Filed under: George Washington

Part I: Government

American Principle Ten

 

Government Must Be Decentralized

 

"… repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny [British King] over these States."

Declaration of Independence

 

 

Officials who bypass the principles of limited government are suppressing the supreme right of the people to rule.  Such officials have violated their duties as trustees and are in effect usurpers, oppressors and tyrants.

 

The American system is "a Republic--a federation, or combination, of central and state republics--under which: the different governments will control each other…  Within each republic there are two safeguarding features: (a) a division of powers, as well as (b) a system of checks and balances between separate departments: hence a double security arises [essential] to the rights of the people" (The Federalist No. 51, by James Madison).

 

Regarding the federal government usurping essential citizen rights, "True barriers [for] of our liberty are our State governments" (President Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, 1801).

 

"The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.  To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them" (President George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796).

 

"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression" (President Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address, 1801).

 

 

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Part I: Government

American Principle Nine

 

Authoritarians In Government Are

a Parasitic and Ever-Present Danger

 

"Taking away our charters, Abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments [constitutions]."

Declaration of Independence

 

 

"They know from experience… beset as they continually are by the wiles of parasites and sycophants [self-seeking] by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious [greed for money], the desperate; by the artifices of men, who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess, rather than to deserve it" (The Federalist No. 71, by Alexander Hamilton).

 

Two notable efforts by power-hungry authoritarians occurred near the end of the war for independence.  First, army officers were conspiring to take control of Congress; second was an effort to make George Washington king.  Washington squashed both of them abruptly.  After all, Americans had just been through a bloody war with England to get rid of rule by authoritarians, religious and secular.

 

An axiom for detecting the corrupt and evil use of power is to follow the flow of money to politicians in and outside of government.  Chief among tactics for overriding the will of the people is fraudulent election finance law.  The importation of millions of campaign dollars from homosexual and abortion rights advocates from outside a region to be represented, given to those who would make the laws, is destructive of representative government.  The people and representative governments must be protected from the importation of campaign funds from outside the region served by an elected government official.  This is not a violation of free speech.  Failure to do so is a crime against republican (not political party) government.  Such violations call for severe punishment.

 

"For it is a truth which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger, when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion" (The Federalist No. 25, by Alexander Hamilton).

 

 

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Part I: Government

American Principle Seven (Part II)

 

The Moral Duties Of Civility Are Also a Predicate

For Interpreting Constitutional Meaning

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

Declaration of Independence

 

"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 Bill of Rights of Massachusetts provides, with clarity, truth learned from Scripture and the laboratory of history: "The happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality…"  Citizens in four additional states agreed to ratify the Constitution by adopting the same wording for their state's Bill of Rights.

 

Jefferson emphasized justification for taxpayer-funded education: "The first elements of morality too may be instilled in their minds; such as, when further developed as their judgments advance in strength, may teach them how to work out their own greatest happiness, by shewing them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits" (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782).

 

The Grand Jury for the 11th Judicial District of Iowa investigated problems in higher education.  Their Presentment was adopted unanimously December 23, 1968: "In the field of morality all basic truths have been apprehended.  All the changing conditions we hear so much about [the charm of immoral practices] do not affect [negate] the validity or applicability of the central directives of human conduct.  These truths are demonstrable in terms of benefits and as to how it is that those who disregard them fall easily into alien pitfalls of Fascism, lawlessness, drug addiction, etc.  There is no greater contribution a teaching institution can make to human progress and purpose than to endow students at all levels with this knowledge."

 

The few teachers who are militantly opposed to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" and limited government, present their dogma with godly charm and the promises of an easier life.  Why is secular Political Correctness so dangerous?  Those who disagree, the good teacher majority and students, dare not present data that disproves what is being taught.  Those who do so are victimized by any number of charges… bigotry, unconcern for the destitute, diversity-hating, whatever.  Consequently, students are not taught about the standards of morality that make self-government, prosperity and liberty possible.

 

What is the price?  Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his Templeton Address, said: "More than a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God: that's why all this has happened.' Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by upheaval.  But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened'" (Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Men Have Forgotten God, The Templeton Address, 1983, in National Review, July 22, 1983, 873, quote from David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, 247-8).

 

The solution requires restoring the intent and meaning of the Bill of Rights that will restore the parents' freedom to choose from among schools that must compete for students.

 

 

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Part I: Government

American Principle Seven (Part I)

 

The Moral Duties Of Civility Are Also a Predicate

For Interpreting Constitutional Meaning

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

Declaration of Independence

 

"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

 

 

"Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"* morality fits into the behavioral envelope that supports life, truthfulness and the Golden Rule, meaning treating others in ways that one would like to be treated and would like loved ones to be treated.  Immorality includes those traits called sin that fall outside the envelope of life.

 

Together, morality and work ethic is the engine that liberates mankind from the tyranny of aggressive government employees.  Liberty from intrusive government makes it possible for the people to market their skills to own property essential for maintaining independence and happiness.

 

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.  Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere… men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forget their fetters" (Edmund Burke, British supporter of the American Revolution, November 3, 1774, speech to the electors of Bristol, England, quoted by HIllsdale College, Imprimis, Vol. 20, No. 9).

 

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).  Secularism is an evil repudiation of the solid basis for prosperity and citizen self-government intended by Constitutional law.

 

Government potential for power as well as the lucrative public treasury attract politicians who are intent on self-aggrandizement and conquest.  Expressed by President Ronald Reagan: "Government is not the solution to our problems, it is the problem" (Inaugural Address, 1981).  "A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.  The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes.  To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them" (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796).

 

*The phrase "Nature's God" used in the Declaration of Independence did not originate with Americans.  The Laws of Nature's God include the Biblical standards of morality.  When the bond between God and man was broken in the Garden of Eden, the forces of evil that seek to defy creation's nature were unleashed.  "The law of nature was a common term used by historic legal writers such as Grotius, Burlamaqui, Blackstone and others.  The law of nature's God, a lesser used term, was more commonly called the divine law, or the revealed law" (Lonang Historical Reference Works).

http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/index.html

 

 

 

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Part I: Government

American Principle Six (Part I)

 

The Written Constitution Established

By Americans Is a Tool For Governing

 

Governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Declaration of Independence

 

 

Americans established government when covenanting to share a small portion of their God-given rights to use force and keep thieves out of the corncrib.  The tax revenues provided by the people, as sovereigns under God, give government its power to function.

 

George Washington, who chaired the Constitutional Convention, wrote about the dangers of government:  "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force.  Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."  The original unamended Constitution provides the nuts and bolts needed to curtail the abuse of power by government employees.  The Constitution was tailored to expose and remove government employees who use the people's treasury to purchase fame for themselves and twist the liberating self-government role of the people as intended by constitutional law.  The delegates identified the self-serving principles used by dishonest men and built in many compliant checks between officials and departments whose limited powers are detailed.

 

In like manner, automobiles need nuts and bolts such as brakes, accelerator control and lights to work safely.  Tools need a second set of laws to maintain their limited use and purpose.  The predicate limiting the use of automobiles includes speed limits, stop signs and no-travel zones.  The predicate limiting the use of government power includes the Creator-based Declaration of Independence and the Bill of [unalienable God-given human] Rights law.  The emphasis of these charters is that the monopoly power of government must never be granted to church or religious leaders, education, media or other privilege-seeking unions.  Permitting government establishment of these entities ALWAYS ends up with power-seeking authoritarians leveraged by law.  They then confuse, mislead and control the people with distorted versions of truth and morality.  It is the people at the grassroots of society who are the diviners of truth and morality, not government-established bosses.  This can only occur when knowledge providers (teachers, religious leaders, media or privilege-seeking unions) are required to compete against one another for the support of citizens in the public arena of ideas.

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Introduction III

Historically, public schools salvaged many students from homes where parenting was failing. Now students from good homes are abandoning the values that made America such a great nation.  This problem is ongoing even though most teachers are doing their best to counter the incursion of secular absolutism (atheism) in the soft sciences of our schools.

 

John Adams' quote:  "But if we had not, 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 that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees. 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 was a direct descendant of Puritan colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  A Harvard graduate, he served on the First Continental Congress and helped to draft the Declaration of Independence.  John Adams was vice-president under George Washington and the 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).


 

Truth or Consequences

 

Knowledge of and acceptance of the Bible, the Great Reformation (1500-1570) and American history empower conscientious individuals to be self-governing and, on a broader scale, inspire communities and the nation as a whole to overcome the tyranny of moral confusion.  Identifying with the first principle (God of Creation is Man's Benefactor) enables believers to avoid the deception and confusion advanced by truth-trashers.

 

Strangely, even the German atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche, accepted the message from human history and understood the source of freedom for his way of life.  He wrote:  "Remove Christianity and the ideas fall too."*

 

*http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=11

 

The American Founding Fathers understood human history and identified the distinction of good as 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 lasting 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 Corinthians 3:17).

 

 

 

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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

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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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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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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.

 

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*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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