Filed under: family

The Foundational Malady Diagnosed

When we observe secular militants without knowing their intentions, we arrive at faulty conclusions.  Their determination is rooted in the fact that morality, the traditional family, and belief in God firmly undermine the power of hierarchical authoritarians.  For them, deception in pursuit of their atheistic world is a virtue.

 

Robert Chandler writes about David Horowitz' testimony before the Kansas House of Representatives regarding "academic freedom."  Horowitz said:  "Entire academic departments and fields are no longer devoted to scholarly pursuits, but have become ideological training and recruitment centers for radical causes."  The departments most suspect are economics, health, history, English, political science, sociology, psychology and anthropology. Add to these departments women's studies, queer studies, black liberation studies, Islamic studies, third-world studies, global warming studies, and so on--you get the picture (Robert Chandler, PhD, with experience in the Department of Defense, State, and the Central Intelligence Agency, Shadow World, One Massachusetts Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C., Regnery Publishing, 2008).

 

David Horowitz writes later in his book Radical Son, "The Marxists and socialists who had been refuted by historical events are now the tenured establishment of the academic world.  Marxism had produced the bloodiest and most oppressive regimes in human history" (New York:  Free Press, 1997).  Citations are from the September 2010 Journal by Dr. David A. Noebel, published by Summit Ministries, Manitou Springs, CO.

 

By far the greatest peril to America today is internal.  It is the secular militants' war against traditional American values. This started when taxpayer-funded universities foolishly caved in to the demand for the old European secular policy of unionization and teachers' independence (tenure guarantees).  Now contemporary liberals gleefully impose their God-rejecting approach to life upon the minds of American youth even in lower-level public schools.

 

Abraham Lincoln understood that it was the dangers from within America, not from the outside, that could destroy America.  He stated:  "What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?  It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army.  Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.  Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors."*

 

Ronald Reagan contributes more insight to this grave topic in remarks at a Dallas Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast, delivered on August 23, 1984 in Dallas, Texas:  "Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience.  Without God, we're mired in the material, the world that tells us only what the senses perceive… And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.  If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."**

 

Image_child_to_school

 

*Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collective Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3 (Boston: 1935), 91-96.  This speech is one of several Lincoln made against slavery, http://www.classicreader.com/book/3766/17/

 

**http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ronaldreaganecumenicalprayer.htm

 

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Outcome-Based Education That Is Profoundly American

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote to her young son, John Quincy, who would later become our sixth president:  "Great learning and superior abilities, should you ever possess them, will be of little value and small estimation, unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.  Adhere to those religious sentiments and principles that were early installed into your mind and remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.  Let me enjoin it upon you to attend constantly and steadfastly to the precepts and instructions of your father, as you value the happiness of your mother and your own welfare. His care and attention to you render many things unnecessary for me to write which I might otherwise do, but the inadvertency and heedlessness of youth, requires line upon line and precept upon precept, and when enforced by the joint efforts of both parents will, I hope, have a due influence upon your conduct; for dear as you are to me, I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed, or that an untimely death crop you in your infant years, than see you an immoral, profligate, or graceless child.*

 

Children are not the property of the government or the state.  The authority and responsibility for what children are taught rests with parents.

 

A Well-Educated Student:

Speaks and writes accurately.

Listens attentively.

Is a reader.

Is honest at all times.

Is a person of prayer.

Has God-honoring goals.

Upholds the traditional family.

Is sensitive to the Word and to the will of God.

Is sensitive to the needs of others.

Handles success and defeat with grace.

Has convictions and stands for them.

Fulfills citizen duties to family, church and country.

Is polite in his dealings with others.

Uses resources responsibly.

Recognizes the existence of absolute truth which never changes and, applied, 

     serves as a very sure means for personal development and success.

Uses gentle yet persuasive words, not physical force, to communicate his position.

