Filed under: law

Old European Secular Philosophy vs Education

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible

than in any profane history.*

Sir Isaac Newton

 

Backed by the 1947 Supreme Court decision Everson v. Board of Education, militant objectors to American principles and the American creed bullied their way into controlling the atmosphere of American public schools.  Instead of upholding their oath to abide by the Constitution, judges rule by "incalculable and changeable decrees."  Rule by men replaced government by established law.  The reasoning behind their decision reflects the old European secular doctrine of open-mindedness for dumbing the people down and transforming society.  Instead of being umpires, unelected judges are trampling on the sacred rights of the people by legislating superior rights for the enemies of responsible liberty.

 

A report by the nonpartisan Commission on Excellence in Education remains the premier American study of problems in public education.  It states:  "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people… If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."  The report laments "the deconstruct of the moral and spiritual strengths which knit together the very fabric of our society."**

 

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores have declined, and today the United States ranks academically near the bottom of the world's industrialized nations.  College seniors have no better grasp of general cultural knowledge than did high school graduates in the 1950s.  The average correct responses for modern college seniors on a series of questions was 53.5 percent, compared to 54.5 percent of high school graduates in 1955 (survey by Zogby International, April 2002, for the Princeton, New Jersey-based National Association of Scholars, presented by NAS President Stephen H. Balch in December 2002).

 

In the fall of 2005, researchers at the University of Connecticut's National Civic Literacy Board conducted a survey of some 14,000 freshmen and seniors at fifty colleges and universities.  Students were asked sixty multiple-choice questions to measure their knowledge in four subject areas:  American history, government, international relations and market economy.  Seniors, on average, failed all four subjects and their overall average score was 53.2 percent.***

 

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 celebre [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" (John S. Brubacher, and Willis Rudy, Higher Education Transition, New York:  Harper and Row, 1958, 296 and 306).

 

"I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.  Therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God."

Gouverneur Morris

Signer of the Constitution

 

Claybennett

 

 

 

*Halley's Bible Handbook authored by Henry H. Halley and published by Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (republished since 1924).

**A Nation at Risk, the National Commission on Excellence in Education, April 26, 1983, http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

***The Coming Crisis in Citizenship:  Higher Education's Failure to Teach America's History and Institutions, 09/26/2006, Intercollegiate Studies Institute's National Civic Board Report.  See http://content.usatoday.com/community/tags/topic.aspx?req=tag&tag=Interco...

Image from:  http://pleated-jeans.com/2012/03/23/funny-pic-dump-3-23-12/

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Public Education Shuns Reality

The secularization of education discriminates against students.  The idea of the Ten Commandments as a basis for personal decision-making is fully substantiated by beneficial outcomes.  Without that moral compass, our nation's youth are left in the dark and under the CONTROL of destructive thinking.  They are not given the knowledge for healthy families, fiscal common sense and national prosperity.  When taxpayers figure this out, marginalization by teacher union bosses and teacher tenure will be exposed.  This will open things up and give parents, along with 95% of the teachers (who are in agreement with the citizen majority), the freedom to install religious diversity back as a source of knowledge.

 

This struggle within our education system is not a debate between science and religion, but between religion and religion, atheism and theism.  Science is simply the sphere in which the debate is taking place.

 

Dr. Michael Ruse, a leading evolutionist and authority on philosophy, points out in his recently published book The Evolution-Creation Struggle that the "theory of evolution is, in fact, religion."*  Dr. Ruse also writes:  "Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science.  Evolution is an ideology, a secular religion, a full-fledged alternative to Christianity with meaning and morality.  Evolution is a religion.  This was true of evolution in the beginning and is true of evolution today."

 

The change in American culture since the 1947 Supreme Court decision in Everson v. Board of Education, teacher unionization, and tenure law has led to a colossal increase in family breakdown, abortion, homosexuality, use of addictive drugs, and burgeoning needs for hospital and prison space.  Universities and colleges dominated by the old European secular philosophy have become havens for alcoholism and dorm cohabitation by unmarried students.  Some state universities have a department of religion dominated by atheists who serve as a campus mafia to destroy the academic standing of any faculty member who dares to suggest that there is such an alternative to Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species as intelligent design or a God of creation.

