July 4^th, 1776, with a continental colonial army in the field fighting for their rights as Englishmen, the Continental Congress prepared to sign the document that many felt might be their own death warrant.  Several grim and dark jokes seem to have been made about hanging in that chamber but the actual mood was very somber and serious. They did not commit themselves fully to a struggle for independence from the greatest empire the world had ever seen without counting the cost. This is, perhaps, why the final words of the Declaration of Independence, just above their signatures, read “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.”

With those words they pledged themselves as a sacrifice for freedom. Some of them, indeed, lost their lives. Others, rich before the war, ended it penniless. Others to keep their honor sacred refused offers of the release of beloved family members from horrible and almost always fatal British prison ships in spite of their breaking hearts. They meant what they said. As the people of that day would have put it, they were in earnest.

Earlier in the Declaration they had referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It was more than a rhetorical flourish. These well educated men were very familiar with the background for such a formulation. Back in the 16^th century, the Protestant theologian John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (a very popular book in colonial America), had stipulated that “the law of God which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men.” Many of the men gathered on that solemn occasion were lawyers, steeped in English law and jurisprudence, and were, therefore, very familiar with the statement of the famed 17^th century English jurist Sir Edward Coke that “The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart” and with what the most popular law commentator of their own day, William Blackstone had written in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone had written that “As man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker’s will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature.”

Their self-evident truths and rights endowed by man’s Creator shows that they believed God was calling them to do what they did. With feeble steps of trembling faith, with reliance on one another and on the protection of God, they launched themselves into implacable war with an empire which had the world’s best army and the world’s best and largest navy. For them the “Providence” on which they depended was not merely simply the way things happened in the world. For them, providence, as John Calvin had earlier summarized, meant that God “as keeper of the keys” actually “governs all events.”

Samuel Adams, John’s relative who had formed the Sons of Liberty and was the mastermind of the first Tea Party, noted that the British had tried to make the state a god. He argued that Americans had seen through that folly. On analyzing the Declaration, he wrote “We have explored the temple of royalty, and found the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone.” He claimed that through the Declaration and its emphasis on providence that “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient.”

Samuel Adams dismissed the argument that Americans had to always obey the government in order to obey God. He felt the success of America had given it the responsibility to not give up. He wrote, “The hand of heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world.”

The American pulpit took up this same theme. Before the war, many ministers had called the reverence and deference for the king a form of idolatry. Now they spoke boldly in favor of the cause of independence. In Philadelphia, George Duffield argued that America’s forefathers had fled Europe to escape tyranny and oppression and that freedom is God’s gift to us because we hated tyranny so. He gave thanks for God’s “adorable goodness” and said that Americans “were born the heirs of freedom.”

So, today it is time to throw off idolatry and reject the idea that government is our ultimate security and refuge. Government is made up of human beings and those human beings have all the failings and sins of human beings. Instead we must liberate ourselves from the clutches of a new and growing tyranny in this our most imperial of presidencies. We must refuse the state’s claim to become our new god. The state will prove a false and destructive god. We are the heirs of freedom, meant to make our own way. We are free to obey God or refuse but God never intended us to give his role to a mere president, or to a bureaucracy. It is time for us to cast down these false idols and realize that we must take responsibility for ourselves. We must quit expecting government to do everything for us and to solve every problem and remember that we have a birthright to fend for ourselves. God created us with the ability, right, and duty to make decisions for ourselves. Expecting government to take care of all our problems is selling our birth right for a one time offer of a bowl of soup. If we sell it, it will be hard to get it back.

Today, I decided to let James Madison do my thinking for me.   What follows is an excerpt of an article written in the National Gazette, March 29, 1792. It is Madison considers property rights and especially the definition of property. I will follow his comments with a few of my own.

Madison:

This term (Property) in its particular application means “that domination which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where and excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho’ from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own….

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and inalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle….

If there be a government then which prides itself on maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification of the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the inference will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property of rights.

Sumruld:

One must wonder what Madison would make of the modern United States. We have already had a Supreme Court ruling which justified local municipalities taking property, in the form of land and dwelling, from individuals to give it to others simply because the city or county would reap more in taxes from the new owner. Here we see a violation of property rights. We also are seeing a growing “excess of power” on the part of our government which is threatening our opinions (new hate speech laws), our persons (government health regulations), and our possessions.