 

Woodrow Wilson, in his election campaign for President, stated "A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do.  We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about…  America was born a Christian nation.  America was born to exemplify that devotion to the tenets of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture."**

 


Abigail_adams

Abigail Adams

1744-1818

 

 

 

*Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams, June 10, 1778, Butterfield Adams Family Correspondence, 3:37, http://books.google.com/books?id=59dQoRNSwxMC&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq...&q=butterfield%20adams%20family%20correspondence%20his%20care%20and%20attention%20to%20you%20render&f=false

**http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20120802/NEWS03/120802024/Chris-McDaniel...

 

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Curriculum That Is Profoundly American

The proposal for education advanced by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and adopted by the University of Virginia provides an excellent formula for teaching American history and government.  It provides indisputable evidence of the American principles that are imperative for education in the taxpayer-funded classroom.

 

The resolution stated that "all students shall be inculcated with the basic American principles of government…  None should be inculcated [taught] which are incompatible with those on which the Constitution of this State, and of the United States were genuinely based, in the common opinion."  The resolution also stated that the faculty had a standard of responsibility and were required to teach affirmatively these unique American principles.  Only after they had done so were they to teach the conflicting principles as such, judging them by the soundness of the American principles that served as a basis.  The resolution then specified six writings that, in the board's opinion, reflected the unanimously supported principles unique to America that youth should be taught.  "These documents were John Locke's Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government (1690), Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government (1698), the Declaration of Independence, Washington's Farewell Address, the Virginia Resolutions of 1799 (adopted by the Virginia legislature), and the Federalist Papers."*

 

The character-building curriculum now taught by homeschool parents and many Christian private schools is comparable to the curriculum taught in common schools and one-room neighborhood schools in early America.  At that time, such schools often had, say, thirty students, some at nearly every grade level, with one teacher.

 

Noah Webster's textbooks, including the Webster's Blue-Back Speller, were standard for American schools until early 1930.  Conversant in many languages, he spent several years writing the Webster's Dictionary that preceded the dictionary used in America today.  His definitions were often supported by Scripture.

 

Webster taught school in West Hartford, Connecticut, and later served as a soldier during the American Revolution.  He spent nine terms in the Connecticut legislature and three terms in the Massachusetts legislature.  A strong proponent for convening the Constitutional Convention, he wrote what became Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

 

Webster was concerned that the youth of our nation would learn to check their emotions and avoid the fears and pitfalls of foolish imaginations.  Karl Marx stirred up the emotions of heady intellectuals.  With promises of a utopia, he captured millions who, to the great loss of their families and even nations, embraced secular popularism.  The Webster dictionary defined emotions as the "strong impression, or vivid sensation that immediately produces a reaction.  The nature of the reaction is to either 'appropriate and enjoy, or avoid and repel' the cause for the impression."**

 

Abraham Lincoln's strong foundation in language was a result of his stepmother's curriculum--the Bible and Shakespeare (The Encyclopaedia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences…, Vol. 16, by Hugh Chisholm, p 703).

Albert Einstein and Bill Gates were university dropouts but not learning dropouts.  They were challenged to learn about the unvarying reliability and order of creation's design.

 

American_schools

 

*Nathaniel F. Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia, as contained in the "Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph B. Cabell," (n.p.: Richmond, Virginia, 1856), 339.  Repeated in Hamilton Albert Long, The American Ideal of 1776, Your American Heritage Books, 141-44, 147.

**Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, G. and C. Merriam Company, 1828; cited by David A. Norris, Lasting Success (Ames, IA Alpha Heartland Press, 2003), 7.

 

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Education That Is Profoundly American

Sound education rests on respect for the First Principle, namely, the God of Creation is man's benefactor.  Increases in knowledge are made possible by the connecting links of intelligible design. Irrefutable third-grade math, for instance, is a link to the latest reliable advances in the physical sciences.

 

John Jay is thought to be one of the most influential among the Founding Fathers.  He served as president of the first Continental Congress and was the first chief justice of the United States.  When Jay applied for admission to King's College in New York at the age of fourteen, one of the requirements he had to fulfill was to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin.*

 

The Founding Fathers recognized that the preservation of the family, self-government, and liberty depends upon applying the timeless and universal principles found in the Bible.  And for Americans to have firsthand knowledge of the Bible, they must be taught to read.  Public school textbooks taught the alphabet through Bible verses that started with each letter.

 

Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, Founding Father and a Signer who arranged  the final draft of the Constitution, wrote "Religion is the only solid basis for good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God" (The Life of Governeur Morris, Jared Sparks, Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1832, Vol. III, p 483, from his "Notes on the Form of a Constitution for France"). **

 

Immigrants from diverse backgrounds came to America and worked peacefully together because they shared a common mind on the issue of human equality, moral law and responsible citizenship.  They wanted no more potentates, or authoritarian clergy, professors or kings.  The Constitution clarified the point, when forbidding titles "of nobility," that could undermine the sovereign authority of the people under God over government (Section 9, article 8).

 

"O Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto:  'In God is our trust.'  And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" (From The Star-Spangled Banner).***

 

Gouverneur_morris_1752-1816

 

Gouverneur Morris

1725-1816

Founding Father and successful politician, diplomat and writer

He took twenty-three proposed resolutions and condensed them into the seven major articles

contained in the Constitution.

 

 

*John Eidsmore, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 1987), 220.

**http://www.partyof1776.net/p1776/fathers/Morris%20Gouverneur/quotes/contents....

***"The Star-Spangled Banner" was made the national anthem of the United States by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. 301), and signed by President Herbert Hoover.

 

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Revisionism In the Soft Sciences

The collective political power of teacher unions, established by legislative and judicial acceptance, has enabled them to prevent curriculum control by elected school boards and superintendents hired to administer the system.  

 

Even though tenure laws enable teachers in the hard sciences (math, engineering, chemistry, physics, and so forth) to get by with dumbed down approaches to learning, the harm done is less than in the soft sciences.  Whether or not the researcher or teacher is a Bible-believer, the conclusions drawn in the hard sciences tend to be the same because proof is determined by observing consistently repeatable and immutable laws of creation's nature.  Misrepresentations are typically exposed and rejected as a result of our free enterprise system, which thrives on competition and the consumer's right to choose from products that come from the hard sciences.

 

In contrast, conclusions drawn in the soft sciences--such as literature, news editing, education strategies, political science, life-origins biology, history, law, social studies, arts, and ecology--differ starkly between creationist and evolutionist instructors.  The differences include the acceptance or rejection of moral certainties, an honest or dishonest rendition of history, and respect or disregard for parental authority and for the Constitution itself.  When an evolutionist instructs a student year after year, the student's ability to separate truth from non-truth and to appreciate the value of moral law and the traditional family becomes seriously impaired.

 

Not surprising, an Ames, Iowa, public school board member complained:  "I know the Legislature likes to talk about local control, but what I am getting [at] is that … we really don't have local control."*

97vmk

*Teresa Kay Albertson, "School District Cuts Not as Bad as Feared," The Tribune(Ames, IA), January 18, 2009, A3.

Image from http://www.jeffersonquotes.com/2012_04_01_archive.html

 

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American Education Philosophy Corrupted

Those who champion the atheistic-secular concept of open-mindedness use it to justify exclusivity for imposing their God-rejecting life view upon captive classroom students.  "Not only must school teachers and principles be 'exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry, but severally and collectively, they must be prepared to proclaim their faith in that open-mindedness and free inquiry.'"  Here we must hearken to Dewey:  "The administrator will… realize that public education is essentially education of the public: directly, through teachers and students… in the transformation of society [into a God-rejecting, socialistic society]."*

 

Atheistic-secular demands that "school teachers and principals be exemplars of open-mindedness [in] the transformation of society" undermine the moral foundations of civil society.  The justification for a tax on the people for education, in a representative republic, requires that the curriculum promote foundational moral boundaries.  The constitutions of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba proclaimed liberty.  But in the absence of a moral predicate providing certainties for Constitutional law--such as provided in the American Declaration of Independence and Northwest Ordinance, they rule by what Solon of Athens called "incalculable and changeable decrees."**

 

Prior to the leftist takeover, the National Education Association published God-honoring, character-building booklets for students and parents as recently as 1950.  For example, A Golden Treasury from the Bible, contained twenty-four Bible verses, including Psalm 1; Proverbs 20:1; Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments); Romans 12; John 3:16, 6:23, 14:1-4 and 15:1-4; 1 Corinthians 13; and Ecclesiastes 12:1, "remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth."