 

"The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four [is] infected with at least one of the diseases, US health officials reported Tuesday" (Laurence K. Altman, The New York Times, Tuesday, Mark 11, 2008).  One in four US teenage girls have STDs.  The diseases, which are infections caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites, can produce acute symptoms … and potentially fatal entropic pregnancy … and cervical cancer."**

 

In 2010, according to Pam Stenzel, a leading lecturer to young people regarding sexual abstinence, teenage girls in America today are carrying, on average, 2.3 sexually transmitted diseases.  In one 24 hour period, 12,000 teens contract a sexually transmitted disease.***  In the 1950s there were five known sexually transmitted diseases.  They could be treated with antibiotics.  Today, there are over thirty sexually transmitted diseases and thirty percent of them are absolutely incurable.  Among the possible disastrous results are a lifelong necessity of treatment as well as sterility, infertility, radical hysterectomy, cervical cancer and death.****

 

"One of every 100 adults are in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America's rank as the world's No. 1 incarcerator," states a report from a new study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.  With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates" (David Crary, New York Associated Press, February 28, 2008).

 

These are merely symptoms of the consequences of the courts' detachment from written and permanent law.  Far greater damage is the hidden loss to the soul of American youth.  Is it any wonder that studies show a significantly higher percentage of public school teachers send their children to private schools than non-teacher parents" (George Archibald, The Washington Times, September 22, 2004)?


Govt-censorship

 

 

*Dr. Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 327.

**Lawrence K. Altman, "One In Four US Teenage Girls Have STD's, Study Finds," International Herald Tribune, March 12, 2008.

***Pam Stenzel, http://pamstenzel.com/

****Pam Stenzel, http://pamstenzel.com/


Image from: http://lawandict.blogspot.com/2011/02/block-outs-and-black-outs.html

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

Manipulation of the Constitution

Secular authoritarians insist upon what they call a "living constitution" that has an open-minded disconnect from moral absolutes.  As has been attributed to Dostoevsky among others, "If God is dead, then anything is permitted."  The colossal failure of secularized education flowing from teachers unions and tenure privileges, which subordinates citizen sovereignty, is the damning consequence of atheistic-secular politics.  The Constitution becomes a mere political document for manipulation by authoritarians who show themselves to be enemies of family, human dignity and limited government.

 

Regardless of the arguments advanced by those who reject the intent of the Constitution, the Rule of Law means that the government is limited in all of its actions by the rules fixed and ratified beforehand.  This is the context within which legislation, court decisions and administrative directives at all levels of government must fit.

 

For those who deny the important role of morality, here is its meaning from Merriam-Webster:  "a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior:  ETHICAL <moral judgments>; b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior <a moral poem>; c: conforming to a standard of right behavior; d: sanctioned by or operative on one's conscience or ethical judgment <a moral obligation>; e: capable of right and wrong action <a moral agent>.

 

Americans determined to protect liberty reject the "living constitution" because it leaves society vulnerable to political deception.  Constitutional government by "written and permanent law" requires an amendment that is acceptable to the people before a change in its provisions is acceptable.  Faithfulness to this process protects society from political deception and the convolution associated with government by incalculable and changeable decrees.

 

Those who reject the rule of law based upon moral absolutes are like ships without an anchor.

Illusion_of_reality_diagram

This drift is illustrated by judicial decisions that set precedents ignoring and overriding the meaning of the Constitution.  An example of the foolishness of the rule of man rather than the rule of law is the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's ruling on November 2, 2005, that parents' fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door," and that a government school has the right to provide its students with "whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise" (Fields v. School District, No. 03-56499, D.C. No. CV-03-00457-JVS).  This unconscionable judge-made law further strengthens the arms of union bosses, leftist teachers and radicals, if any, on school boards.

 

American conservatism transcends both the good and evil intentions of today’s adherents to the old European secular philosophy—the religious and political left.  Revisionist morality, supported by the Darwinian theory for life’s origin, meaning, and purpose, represents one of the greatest evils of our time.*  A focus upon the danger to American liberty can be narrowed to those who are at the seat of the problem—secular militarists.

 

American exceptionalism, the tradition of citizen self-reliance, and the liberty that comes with limited government CAN be restored.

