Defending the Founders by Cato

I was thinking today about the founding of this country. Ours was a country born in battle and bathed first with prayer. Our Declaration of Independence repeatedly refers to God. The founders were not worried about offending those who did not believe. They swore it was the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that entitled them to their place among the nations. They thought their rights were “endowed by their Creator.” They used the word “unalienable” to mean that no one can ever be truly separated from these God given rights because it was God who gave them. The main purpose of government was not to give the rights, God had already done that. The main purpose of government was to make these rights “secure.”

Among the God given rights, but far from a complete list of them, were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They understood these, in the context of their war, to be the right to defend themselves against an oppressive government that was determined to thwart their pursuit of those ordinary joys that make life worth living. The first flags of our revolution say it all. One had a coiled rattlesnake with the warning below, “Don’t tread on me!” Don’t tread on my rights as an individual made in God’s image.  The other flag showed a pine tree stretching heavenward with the words below it, “An Appeal to Heaven!” They knew they needed God’s providence and protection to survive. Later in the Declaration they said they were “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world” and that they had “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”

When they started down the path to this war in 1774, the Continental Congress opened their first meeting with prayer, a prayer that according to several of those present lasted for several hours and included an invocation of the 35^th Psalm. When John Adams wrote his wife Abigail about it, he urged her to “read that Psalm.” Private letters from the delegates carried similar requests all across the colonies. Others report that at this prayer time George Washington, Patrick Henry, John Randolph, John Rutledge, Harry Lee, and John Jay all prayed together fervently for America, for Congress, and especially for the town of Boston, then occupied by enemy troops. John Adams said it was “enough to melt a heart of stone.”

On June 17, 1775, John Adams wrote again to Abigail that he and the rest of Congress had “appointed a Continental Fast. Millions will be upon their knees at once before their great Creator, imploring His forgiveness and blessing; his smiles on American councils and arms.” As the war progressed, John Adams thought that those prayers were being miraculously answered. He told Abigail on December 15, 1777 that it “appears to me the eternal Son of God is operating powerfully.”

The stories, the letters, and so forth are too numerous to share here but I have tried to give you their spirit, the attitude of our nation’s founders in their great crisis. We too face a great crisis. Perhaps the nation born in prayer can be saved in prayer. That of course remains to be seen. But while neither we nor they can predict victory in the conflict with evil, we can do what they always wrote each other that they must do. We can “deserve victory.” But how do we do that?

That is a question each of us must face. I believe, however, that the first thing we must do is spread the truth about the founding principles of our country. We must oppose strongly those who would rewrite our history to leave out religion, to leave out the genuine accomplishments for the betterment of mankind that have been made by our country, and to purposely distort the principles and record of our founders. For a long time the left, through infiltrating the schools and “revising” our history, has sapped our country's moral fiber and patriotism. We must insist that this stops and that instead the whole truth of our history be told, especially the good parts. They must quit censoring the founders when they speak of religion and morality and they must quit distorting their records. You must take that stand now. We all must take that stand now, if we are to save our country and its freedoms.