 

In contrast to the old European secular philosophy, the American philosophy of education requires that all prominent views, including the atheistic-secular view, be introduced, but that they are taught in the context of the history of their outcomes.  This is seen in the resolution proposed by both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and adopted by the newly founded University of Virginia (see Chapter 10 of Restoring Education Central to American Greatness).  Their resolution identifies the great need of our day, stressing citizen responsibility and the need for a thorough knowledge of historic American foundations.

 

The education guidelines set forth for the University of Virginia emphasize that "all students shall be 'inculcated' with the basic American principles for government," and, "None should be inculcated which are incompatible with those on which the Constitution of this States, and of the United States were genuinely based, in the common opinion."  The resolution also stated that the faculty had a standard of responsibility and were required to teach affirmatively these unique American principles.  Only after they had done so were they to teach the conflicting principles as such, judging them by the soundness of the American principles that served as a basis.***  These principles are detailed in Chapter 10 of Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.

 

Faithful school boards and administrators take seriously the fact that youthful trust, inexperience and vulnerability to exploitation by the enemies of the family and self-government require that the learning environment be protected.  God has given mankind a wonderful mind to use and explore the universe, with but one exception:  we are not to use our minds to absorb the details and wiles (deceptive snares) of evil (Genesis 3:13; Isaiah 5:15-16, 20; Romans 16:19; and James 1:12-17).

 

Image_nea_booklet

 

*James Allen Johnson, "A Note on Academic Freedom: Schoolmen Must Declare Their Faith," Phi Delta Kappan, 44:185-88 (January, 1963), in Robert Hoffman, Foundations of American Education (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1970), 192.

**Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 2, The Life of Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1939), 118.

***Nathaniel F. Cabell, Early History of the University of Virginia as contained in the "Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph B. Cabell" (n.p.: Richmond, Virginia, 1856), 339.  Repeated in Hamilton Albert Long, The American Ideal of 1776, Your American Heritage Books, 141-44, 147.

 

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The Emergence of Teacher Tenure Law

Teacher tenure law was brought from Europe to America with the founding of the American Association of University Professors in 1915.  Their first president, Professor John Dewey (1859-1952) was a published atheist.  Dewey reminded conferees, "To have failed to undertake these initial demands would have been cowardly."*

 

The abuse of academic freedom and teacher tenure guarantees is rooted in the old European secular philosophy.  John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy point out that, when Darwinian advocates coupled their "origin and destiny of man" theory with the authoritarianism of "German graduate methods [faculty independence]… academic freedom became a cause celebrate [highly controversial]."**  According to Darwinian militants, "There is no fixed limit or perfect form of knowledge and, that on the contrary, truth is always tentative."***

 

The harmful impact of teacher tenure guarantees arises from the use of law (government power) to shelter teachers from accountability to the public for what they teach.  "The obligations of the teacher are direct to truth, and the teacher who, in order to please anybody, suppresses important information, or says things he knows are not true, or refrains from saying things that need to be said in the interest of truth, betrays his calling and renders himself unworthy to belong to the company of teachers."****

 

John Dewey is recognized as a key leader of the Teachers Union, Local 5, which was organized in 1916 as an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in New York City.  The union's principal target was the repeal of the Lusk Laws, statutes that allowed for the revocation of a teacher's license "if he is not of good moral character--or if by act or utterance he shows that he will not support the Constitution of the State or of the United States of America.*****

 

This belligerent breed of social engineers gradually pushed its way into the leadership of government-administered education.  The group also included Professor John Dewey.  He was the first president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and was one of the signers of the first Humanist Manifesto.  He also served as honorary president of the National Education Association (NEA) after it came under leftist control.

 

These authoritarians demand taxpayer-funded tenure guarantees, the means to finance and empower their war against citizen self-rule and liberty.  To achieve their goal, they must have the freedom to turn the minds of students away from the beliefs of their parents and traditional American values.

 

Image_nea_radicalunion-295x300

*John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 310.

**Ibid., 296.

***Ibid., 306.

****W. T. Couch, Academic Freedom (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1995), 1; quoted at a conference titled "Fifty Years After Russell Kirk's Academic Freedom:  The Future of the Liberal Arts in America," Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, February 2-6, 2005.

*****Kheel Center for Labor Management, Teachers Union of the City of New York. Records, 1921-42, Collection Number: 5445, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05445.html

Image from http://www.reflector.com/greenville-news-board/nc-public-school-teacher-gives...

 

 

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The Enemy of the Foundation for American Law

Phyllis Schlafly's The Supremacists:  The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, published in 2004, documents scores of devastating decisions that flow directly or indirectly from the exploitation and contrivance of Marbury v. Madison and the Everson v. Board of Education precedents.  The harm is compounded by neglect of the Tenth Amendment, which places the authority over laws with the states, counties and cities according to the will of the local body politic:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."*

 

The following is additional documentation from Phyllis Schlafly's book.

 

1945-47 (pages 105-6,155-59,175)  Laws protecting Americans from fraudulent disinformation about Communists working in America were overturned.  This, in large part, has led to the arrogance of radical professors and the radicalization of students starting in the 1960s.  Many of these students are now teaching in lower-level, taxpayer-funded government schools throughout America.

 

1953 (pages 17-34)  Judges make war against public acclaim of God, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments and prayer.

 

1964 (pages76-81) Liberal judges cripple law enforcement.

 

1966 (pages 57-64)  Judges overturn laws prohibiting the marketing of pornography.

 

1973 (pages 65-75)  Judges adopt the radical feminist agenda, requiring all state legislators to accept the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade.

 

1985 (pages 92-96)  Judges assume the authority as judges to impose taxes on the public.

 

1993 (pages 35-46)  Judges war against marriage and the family, established and upheld for thousands of years.

 

1999 (pages 47-56)  Judges undermine US sovereignty by paying deference to the agendas and laws of foreign nations, including laws that prohibit capital punishment and give the citizen franchise to felons.

 

2003 (pages 69 and 141)  Liberal judges attack the Boy Scouts and other gender-specific organizations.

 

Resting upon legal precedents reaching back to 1945, the American Civil Liberties Union and leftist teacher union bosses are reaching beyond their control of public education to war against God and American values elsewhere.  For example, the Teachers [Union} Association of California spent $1.25 million in opposition to a Proposition 8 amendment that supported the marriage between one man and one woman.  That $1.25 million came from teachers' union dues.  According to Reg Weaver, outgoing president of the National Education Association, one-third of the NEA union members are Republicans and one-third are Independents.  "Each California teacher pays $922 each year in California Teachers Association dues" (Los Angeles Times, November 18, 2008, cited by the November Education Reporter, St. Louis, Missouri).

 

Stare decisis is no excuse for preserving bad court precedent.  Stare decisis is legal talk for an everyday practice that we all follow.  It simply means that once a decision is implemented, it should be supported for a considerable period of time to see if, in fact, it is helping or, at a minimum, not doing harm.  The practice of preserving court precedent was never intended to be a mandate for national suicide.

 

Judge Robert Bork observed that the courts, and especially the Supreme Court, have become "the enemy of traditional culture," in areas including "speech, religion, abortion, sexuality, welfare, public education and much else."  He continued, "It is not too much to say that the suffocating vulgarity of popular culture is in large measure the work of the Court."**

 

Full

*http://www.campaignforliberty.com/pillars/usconstitution.php

**Jeffrey Rosen, "Obstruction of Judges," The New York Times, August 11, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/11/magazine/11JUDGES.html?pagewanted=all

Image from http://www.christianpost.com/news/aclu-in-heaven-17995/

 

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Earl Warren Court of 1953-1969

The harm that has resulted from the activist Earl Warren Court (Supreme Court 1953 - 69) is beyond measure.

 

"On August 7, 1956, the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security held a hearing on the 'Limitation of Appellate Jurisdiction of the United States Supreme Court' [arising from decisions by the Warren Court] at which Senator William E. Jenner testified:  'There was a time when the Supreme Court conceived its function to be the interpretation of the law.  For some time now, the Supreme Court has been making law--substituting its judgment for the judgment of the legislative branch.  We witness today the spectacle of a Court constantly changing the law, and even changing the meaning of the Constitution, in an apparent determination to make the law of the land what the Court thinks it should be.'  Echoing the testimony of others, Senator Jenner continued:  'The Senate was wrong.  The House of Representatives was wrong.  The Secretary of State was wrong.  The Department of Justice was wrong.  The State legislatures were wrong.  The State courts were wrong.  The prosecutors, both Federal and State, were wrong.  The juries were wrong.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation was wrong.  The Loyalty Review Board was wrong.  The New York Board of Education was wrong.  The California bar examiners were wrong…  The Ohio Committee on Un-American Activities was wrong.  Everybody was wrong except the attorneys for the Communist conspiracy and the majority of the United States Supreme Court.'"*

 

As long as the court fails to restore the First Amendment, intended to prevent, among other things, establishment of government employment guarantees, radical government teachers will continue to rip into the moral fabric of the American mind.  The Ten Commandments, featured on the walls of the US Supreme Court Building, will continue to be found and removed from schools and other public buildings throughout the nation.  Although this is being vigorously protested, American foundations in God-honoring faith were largely absent from the new Visitor Center that has now become a gateway to the Capitol Building in Washington DC.  Even the words "religion and morality" were stripped from the education mandate of the Northwest Ordinance displayed in the Visitor Center.**

 

The war against the Judeo-Christian foundation for American law, self-government and the spirit of liberty extends beyond the censorship of American history and foundational American beliefs from public school textbooks.  No nation, however great, can withstand the politicization of the soft sciences that comes with the establishment of teacher union tenure laws.  "All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."***  Perhaps the greatest damage has been the loss of quality education taught unabashedly by pro-family, pro-life and pro-American teacher majority.  Good teachers simply submit or leave the profession.  The soft sciences in schools saddled by tenure laws are not the only victim.  Student abilities in the hard sciences have suffered.****

 

Judicialactivism

*Phyllis Schlafly, The Supremacists:  The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It, Dallas, TX:  Spence Publishing Company, 2004, p. 108.  This highly recommended book may be purchased at http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2004/june04/psrjune04.html

**http://www.onenewsnow.com/Journal/editorial.aspx?id=315560

***John Dalberg, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, an English historian refuting the dogma of papal infallibility, April 3, 1887.

****http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-25/us/students.science.math_1_math-and-scienc...:US

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A Celebration of Liberty

"Be it remembered, however, that liberty must at all hazards be supported … cannot be preserved without a vernal knowledge among the people…  And the preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.  The people … have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know."*  This is from the 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, by John Adams.  He was a devout Christian, a Harvard-educated lawyer and a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses that adopted the Declaration of Independence.  He was the second president of the United States.  Adams' wife, Abigail, has been recognized as a Founding Mother because of her influence on behalf of women's rights.  Their son, John Quincy Adams, was the sixth president of the United States.

 

Are we as citizen taxpayers willing to forfeit our liberty, the teaching of essential knowledge, as a courtesy to union bosses and tenured secular militants who have rejected American history, the traditional family, public morality and representative government?  AS EDUCATION GOES, SO GOES A NATION.

 

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote the following to his wife, Abigail:  “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more” (cited by David McCullough, John Adams, New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2001, 130).

 

On July 4, 1787, consistent with the nationwide custom, Philadelphia celebrated the Declaration of Independence with bell ringing, marching with fife and drums, the salute of guns and speeches.  It was Wednesday, and the constitutional delegates had taken the day off.  That "The Grand Convention may form a constitution for an eternal Republic!" was the toast of the day.  The Pennsylvania Herald declared, "With zeal and confidence we expect from the Federal Convention a system of government adequate to the security and preservation of those rights which were promulgated by the ever memorable Declaration of Independence."  

 

No more rule by pretender gods -- Samuel Adams is quoted as saying, "We have this day [Fourth of July] restored the Sovereign [the God of creation] to whom all men ought to be obedient.  He reigns in Heaven, and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His Kingdom come."*


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*http://www.usachristianministries.com/us-history-quotes-about-god-and-the-bible/

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