 

 

 

*Charles Darwin published his theory for a God-rejecting worldview in the book The Origin of Species, published in 1859.  There is some adaptation within species, but the Herculean efforts of science pretenders to find evolution between species fail.  Sir Arthur Keith, a leading evolutionist has written:  “Evolution is unproved and unprovable.  We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable” (Sir Arthur Keith, as citation in Wallie A. Criswell’s Did Man Just Happen? Grand Rapids MI:  Zondervan, 1972, p. 73; D. M. S. Watson acknowledged the same in Nature, vol. 124, August 10, 1929, pp. 231-234).

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

The Paper Trail of Our Constitution

By far the most consequential document for government throughout all history is the Declaration of Independence.  The hitherto inexperienced benefits that enabled America to become the greatest nation on earth rest entirely upon the justification for displacing the rule of man with rule by impartial, God-honoring law.  The Declaration provided the philosophical basis for prohibiting actions by government officials that would interfere with citizen sovereignty under God.  The people who vote in secret and choose like-minded representatives determine the consensus for government action.  Adherence to "self-evident" truths that men are "endowed by their Creator" with "certain unalienable Rights" unleashed citizen creativity and independence from tyranny and trickery of authoritarians in and out of government.

 

On July 8, 1776, the Declaration was read in public for the first time, outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, accompanied by the ringing of the Liberty Bell.  On August 2, 1776, the members of Congress signed the parchment copy.  It provides the logic and justification for the chain of authority described by Hamilton Albert Long as “man under God over government.”*  The Declaration and citizens' Bill of Rights, added later to the Constitution as the First Amendment, provides the fundamental God-honoring design for government, and the Constitution is the tool for implementing that design.

 

The purpose of government as a tool for, by, and of the people is spelled out in the preamble of the Constitution:  "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare [meaning common needs that do not conflict with the development of work ethic and personal self-reliance] and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

One historian points out that the preamble contains seven action words:  form, establish, insure, provide, promote, secure, and ordain.  The Constitution concludes:  "Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present on the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven and of the independence [Declaration of Independence, founded upon the sovereignty of the benevolent God of creation and of the Bible] of the United States of America the twelfth [adopted twelve years earlier].  In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names."

 

Until amended by the people, written law holds firm.  It includes the right of trial by one's own peers and the citizen grand jury.  The divine (God-given) right authorizes the people to petition government officials and, if need be, lawfully punish or remove them from office.  The strict boundaries included "no taxation without representation."

 

From 1775 to 1783, the eight-year War for Independence from authoritarian rule was waged.  Its victory was a monumental achievement granted by the providence of God.  The signers of the Declaration of Independence had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  Of the fifty-six signers, five were captured by the British as traitors and tortured; twelve had their homes ransacked and burned; two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; and another had two sons captured.  Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships in the Revolutionary War.  In spite of the suffering, not one of the Founding Fathers ever reneged on his commitment to independence.**

J0410154-570x379

 *www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_history.html

**www.snopes.com/history/american/pricepaid.asp

 

Image from http://www.truenorthquest.com/endowed-by-the-creator-with-certain-unalienable...

 

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

 

Natural Law vs. Secular Law

The natural-law philosophy, foundational to the American constitution, is in direct conflict with secular law.

 

The atheistic-secular philosophy for law identifies with what Solon of Athens described as "government by incalculable and changeable decrees" (Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, Vol. II, The Life of Greece, Simon and Schuster, 1939, 118).  No ~ a solid basis is necessary for prosperity and the self-government enablements of man, for which the Constitution was written.  Secular law leads to political adventurism, exploitation, death and slavery.

 

Separation of the three branches of government (checks and balances) is vital, but what about the Declaration of Independence pattern for separation from hierarchical rule?  This is outlined in the Bill of [citizen] Rights and intended to prevent government servants from perverting established law to grant rights that are harmful to the public.  They are also intended to prevent government servants from using the public's treasury to subsidize slothful citizens and thereby attract an irresponsible voting block.  

"Liberty and security in government depend not on the limits, which the rulers may please to assign to the exercise of their own powers, but on the boundaries, within which their powers are circumscribed by the Constitution.  With us, the powers of magistrates, call them by whatever name you please, are the grants of the people…  The supreme power is in them [the people]; and in them, even when the Constitution is formed, and government is in operation, the supreme power still remains.  A portion of their authority they, indeed, delegate; but they delegate that portion in whatever manner, in whatever measure, for whatever time, to whatever persons, and on whatever conditions they choose to fix" (Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, Lectures, 1790-1791).

 

The limited purpose for judicial independence is to enable judges to settle disputes without being pressured by special interests.  When judges establish policies by legislating or administrating, they have seriously violated their jurisdiction and become fascistic.  That is, they are overriding and preventing the people as sovereigns whose exclusive authority it is to elect like-minded representatives to do the legislating and serve as administrators. 

 

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary.  That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them."*  Upholding the intent and meaning of "certain unalienable [supreme] rights" of the people, outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, is indispensable.  Laws that protect sodomy, same-sex marriage, abortion, and the privileges of teacher tenure are a violation of essential American principles that protect the public from exposure to unsavory and virulent evil practices.  On the other hand, laws that protect a strong, responsible citizen majority are crucial to the survival of self-government and liberty from tyrannical government rule.  

 

As long as judges do not use their independence to twist the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to mask an authoritarian secular agenda, the American principles for life and liberty are not impaired or diminished.  All citizens, including judges, have the duty to protect the unalienable God-given rights to life and responsible use of liberty for others.

Judicial-activism

For more information or to purchase Restoring Education Central to American Greatness:

http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000185969/Restoring-Education-Cen...

http://www.amazon.com/Restoring-Education-Greatness-Principles-Liberated/dp/1...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-education-david-a-norris/1103308053...

 

For previous blog entries on similar topics, simply go to this site and scroll down:

http://davidanorris.posterous.com/

 

Like on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Restoring-Education-Central-to-American-Greatne...

 

* (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821, www.marksquotes.com/Founding-Fathers/Jefferson/index7.htm)

 

American Principle Two: God Is the Source of Unalienable Rights

“All men are … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Declaration of Independence

 

“We The People Of The State Of Iowa, grateful to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed, and feeling our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings, do ordain and establish a free and independent government, by the name of the State of Iowa …”

Preamble, Constitution of Iowa, adopted in 1846—

seventy years after the Declaration of Independence

Image_patch

Belief in a Higher Authority also believes in the opposite side of the coin:  that man does not originate law, God does.  Legislators articulate this pre-existing law and give it particular applications to changing circumstances.

 

During the 1765 crisis caused by the king's Stamp Act, John Adams, when writing the Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, August 12, 1765, the Boston Gazette, pointed out that liberty was not man's creation or something radically new to the world, but rights "derived from our Maker," rights "indisputable, unalienable," "inherent," "essential," "divine" and even acknowledged since the Middle Ages by British law.

 

"We further recommend the most clear and explicit assertion and vindication of our rights and liberties to be entered on the public records, that the world may know, in present and all future generations, that we have a clear knowledge and a just sense of them, and, with submission to Divine Providence that we never can be slaves" (John Adams, pictured below, adopted on October 14, 1765, by the town meeting of Braintree, Massachusetts, and sent to their representatives in the Massachusetts state legislature).

 

Those who reject God's authority and proceed to fix the rights of others are, by definition, false gods and, in practice, become tyrants.  Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist, No. 78, says:  "A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law."  When a particular statute violates the meaning of the Constitution, it is the duty of judicial tribunals to disregard it and adhere to the Constitution.  

 

"The sacred Rights of mankind are not to be rummaged from among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or voided or obscured by mortal power" (teachingamericanhistory.org, Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775).

 

Education in America today is energizing the enemies of the family, self-rule, prosperity and liberty because it does not emphasize that man’s unalienable rights are the gift of God.

Inalienable_rights

A full discussion of these vital American Principles can be found in my book, Restoring Education Central to American Greatness.  For more information or to purchase the book:

Like this on Facebook:

 

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

 

Restoring Education Central to American Greatness: Fifteen Principles That Liberated Mankind from the Politics of Tyranny By David A. Norris

“As one of the tens of thousands who admire the action of your Grand Jury, I wish to commend Foreman Norris and his jury for their courageous and true Americanism in focusing public attention on the perverted minority… who would destroy what we have… in America and deliver us unto our enemies.” (E. Allen, Burlington, North Dakota, letter to the Nevada Iowa Journal)

 

Ames, Iowa – (AP) – The Grand Jury wants “moral pollution’… “and defamation of our country ( in the Humanities curriculum) stopped.” (Denver Post)

 

Posterous theme by Cory Watilo