Filed under: Bible

Our Hands Are Tied ... By Teacher Unions

The loss of citizen control over what our nation’s youth are taught in the behavioral studies hinges on two teachers’ tenure contract paragraphs demanded by union bosses when negotiating with local school boards.  The first devastating paragraph provides teacher tenure guarantees that supersede the authority of school administrators to replace employees.  The second harmful paragraph makes it a crime to disclose bad teacher performance to the public or to other schools that are considering hiring the teacher until costly and lengthy legal proceedings have approved such disclosure.

Professionals like medical doctors, engineers, plumbers, and airline pilots—vital to our society—do not have tenure guarantees.  Yet what is being taught to America’s youth is of even greater importance.

The unionization of teachers and accompanying tenure law have enabled a small cadre of radicals to enforce their attacks against God in education. Newt Gingrich stated:  “Those who want absolute proof you cannot teach American history honestly and accurately without reference to God, go to the Lincoln Memorial and read where in Lincoln’s second inaugural, March 1865, he referred to God fourteen times and used two quotes from the Bible.”

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote about the First Principle in his Articles of Belief:  “ I believe there is one supreme, most perfect Being …  Also when I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space that is [in] every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds forever moving around him; then this little ball on which we move, seems, even in my narrow imagination, to be almost nothing, and myself less than noghing, and of no sort of consequence … That I may be preserved from atheism … Help me, O Father!... For all Thy innumerable benefits; for life, and reason … My good God, I thank thee!”

Benjamin Franklin, “Articles of Belief,” in The American Ideal of 1776, ed. Hamilton Albert Long(Philadelphia:  Heritage Books, 1963), p. 5.

Lincoln_memorial

 

As Justice Brandeis said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

The American states did not become united until the constitutional delegates agreed to amendments that were specific about religious and educational freedom from government and nongovernment dictation.  The first ten amendments included the codification of the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence (separation from authoritarian rule).  Far from being secular, all aspects of human endeavor, including government, fall under the purview of creation’s God.  The value system for determining the proper role of laws and the use of government power is clear.  We ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).  Adoption of this morally-specific, nonsectarian, God-honoring predicate has served as a marvelous unifier for our diverse immigrant nation.

Congress-large1

We no longer have public education.  In the behavioral and political sciences it has become government education comparable to the monopoly state doctrine that decimated Medieval Europe.

The secular militants claim to be patriots because, as they say, dissent is American.  What they mean is evident from how they have gutted traditional American values in public education.  They demand freedom for themselves but reject the American concept of academic freedom (the freedom to be honestly informed) and the freedom of others to make their own choices.  The soft underbelly of the secular left is the fact that they cannot withstand the competition of ideas.  For them, it is intolerable to allow students to learn of the God of creation alongside their atheistic lifeview.

An elaboration of “In God We Trust” is found in Proverbs 3:5-6:  “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”

The “In God We Trust” worldview has been the foundation for public education, beginning in the original thirteen colonies and continuing for over 250 years.  Tragically, the Supreme Court ruling in the Everson v. Board of Education decision of 1947 began a dramatic shift away from “In God We Trust.” 

Stay tuned for more discussion about socialism, civic religion and a strategy for restoring competition in education and choice by the people …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantasy vs. Reality

Flood_4
In the middle of a hillside surrounded by beautiful homes was a swampland that absorbed the surface water coming down from the properties above. This swampy area was filled with dirt and resulted in serious flooding below it. The goal of the neighbors living below was to solve the problem without an expensive lawsuit. The developer of the swampland was confronted with the truth. Knowing the historic consequences of rejecting truth, the developer agreed with reality. At considerable expense, he provided a large trench to collect and reroute the water away from the development. His acknowledgment of the timeless laws of creation’s nature caused him to solve the problem and avoid the consequences that come when truth is rejected.

Policies consistent with the truth provide significant benefits for states and nations as well.

Ideas for decision making have one of two origins—either materialistic and mortal or a basis upon reality of everlasting truth, according to God’s design.  The Word of the God of creation and creation’s nature has strangely disappeared from the lexicon of public education.  Conversely, those who persist in the fantasy of revisionist morality (moral relativism) and a central government that compromises the people’s right to be fully informed have, in fact, ignored the irreversible laws of creation’s nature.

William_blackstone

William Blackstone

1723-1780

Author of Commentaries on the Laws of England

 

William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England were used by Abraham Lincoln and by students of law into the 1920s.  Blackstone said: “Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws [principles] of his Creator …  These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil … This law of nature dictated by God Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other.  It is binding over the entire globe, in all countries, and at all times:  no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.”

 (William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1765, 38-40)

 

 

Yesterday's Foundation for Today's Liberty

From the beginning, Judeo-Christian principles have been the

foundation for American public dialogue and government policy. They

serve as the solid basis for political activism in support of a better

socioeconomic environment. Found in American homes, truth from

the Hebrew Christian Bible has enabled individual liberty to prevail

over secular empires because it is a practical message about reality from

man’s Creator.

 

In their quest for liberty, Americans focused upon the conspicuously

self-evident “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It is the governing

character of these principles (laws), such as humility, the Golden Rule,

and the Ten Commandments, that leads to success. This is the sure

foundation upon which man’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness” rests. Called “virtue” by America’s Founding Fathers, the

impartial and divine element frees man to do what is right. “Where the

Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

First

 

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo