Restoring Education Central to American Greatness http://davidanorris.posterous.com David A. Norris Blog posterous.com Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:13:00 -0700 Part I: Government http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-74472 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-74472

American Principle Fifteen 

 

The Benevolent Provision and Heart Of God For Mankind

Are Recognized By Our Founding Fathers

 

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Declaration of Independence

 

 

It is the deeply felt expression of faith in the God who gave us life and the respect for unchanging laws of creation's nature that reversed the historic tide of oppression by government officials.

 

Our duty is to be public about the fact that reliable standards for law come with knowledge of the non-sectarian Creator-based meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment.  In 1835, the significance of this connection was observed by Alexis de Tocqueville, "… in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom…"

 

We must be honest.  There is an imperative need to restore American law that upheld the impartial life-enhancing morality, known then as Common Law and will always be known as the Laws of Nature.  The Declaration of Independence reads "… the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind…"  This is not only the basis for our nation's charters, it is also the unifier of our immigrant nation for the greatness that has been achieved.  

 

The wisdom of leaders who drafted the American charters is illustrated by the recommendation made for the American Seal.  Originally Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams proposed that the Seal pay tribute to the benevolent provision and heart of God for mankind.  Their design depicted the Old Testament journey of the Israelites who were guided by God through the wilderness.  The other side displayed Anglo-Saxons from Germanic tribes who descended to England and influenced the making of laws.  The Anglo-Saxons introduced morality for law comparable to the values of right and wrong identified by the human conscience at birth.  Undoubtedly, the most significant guide for law chosen by Americans was the Ten Commandments presented by God to Moses at Mount Sinai.

 

Secular authoritarians who abuse citizen sovereignty in practice and the Constitutional concept of unalienable God-given human rights have always menaced society.  "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations" (James Madison, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788).  The quest for power is reflected in their tax and spend authoritarian militancy.  While claiming patriotism, they promote fear and employ every conceivable means to remove any knowledge of America's Judeo-Christian heritage and the principles of the Declaration of Independence that gave birth to the United States of America.

 

The Declaration of Independence concludes: "We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.  And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" (the final paragraph from the Declaration of Independence unanimously adopted by the thirteen United States of America, CONGRESS, July 4, 1776).

 

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] of the United States of America the Twelfth [adopted earlier] In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our names."

 

 

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Tue, 12 Mar 2013 06:32:00 -0700 Part I: Government http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-57285 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-57285

American Principle Eleven (Part II)

 

Government and Union Monopolies Involving Education

Or Religion Are Prohibited--For Liberty's Sake


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a 'redress of grievances.'"

First Amendment, Constitution of the United States

 

 

Education that does not teach the timeless Creator-based principles, outlined in the Declaration of Independence, empowers the enemies of America and the people's right to liberty from oppressive government employees.  "Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights, and where learning is confined to a few people, liberty can be neither equal nor universal" (Dr. Benjamin Rush, Essay, 1786; Dr. Rush was a highly regarded physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence).  Freedom from tyrants of the mind requires that government be prohibited from being a part of or permitting monopolies over education, religion and political unions.  It is the duty of government to encourage competition between them in America.

 

The Following Was Taken From Chapter Nine

 

Even though some judges are soft on crime, "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," according to 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).

Graph_for_principle_11_pic

These are merely symptoms of the consequences of the secularization of education in government schools.  Far greater damage is the hidden loss to the soul of America, including the loss of the people's discernment needed for choosing public officials.


First Amendment law, intended to prevent the suppression of the right of parents to choose between competing education suppliers for their children's education, is superior to all other laws--national, state and local.

 

 

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Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:42:00 -0800 Part I: Government http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-50006 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-50006

American Principle Eleven (Part I)

 

Government and Union Monopolies Involving Education

Or Religion Are Prohibited--For Liberty's Sake


"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a 'redress of grievances.'"

First Amendment, Constitution of the United States

 

 

The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were concerned about the use of government power by what Thomas Jefferson called "Tyrants of the Mind."  Instead of government being the servant of the people, tyrants override the people's authority and gradually take control of what schools teach.  The family and the teaching of American history become early victims.  Students are dumbed down.  Secular open-minded morality and class envy divide families and communities.  Fellow travelers in the judiciary reject the historical application of First Amendment law.  In later chapters we document the inroads of harmful law.

 

Government-sanctioned teacher tenure guarantees are a violation of the First Amendment.  Privileged government teachers lead toward the same devastating consequences as the government-sanctioned church imposed on medieval Europe.  Experience with tyrants of the mind is the reason for the First Amendment.

 

Tyrants of the mind are bullies.  The creation of fear enables the few to overpower school administrators hired by the people to run schools in the public interest.  The weapons used include bad-mouthing and the ruin of the reputations of good administrators and teachers who dare to challenge leftist "politically correct" militants.

 

Editors of the book Speeches That Changed the World started with the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) and Christ's Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).  These editors recognized the good that believers have contributed to society and the superior quality of the Bible as literature.  Speeches That Changed the World included speeches by two Darwinian evolutionists, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.  Their leadership did influence the world.  The murder of millions of innocent people demonstrates the depths to which the open-mindedness of Darwin's God-rejecting Origin of the Species dogma can take men.

 

As always happens, those who reject the envelope of the life-enhancing "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" eventually self-destruct.  The problem now in America is the damage being done to the minds of millions of our youth who will soon be leaders.

 

"Educators have recognized the processes by which thought and behavioral patterns acquired in youth become the basis for adult motivation.  In modern times thoughtful observers have become progressively aware that moral, social, and political concepts implanted during the time of mental immaturity not only participate in the conduct of later life, but, once acquired, such concepts become dominant and often unalterable in the adult" (Grand Jury study of problems in higher education for the Eleventh Judicial District of Iowa, chaired by David A. Norris).

 

"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, U.S. health officials reported Tuesday" (Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, March 11, 2008).  One in four U.S. teenage girls have STDs.  The diseases, which are infections caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites, can produce acute symptoms… and potentially fatal pregnancy… and cervical cancer.  The two most common sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs, among all the participants tested were HPB at 18 percent, and chlamydia at 4 percent, according to the analysis portion of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

 

An honest evolutionist: "Evolution is unproved and unprovable.  We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable" (Sir Arthur Keith, citation in Wallie A. Criswell's Did Man Just Happen?, Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 1973).

 

Education worthy of the name will emphasize that the president, congress and the judiciary are servants of, by and for the people who are the sovereigns under creation's God.

 

 

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Fri, 01 Feb 2013 07:16:00 -0800 Part I: Government http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-57382 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/part-i-government-57382

American Principle Four (Part II)

 

All Men Are Equal

In the Sight Of God and the Law

 

"that all men are created equal ..."

Declaration of Independence

 

 

The Bible's Priesthood of Believers doctrine points to the direct God-to-man relationship that has liberated countless millions of people from exploitation by truth trashers.  People cherish a system that defines the truth as a gift from God, unchanging and always applicable.  They appreciate a system that respects the right to enjoy the fruit of one's labor and freedom to exchange enhanced products for prosperity.  Recognized anew during the Great Reformation (1500-1570), it is part of the American Judeo-Christian heritage.  The God-to-man relationship is a protective covenant.  People may choose to avoid deception imposed by authoritarians by going directly to God's Word and, when interpreted as such, learn the TRUTH.  Protected by the religious liberty amendment, until twisted by judges, the First Amendment freed the people from the tyranny of ideological truth trashers.

 

When adopted both religiously and educationally, Priesthood of Believers diminished the ability of truth and knowledge trashers and generated the greatest expanse of human ingenuity and prosperity in history.

 

The Judeo-Christian faith is not a religion that is forcefully imposed on the people.  Acceptance is a personal choice.  Paralleling Biblical morality, the Creator-based Declaration of Independence serves as America's impartial Civic Religion for public life.  Immigrants come to America by the millions because they can be free from the inequality of authoritarian rule.  For some readers, this may seem beside the point, but the Judeo-Christian Bible, though thousands of years old, has been the most popular book throughout history, by far.  Pilgrim's Progress, a book composed of Christian allegory by John Bunyan, was published in February, 1678.  Written almost 350 years ago, Pilgrim's Progress is thought to be second only to the Bible in existent numbers today.

 

Only when public alarm leads to changes in the judicial branch, and the meaning of the First Amendment again becomes law, can education become free from the enemies of religious liberty and citizen self-government.  This would put an end to the use of government-powered lawsuits by men intent on defiling society.  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …" (from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America).

 

 

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Mon, 31 Dec 2012 06:18:00 -0800 Introduction VII http://davidanorris.posterous.com/introduction-vii-78068 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/introduction-vii-78068

There are three achievements of secular progressives that have enabled leftist radicals to control behavioral instruction in public schools (see Chapters 7 and 9).  Their first big achievement came when Supreme Court majorities began to impose mandates for law that rejected the unique God-honoring basis for law advanced by the Magna Carta and the American Declaration of Independence.  When secular mandates by the court for future laws are allowed to stand, the historic absolutes resident in the "rule of law" and moral priorities are no longer binding.  Consequently, our Constitution becomes a mere political document.  The center of power shifted foolishly from the people and Congress subject to the Constitution, to the political preferences of judges.  Among the first of many twists away from our Constitution and the First Amendment was the Everson v. Board of Education decision.  The second achievement of leftist radicals was the takeover, beginning in the 1960s, of the then-conservative National Education Association (see Chapters 7 through 10).  Also in the 1960s, secular progressives, committed to the elimination of self-government and liberty, reached their third achievement--the unionization of government teachers.

A government-established union monopoly, like an established state church, undermines the people's right to choose between providers that must compete for a following.  Union monopolies have always been power-corrupting institutions. Whatever their agenda by subject or region, accountability to competition is removed and evil prevails.  Union monopolies are in diametrical opposition to government of, by and for the people.  It is the collective political power foolishly granted to autoworker unions that brought the American auto industry to its knees.  It is the collective political advantage of unionism that makes it possible for radicals to impose their atheistic worldview over the objections to both the vast majority of parents and the millions of excellent teachers caught in the union web.  Violation of citizen authority (government of, by and for the people) is the radical politics of fascism--authoritarian hierarchical government.

Detailed in Chapter 7, 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.

Some repetition has been used for emphasis and to tie the chapters together.

 

Benjamin_franklin_4

Benjamin Franklin

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 nothing, 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}, 5).

Is it too late for America?  Not at all.

 

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Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:07:00 -0800 The Morality of Civility http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-morality-of-civility http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-morality-of-civility

"'Tis substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.  Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with Indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?" (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796).*

 

The Northwest Ordinance is a rock-solid example of the nonsectarian religious predicate embraced as constitutional law.  When the Articles of Confederation was replaced by the new Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance was passed again and became effective under the new Constitution.  George Washington signed the Northwest Ordinance back into law on August 7, 1789.  Article III specified "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged."**  During this same period of time (July 17 to August 7, 1789), the same men who had implemented the Northwest Ordinance were writing the First Amendment to the Constitution [prohibiting government officials from interfering with religious freedom, printing press and education competition].

 

Even some atheists and skeptics realize the inviolate nature of what Americans call the "laws of God and creation's nature."  Ernest Renan, the agnostic, warned his friends: "Let us enjoy the liberty of the sons of God, but let us take care lest we become accomplices in the diminution of virtue which would menace society if Christianity were to grow weak.  What should we do without it?  If Rationalism wishes to govern the world without regard to the religious needs of the soul, the experience of the French Revolution is there to teach us the consequences of such a blunder."***

 

History summarizes the nature of war against responsible citizen self-rule and liberty.  When Whittaker Chambers left the Communist party, he feared that the world would succumb to the parasitic nature of socialistic promises.  He said that the only hope was to discover "a power of faith which will provide mans' mind, at an intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and reason to die."**** President Reagan angered leftist sympathizers in American media and universities by using the word "evil."  On March 8, 1983, Reagan said the Cold War would "never be decided by bombs and rockets…"  We would prevail because of belief in God.  What is teaching moral revisionism (objected to by over 90 percent of taxpayers, teachers, and administrators) now accomplishing in student minds' in captive public schools?  Reagan concluded, the strength to prevail "is not material but spiritual."*****

 

*http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

**http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=48

***http://www.scribd.com/doc/79320764/HISTORY-OF-CHRISTIANITY

****http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2001/04/whittaker-chambers-man-of-co...

*****http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/speeches/evilempire.htm

Northwest_ordinance_of_1787_card-p137813764267429633bhc2d_325

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Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:39:00 -0800 Responsible Citizen Self-rule and Liberty http://davidanorris.posterous.com/responsible-citizen-self-rule-and-liberty http://davidanorris.posterous.com/responsible-citizen-self-rule-and-liberty

By placing their faith in the principles advanced by creation's God for education, Americans achieved liberty from brutal rulers and the history of big government.

 

Benjamin Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the second Continental Congress and signer of the Constitution of the United States, wrote this 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…  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!"*

John Quincy Adams, America's sixth president:  "The law given from Sinai was civil and municipal as well as a moral and religious code; it contained many statutes… of universal application--laws essential to the existence of men in society [of the United States], and most of which have been enacted by every nation which ever professed any code of laws."**

To justify taxpayer-funded education, instruction must detail the civil and moral absolutes found in the Ten Commandments but rightly avoid controversy of religious codes that are the domain of church denominations.  The depth of spiritual conviction of these absolutes is spelled out in the Creator-based Declaration of Independence, religious liberty (First Amendment), and the Bill of [human] Rights law.  Citizen equality as sovereigns under God over government is demonstrated when randomly chosen citizens serve as the supreme court for judgment of guilt or innocence in criminal trials conducted by government officials.  The above values are the design, and the Constitution is the tool to implement that design.

 

The preamble to 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 or hamper the development of the 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."

 

"Our investigation indicates that the main reason for youthful rebellion and the attitude of carelessness in student morals is their loss of confidence in the wisdom embedded in their heritage.  Failure to dearly implant these truths detaches future generations from past experience, the very basis of education" (Grand Jury Presentment, 1968-69, Problems in Higher Education, the Eleventh Judicial of Iowa).

 

First-amendment-rated-e-for-everyone-225x300

*http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/ben-franklin-quotes-1.html

**http://quotes.practicalmanliness.com/john-quincy-adams/138/

 

 

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Tue, 20 Nov 2012 10:34:00 -0800 The Sovereignty of the American Citizen http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-sovereignty-of-the-american-citizen http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-sovereignty-of-the-american-citizen

Those among us who choose to exchange declining relationships and health for the temporary excitements of moral revisionism is one thing.  Exercising that diversity in private is their right.  Those demanding the right, however, to take over behavioral curriculum in taxpayer-funded public schools is another.  The war they have imposed, by pressuring liberals in government, must be confronted and won.  America is a Republic!  The "living Constitution" idea of changeable decrees imposed by liberal judges (1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision) always becomes despotism because power in the hands of man, over time, becomes corrupt.

 

"Our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.  And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who 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; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.  Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority. 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" (John Adams, Vice-President under George Washington, and second president of the United States, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1766 from The Works of John Adams, …by his grandson, Charles F. Adams, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 10 volumes).

 

The sovereignty of man under the impartial and higher authority of creation's God over government is traceable from the Bible to the Magna Carta, 1215, signed at the point of a sword by a frightened king.  It is likewise traceable to the English Bill of Rights, 1689, signed by a would-be brutal king.  We then have the God-honoring American Declaration of Independence, 1776, the War of Independence, and then the Constitution highlighted by the First Amendment and the Bill of [human] Rights which details what servants in government must never be allowed to violate.

 

The Common Law jury system, resting final authority in the people, came alive in America on March 4, 1789, the date Congress set for the start of the new ConstitutionThis is the most important feature of the American Constitution.  George Washington became our first president under the Constitution on April 30, 1789.

 

Revelations of the American Judeo-Christian heritage are singularly qualified to foster personal responsibility, citizen self-government and prosperity.  People do not steal the fruits of other men's labor.  The community helps those few who are not able to work or are indigent for other reasons.  Reputations for honesty do not rest in the words of evil gossips.  Taxpayer-funded educators support the character of the traditional family.

 

God does not control men; He protects those who will listen.  By applying God-honoring interpretations of Scripture and being sensitive to His Spirit, man becomes self-controlled (Hebrews 13:18-20).  "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" (Proverbs 3:5-6). 

 

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Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:37:00 -0800 The First Amendment is the Most Important Amendment http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-first-amendment-is-the-most-important-ame http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-first-amendment-is-the-most-important-ame

The most important of all the amendments to our Constitution is the First Amendment:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

 

In the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court majority discarded the principle for control of government by law (government limited by laws instituted by citizen sovereigns).  They displaced it with control of government by man (top down authoritarianism).  Quoting Alexander Hamilton:  "Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE [changeable decrees by authoritarian man], and a government of LAWS [governments that derive 'their just powers' from the consent of the governed], the first is the definition of despotism--the last Liberty" (Tully Papers, 1794).  These two approaches to governing society have been at war against one another throughout human history.

 

The Everson v. Board of Education decision clearly compromised "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" The judges altered the Constitution at the core of its meaning.  Power-hungry judges and politicians, along with fellow travelers in education, the media and monopoly union bosses, are now working overtime.  They are leveraging the judge-created right that empowers liberals to impose government establishment monopoly in public education, preventing the competition of ideas by moral religions.  The power to impose false renditions of truth upon  captive government classrooms and poison youthful minds is being used to confuse, marginalize and rule new generations.

 

"For many years psychologists and educators have recognized the processes by which thought and behavioral patterns acquired in youth become the basis for adult motivation.  In modern times thoughtful observers have become progressively aware that moral, social, and political concepts implanted during the time of mental immaturity not only participate in the conduct of later life, but, once acquired, such concepts become dominant and often unalterable in the adult" (Story County Grand Jury, in and for the 11th Judicial District of Iowa, 1969).

 

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Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:39:00 -0800 The First Amendment http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-first-amendment http://davidanorris.posterous.com/the-first-amendment

The most important of all the amendments is the First Amendment.  This is demonstrably true.  It was not until secular militants were leveraged by the 1947 Supreme Court's Everson v. Board of Education decision that the role of moral absolutes ceased to be standard in government schools.

 

On September 25, 1789, Congress requested unanimously that President Washington proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.  This is the same Congress that on the same day approved the final draft of the First Amendment to protect the people's rights to religious freedom from suppression by government administrators, judges and legislators.  President Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1798:  "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor…  Now, therefore, I do recommend… that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…  And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… And to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."*

 

The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to emphasize the proper use of the Constitution as a tool to protect and uphold religious freedom.  This freedom enables the religious denominations to compete in public, including education.  This, in turn, sharpens the importance of moral absolutes in the minds of citizens who are the sovereigns under God over government.  For most of our history, the Judeo-Christian basis for citizen self-rule has been vigorously taught.  Non-denominational prayers and the Pledge of Allegiance were practiced in classrooms.  For several decades now the moral religions, most directly Christianity, have been under systematic attack by liberal judges.  Americans can agree with the following quote as long as any conflict between amendments to the Constitution are reconciled by having the First Amendment, in its original meaning up until 1947, upheld as supreme.

 

"A constitution, like any other document, is to be read as a whole.  The court, in the language of the lawyers, 'will take the instrument by its four corners' and read each part in the light of the rest.  Since written constitutions come into effect through popular assent, the meaning intended by the people would be sought by the courts.  The common understanding of the words at the time the language was employed is therefore of cogent significance.  This consideration, however, will not prevent the application of the terms employed to conditions arising later and not contemplated at the time the language was adopted…  There is an ancient rule of statutory construction, coming down through Blackstone, that in seeking the true meaning of legislative language the court will take cognizance of the 'old law, the mischief and the remedy.'  The rule is useful in constitutional construction" (Rosco Pound, Dean of the Law School of Harvard University, Volume III, National Law Library, P. F. Collier & Son Publishers, New York, New York, 1939, 23-24).

 

*http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html


 

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Mon, 23 Jul 2012 10:48:59 -0700 Teacher Union Contracts http://davidanorris.posterous.com/teacher-union-contracts http://davidanorris.posterous.com/teacher-union-contracts

The Supreme Court's failure to apply the First Amendment for its intended purposes destroyed the perimeters necessary to protect society from morally incompetent teachers.  Statewide laws, enabling tenure guarantees for unqualified teachers, crept silently into legislation for lower-level public schools beginning in the early 1970s.  Only seven states have rejected such laws.  The leftist NEA union advantage of control continues, however, without tenure laws in those seven states.

 

Two paragraphs for teacher contracts demanded by NEA unions are the root of the problem.  These controlling paragraphs may be found in the contract between the NEA union (or its state affiliate) and the local school board or in the state public sector collective bargaining laws.  One paragraph provides teacher tenure, which makes it virtually impossible to fire a teacher.  There is also a confidentiality paragraph, making it a crime for school administrators to disclose the reason(s) for dismissing a teacher without advanced approval--a very costly and lengthy procedure.  If the citizens are not permitted by law to be informed, their political support, so desperately needed by the superintendent in order to fire a bad teacher, is successfully silenced.

 

"Precisely because of the obvious potential for abuse, even labor union advocates like AFL-CIO President George Meany and Franklin D. Roosevelt viewed unionization of the public employees as unthinkable."*

 

In March 2008, harsh debate in the Iowa legislature brought this problem to the public's attention.  Radicals, whose elections were advanced by large sums of campaign money received from outside the state, were pushing for changes in the public sector collective bargaining law.  A section making it even harder to fire harmful teachers caused "grave concerns" among school administrators.  "Margaret Buckton, chief lobbyist for the Iowa Association of School Boards, says [arbitration] adjudicators have tended to rule in favor of the teachers."  As the teachers' bargaining rights law now stands, "Attempts to remove a teacher can last years and cost hundreds of thousand of dollars."**

 

Any force that makes it impossible for the school administrator to be in control and implement the citizen consensus for values is, by definition, fascistic and advances the consequences of fascism.  It was this ever-present threat, and its consequent tyranny of the mind, that prompted elected representatives in the individual states to require that curbs be placed upon government employees via the First Amendment and the federal Constitution.

 

*Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, "How the National Education Association Corrupts Our Public Schools," Forbes magazine, June 7, 1993.

*Dan Gearin, "Schools Concerned with Union Bargaining Bill," The Tribune (Ames, IA), March 27, 2008, B4.

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Fri, 22 Jun 2012 07:37:40 -0700 Exegesis of the Constitution http://davidanorris.posterous.com/exegesis-of-the-constitution http://davidanorris.posterous.com/exegesis-of-the-constitution

 

The importance of firmness in retaining the original meaning of the Constitution for judiciary, legislative and administrative separation merits repeated emphasis.  The duty of unelected judges is to settle disputes based upon the Constitution and Precedents consistent with the Constitution.  Responding to the question, "Is there a role for politics in our judicial system?" Atonin Scalia, who has now served for over twenty years on the Supreme Court, said:  "The absolute worst violation of a judge's oath is to decide a case based on a partisan principle or philosophical basis, rather than what the law [states]."*

 

Prior to the Everson v. Board of Education decision in 1947, the First Amendment protected religious liberty.  Liberals going to court to get the Ten Commandments removed from public property would have been wasting their time.  A disruptive student who objects to the statement "Jesus is the reason for the season" on t-shirts in the public school would not have threatened a lawsuit.  The force of government was on the side of the people's civic right to use their institutions, including public education, to proclaim belief in the nonsectarian God of creation.

 

The First Amendment upholds the unalienable right of the people to share their religious beliefs and make comparisons.  With this knowledge they can then choose what appears to be best.  This competition between the religions strengthens the Higher Authority "government of laws, and not of men" consensus among voters.

 

"On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed" (June 12, 1823, Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses and Letters, New York: The Library of American, 1984).

 

Modern_judge

*V.P. Price "Are There Too Many Lawyers?" Parade, September 14, 2008, 9.

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Tue, 08 May 2012 06:44:59 -0700 America's Civic Religion in Light of Congress http://davidanorris.posterous.com/americas-civic-religion-in-light-of-congress http://davidanorris.posterous.com/americas-civic-religion-in-light-of-congress

Even Congress has recognized that America has a civic religion. 

 

Presidents, as well as many other citizens, attended church services held on Sundays in the United States Capitol building.  President Thomas Jefferson, "during his whole administration, 1801-1809, was a most regular church attendant," documents James H. Hutson in Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.  Ministers of several Christian denominations conducted the services.  Honoring the nonsectarian God of creation in public and on government property is an important manifestation of civic faith.  In addition to attending church services in the Capitol building, Thomas Jefferson made significant financial contributions to that ministry.

 

"After the Civil War, from 1865-1868, the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., permitted the newly organized First Congregational Church of Washington to use its chambers for church and Sunday school services.  During that same time, specifically on June 13, 1866, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment which, according to some later judicial foolishness, forbids religious activities on public property."*

 

Addressing Congress, Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed:  "I anticipate nothing but suffering to the human race while the present systems of paganism, deism and atheism prevail in the world."**

 

English language Bibles had to be imported from England until 1782 when Congress authorized Robert Aitken to commence the first American printing of the Bible in English.   Aitken was also the official printer of the Journals of Congress for the United States Congress.  The following year, George Washington wrote a letter of commendation to Robert Aitken for his "Bible of the American Revolution."***

 

On September 25, 1789, Congress requested unanimously that President Washington proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.  This is the same Congress that on the same day approved the final draft of the First Amendment to protect the people's rights to religious freedom from suppression by government administrators, judges and legislators.  President Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1798:  "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor…  Now, therefore, I do recommend… that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed…  And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions… And to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."****

 

In 1954, Congress ordered that "a room with facilities for prayer and meditation…" be made available in the United States Capitol.  The seventh edition of The Capitol, an official publication of the United States Congress, describes the stained-glass window of the Congressional Prayer Room:

 

"The history that gives this room its inspirational lift is centered in the stained glass window.  George Washington kneeling in prayer… is the focus of the composition…  Behind Washington a prayer is etched:  'Preserve me, O God, for in Thee I put my trust,' the first verse of the sixteenth Psalm.  There are upper and lower medallions representing the two sides of the Great Seal of the United States.  On these are inscribed the phrases:  annuit coeptis--'God has favored our undertakings'--and novas order seclorum--'A new order of the ages is born.'  Under the upper medallion is the phrase from Lincoln's immortal Gettysburg Address, 'This Nation under God'…  The two lower corners of the window each show the Holy Scriptures, an open book and a candle, signifying the light from God's law, 'Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path' [Psalm 119:105]."*****

 

A primary duty of government officials and most certainly the duty of professors and teachers whose salaries are funded by taxpayers is to promote the liberating principles of the nonsectarian American civic creed that has been discussed in this and earlier blog posts.

 

1

 

 

*James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1998, 84.  The entire book is available at lastingsuccessedu.org

**Benjamin Rush, Annals of Congress 1834, vol. I (September 25, 1789), 949-50.

***http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/

and

http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/colonial-bibles.html

****http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/GW/gw004.html

*****http://www.wallbuilders.com/downloads/newsletter/H.Res.888.pdf

 

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Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:16:00 -0800 Thanksgiving and the First Amendment http://davidanorris.posterous.com/80876241 http://davidanorris.posterous.com/80876241

On September 25, 1789, Congress requested unanimously that President Washington proclaim a national day of thanksgiving and prayer. This is the same Congress that on the same day approved the final draft of the First Amendment to protect the people’s rights to religious freedom from suppression by government administrators, judges, or legislators.

Image_tgiving_proc_title

President Washington proclaimed on October 3, 1798: “Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor …  Now, therefore, I do recommend … that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country ... for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed  ...

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations.”

Image_thanksgiving_proc

The President’s proclamation included,

 “ ... and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions ... to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue.”

 

(Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. 12, Boston:  Ferdinand Andrews, 1838, p. 119-20, www.forbes.house.gov/uploadedfiles/Footnoted397.pdf) 

 

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