Though our government was instituted to “protect property of every sort” including those which lie “in the rights of individuals,” it has ceased to be a just government by Madison’s definition. Remember Madison would know perhaps better than anyone else what our founders had meant our government under the Constitution to be. After all, he got the moniker “Father of the Constitution” the old fashioned way, he earned it. He envisioned the new document, wrote its first draft and fought for it in the convention and in the ratification fight. A truly just government, according to Madison, “impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.” It does not use empathy as an excuse to pass out rewards to its favorites at the expense of others. For Madison, as for the other founders, charity was a voluntary act by the individual. He would have viewed our approach to government welfare as a form of state sanctioned theft.

Note also how much Madison would have objected to the idea that our consciences can be judged by the law, which is a basic assumption of the new hate crimes law making its way through the Congress. He even said a government that perfectly respected the sacredness of private property (our government has ceased to do this) would have no right to “invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred.” 

According to Madison, no government which violates our rights to our opinions, religion, persons, or our actual possessions can be a pattern for the United States. This, however, has become the pattern. We must turn back the tides of tyranny for the day has come when the United States does not “equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights.” Our government has become an elitist tyranny which respects neither the rights of property nor the property of rights. It is time to change that.

The Nobodies

In this age of celebrity it is important to remember who really makes this country strong, who really works to make its streets safe, defend it, keep it healthy, fight its fires, help their neighbors, make its products, counsel its emotionally wounded, meet its spiritual needs, handle its waste, produce its energy, and teach its children. It is us, the nobodies.

When thousands of us turn out for the Tea Parties, celebrity “talking heads” on television belittled, lied about, and insulted us. A celebrity president mocked us. Celebrity columnists joined their television brethren in assaulting our motives and intentions, trying to paint us as radical extremists. “We are the celebrities; must listen to us and do what we say because we are better and smarter than you” seemed to be their message.

But the truth is they are nothing. What makes them celebrities is us. All we have to do to dethrone them is stop paying any attention to them. Celebrities in Hollywood would disappear if enough nobodies quit going to their movies. Celebrity news casters would soon be off the air if enough nobodies quit tuning to their channel. Celebrity columnists would soon be out of a job if enough nobodies quit buying the newspapers and magazines that they write for. And, our celebrity president will be history by 2012 if enough nobodies protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and vote him out.

The nobodies are the real power. Without us to buy their products and/or invest in them corporations go out of business. Without our tax money all our president’s grandiose schemes for more power become mere dreams. We are the real power and we must not let them deter us. We, who see what is going wrong in our country, must help educate our fellow so-called nobodies. If enough of us nobodies unite then almost anything is possible. Don’t ever give up. Don’t ever let the celebrities convince you that it is hopeless. The only power they have is the power so-called nobodies have given them.

We nobodies, otherwise known as “We the People,” made this country and are the real legitimate rulers of this country. We have the natural right, as the Declaration of Independence says, to alter it in any way we see fit. We have the power to restore it to the original vision found in the Declaration of Independence and the other founding documents. Because the truth is that we are not nobodies we are citizens, we are fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers, we are the real power of this nation and the reason why it was founded. We made the celebrities and we can break them just as easily. We the People have the power to take our nation back and if we can arouse enough of the people to the dangers before us, we will win. Keep spreading the truth, keep protesting, keep calling, keep organizing ourselves for resistance, keep doing what is necessary to return power to “We the People” and end the rule of the experts who think they know what is best for us and believe they must take care of us because we cannot take care of ourselves. The truth is we do not need them. We can rise up and replace them at any time with people (from among our ranks) who would probably be better at their jobs than they are.   So, don’t listen to the elites, who think they can browbeat you into submission. You are somebody and all of us together can easily overcome them. We just need to wake up some of our sleeping brothers and sisters.

The philosophical heart of The Declaration of Independence is found in its second paragraph. It is there that the signers let you know what they truly believe regarding government and the people. 

It starts out with the phrase, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” What does that mean? A self-evident truth was and is a truth which does not need proof. It is so obviously true that to deny proves the denier is mad. To deny these truths is like denying that when you step of the edge of a cliff you will fall. To deny these truths is like trying to deny your own existence. Our founders believed these things were undeniable by any rational or reasonable person.

The second phrase of the paragraph, “that all Men are created equal” is often misunderstood by the critics of our founders. They did not say that all people were treated equally in the society as it existed or even that there would come a day in human society when all would be treated equally. And, when they used the word “Men” they were not talking about gender but about humanity. Until recent years and the rise of identity politics it was clearly understood that this is what they meant. What the founders meant by “all Men are created equal” is that humans all humans have an inherent equality before God. All of us are equally human. This, in many places in their day, would have been considered radical. They lived in a world where it was common place to consider people of a lower social or economic status as something less than fully human. This way of looking at people had prevailed, for the most part, in the Ancient World; with, save for a few philosophers, the relatively early exceptions to this kind of thinking being found in the context of Judaism and later Christianity. Egalitarian thought in this regard was not a legacy of our Greco-Roman heritage but of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

The third phase in the paragraph, “that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” acknowledges first of all that there is a creator. The founders, even the least overtly Christian among them, had no trouble in believing that there is a God who created mankind and oversees the affairs of mankind. The so-called Deism of Jefferson and Franklin did not fit very well with English and continental forms of that outlook since, from their own writings and actions, it is evident they expected God to intervene in the affairs of men. They all also believed that God had given something to all humans; that is what the word “endowed” means. God had given to all humans “certain unalienable rights.” The word “certain” meant that these rights could be clearly defined and understood. The word “unalienable” meant that these rights were not something that could be separated from us as human beings. They are part of what it means to be a human being. We might be restricted in our exercise of our rights but we could no more lose them than we can cease to be humans. That these are “rights” means that they cannot be granted by government or by any other human; they are irrevocable gifts from God. No government can give you these rights. The most a government can do is get out of the way so you can freely exercise these rights.

The next phrase “that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is also extremely important. Note the words “that among these are.” The founders did not limit our God-given rights to just those related to the three issues they later listed.  “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” are merely three examples among many self-evident rights that we were given by God. 

It is very important to look at our right of “Life.” It was given equally to all of us. There is never anyone who should not have been born. There may be some who made horrible choices that we wish they never made but none that should never have been born in the first place. Life is sacred. God placed a high value on human life according to Judeo-Christian thought. Each of us is precious, much more precious than property. We were intended to have a culture of life not a culture of death. Every one of us, even those considered the most useless or unnecessary by some in our society were viewed by the philosophy of our Declaration as having a right to life. Many of us feel our founders would have extended that right to the yet to be born. Note also that the right to life implies the right to defend life; the right to use forceful means to defend the lives of others and of ourselves. This is the first and most fundamental of all rights and is, perhaps, for that reason listed as the first example.

“Liberty” is the second right in their list of examples. The question is what did they mean by the word? One thing is for certain, considering the subsequent words and deeds, is that they did not equate “Liberty” with libertinism. They did not think “Liberty” meant the right of commit illicit sex acts; promote illicit sex acts, talk about illicit sex acts in front of children. They did not see liberty as the license to do whatever we want no matter who it hurts. They also were not so naïve as to think people will always get what we desire or even that we should get it. They clearly understood that societies had to have rules in order to avoid descending into chaos and perpetual strife. So, what did they mean by “Liberty”? That is made clear by the war they fought and the arguments which they made for that war. For our founders “Liberty” was a freedom from something. It was freedom from undue government interference with and obstruction with the God given rights of the individual human being. As their comments later in the Declaration make clear, they opposed governments which did not maximize an equal liberty for its citizens by picking winners and losers, by handicapping people because of their birth, wealth or lack thereof. They wanted a government that served all the people equally and left the people free to make their own choices about who they associated with, where they lived, how they managed their own health and welfare, what they thought or read, etc. 

The third right expressed sort of fits within the second. “The Pursuit of Happiness” is the result of real freedom. We get to make the choices in life that we think will make us happy. We may be wrong and may wind up unhappy but it is not the role of the government to try and guarantee our success or happiness. Our “Pursuit” is up to us, not the government. If we think money will make us happy, we are free to try and legally accumulate as much as we can. If we think community service will make us happy, we are free to do as much of it as we can. Government must stay out of trying to direct our lives. It must not be an obstacle to our “Pursuit of Happiness” nor must it try to ensure outcomes. Trying to ensure outcomes takes away our freedom to try and fail and learn. Instead, it permanently infantilizes people.

Following a hyphen, to separate the rights from their ideas about government, the founders’ next phrase is “That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” They believed the purpose of government, the only legitimate purpose of any government, was to make it easier for people to freely exercise their God-given rights. Government was to protect people’s rights from those who would try to check them. It was to protect people from crime, conquest, etc. 

The next phrase is extremely important. The founders insisted that “deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” meant that government must be answerable to the people. Any government that lost the consent of the people it governed had ceased to secure their rights because one of their most fundamental rights was to be governed as they chose. Without the consent of the people government had no right to exist. Its purpose is to serve the interests of the people, all the people. Any time government begins to focus of serving only the interests of some over the interests of all it is in danger of becoming an illegitimate government. Government’s authority and legitimacy depends on the willingness of its citizens to continue obeying it. When the people begin to see the government as their enemy, its doom is sure.

The next thing the founders agreed to in this document is what constitutes its heart. Written next are the words “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” They will go on to contend, and give examples, that the British government, both king and parliament, has become destructive with regards to the colonists God-given rights. Far from securing these rights, the founders will argue, the British government is violating them. The idea is that, since people create governments to protect their rights, it is the God-given right of the people to change their government. They clearly believed government is the servant of the people not their master.

According to the founders, they did not only have the power to change governments; but that they had the power of “laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Again, according to the founders, the people are sovereign. It is up to the people to set up the government they want and to structure it in whatever way they think will protect their rights most effectively and will aid them in their free and equal pursuit of happiness the most.  Again, their idea is that government must be the servant of all the people not their master.

The next sentence explains things a bit more. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, that to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.” What the founders are acknowledging in this sentence is that it is really foolish to have a national revolt unless you have really good reasons for it. They also, however, note that people almost always are more willing to let things go to far than to revolt and overthrow government. Part of this they claim is because people don’t like to change things they are used to and comfortable with in return for an unknown future. It is sort of like the proverb about the “devil you know.”

The next sentence summarizes their argument for the War for Independence, which will follow later. This is the beginning of a transition from political philosophy to concrete history and a call to action. The sentence argues “But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under Absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards to their future Security.” The idea here is that when a government goes to far, when government abuses of power and takeovers of areas of responsibility not consented to by the people reveals clearly that those in government are trying to become the masters of the people instead of protecting their rights, that it is the right and duty of the people to replace such a government.

In the next sentence the founders began to apply their philosophy and their hypothetical situations to what had happened to them. It reads “Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.” Here the founders are saying it was not all hypothetical after all. They have seen a growing abuse of power by a government that has shown that it wants to treat them as slaves to its power. They now reserve for them selves the right to revolt and establish their own government in its place.

It is now they will turn to the historical record. The last two sentences of the second paragraph will be the transition to a long list of British governmental abuses of the colonists. After that list, they recorded all their efforts to avoid rebellion and then declared independence. This transition sentence reads “The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this let Facts be submitted to a candid World.” After explaining that the British government, especially in the person of the king (head of England’s executive branch at the time) has through repeated actions aimed at making the people of America servants to government that does not protect their rights but, in fact, violates them; the founders wrote that they were going to list specific examples of these actions.

So, the Second Paragraph gives us a clear picture of the fundamental political philosophy of America’s founders and the limits they wanted to place on government power. They believed we have God-given rights which are always ours and that government’s job is to protect those rights. Among those rights was also the right to change government when it did not do its job of protecting our rights. It their view, the people were the source of whatever legitimate authority government might have and that it automatically lost that authority when enough of the people said it had. They believed that if government tries to become our master instead of protecting our rights that it is our duty to call it to account and, if necessary, change it.

I was thinking today about Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, and the sermon he preached before the Massachusetts legislature in May of 1775. Some at the time were wondering if disputes over taxes were worth all the sacrifice might result from a revolt the British government. Langdon assured the members of the legislature that fighting had been made necessary by a growing cultural divide between the colonists and the leadership in Britain. He claimed that “The general prevalence of vice has changed the whole face of things in the British government.” He also raised the issue of what the pursuits of the British leadership were. His answer was that they now sought “titles of dignity without virtue” and sought “vast public treasures continually lavished on corruption till every fund is exhausted, notwithstanding the mighty streams perpetually flowing in.” That sounds kind of familiar doesn’t it? Langdon knew that the corrupt politicians in London would never be satisfied. They had virtually bankrupted England and now saw the American colonies as a proverbial golden goose which they could use to enrich themselves and their friends.

Langdon had cited as his text for the sermon Isaiah 1:2. In the NIV the passage reads, “Hear, O heavens! Listen, O earth! For the LORD has spoken: ‘I have reared up children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.’” He saw England’s problem as the rebellion against God of its leadership. Americans at the time were as likely to see their struggle for independence as a moral crusade as they were to see it as a tax revolt. There was a reason for that. 

The pulpits of America had not been silent. The church in America had truly been doing what the left always claims it does. They had been speaking truth to power. They had been challenging the corrupt leaders of England for over 20 years and now things were coming to a head. One of the things that is left out of most of our history books is how important a role America’s religious leaders played in the build up to the revolution. Sermons in that era were often printed in their entirety in the newspapers and were the topic of almost everyone’s casual conversation. And, for over 20 years the pastors, priests, and rabbis of America had castigated the leadership of England for its moral failures.

Langdon, in his sermon, said that the British government’s claim that Britain’s immense debt was because of the Seven Years War, which was partly fought in America, (often patently accepted as valid in current textbooks) was a mere dishonest pretext. According to Langdon, the claim that Britain’s “immense debt” was because of its “defense of the American colonies” was false. He saw the real root of England’s money problems in the political and moral corruption of her elites and their corruption and oppression of her people. He insisted that no amount of increased taxation would ever be able to keep up with the immoral lusts and greed of England’s leadership. He said, “The demands of corruption are constantly increasing, and will forever exceed all the resources of wealth which the wit of man can invent or tyranny impose.” The only solution, he argued, was for the government in London to eliminate its “vast unnecessary expenses.” 

Langdon went on to claim that if true moral reform were to sweep through England and rid it of “all those vices which bring misery and ruin upon individuals, families, and kingdoms’ then and only then could the “public debt, great as it is…in a few years be cancelled by a growing revenue.” Later, after the war, even without revenues from America, England would regain its prosperity. In the event, Langdon proved somewhat prophetic. Moral and political reform was a big part of what brought England back from financial profligacy.

America has also now developed both moral and political corruption which demands revenues that no amount of taxation can ever provide. Where are our Landons sounding the alarm? Moral and political reform must sweep this country or its corruption will lead to its collapse. We must act. We must have the courage of a Samuel Langdon and the courage of that Massachusetts legislature of long ago.

It’s 1854. We should watch closely to see if any political party decides to make our agenda its own and give them our backing if they do. If none of them do, then we must form a new political party. Back in the 1850s, a populist movement against the spread of slavery did just that. That was how the Republican Party was born. If they could do it in the 1850s, we can do it in the 2000s. Also note, they ultimately met their original goal. Not only was the well-entrenched institution stopped from spreading, it was ultimately eliminated in the U.S. We too can meet our goal if we are committed enough. So, if we cannot get the existing parties to listen to us, like the Antislavery people of the mid-1800s couldn’t, then, just like them, we will start our own party, the Tea Party.

Sorry if this seems to be a rant but to me the above seems more than obvious.  Wake  up.  The Dems and the big government Repubs want to be "Massa."  We need to do what that populist movement back in the 1850s did and reverse the expansion of slavery.

No serious investigation by the FEC of Obama's campaign had me puzzled.  With all the apparent fraudulence in his fund raising and donation schemes, including removing the fraud protection safeguards from his web based donation sites, why was his campaign not being grilled seriously by the Federal Election Commission.  Why was this watchdog doing nothing?  And then today, I ran across a reference to what I had missed.  It was in a News Max article found here http://www.frontpagemag.com/.  The relevant passage said, "Helping to cripple the FEC was the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who placed a 'hold' ona Republican nominee in October 2007.  That action had the effect of keeping the commission on the sidelines for the entire primary season."  To me that looks like premeditation by a man who was already running for President.  I think he was trying to avoid early and serious scrutiny by the commission so that his fraudulent fundraising effort would not be exposed before it was too late.  What do you think?

Part 4 on Progressive Socialism

Last time I promised that I would write about what political tools American progressives used to gain power and how they held on to and used that power try to achieve their goals. I also promised to briefly speculate both on why they have not succeeded and on why they face a growing challenge in the twenty-first century.

First progressives made common cause with and, in many cases, came to dominate long standing social reform movements. As they gained control of these movements they changed their character from movements that encouraged the individual to change his own behavior into movements that clamored for government to use its coercive power to force people to change their behavior. The classic example of this is the temperance movement. It had begun as a persuasive movement and had some success. As progressives moved into leadership roles in the movement, it began to try to harness the law making power. The ultimate result was the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution (Prohibition).

Progressives needed to make the new “non-political” bureaucracies, they hoped to control more important than the political parties and they needed to weaken the parties themselves. They did this through measures that seemed to favor more democracy but in fact lessened it. One of the most important of these was the creation of the political primary.

There was a time in this country when the political conventions were truly important. Party loyalists and workers got together to pick the candidates that they believed best upheld the ideals of their party and had the best chance of getting elected. The primary takes that choice out of their hands and weakened party discipline. No longer do the party labels mean as much as they once did.   Anyone who can collect enough signatures of registered voters can now become through the primary the party candidate, even if he or she believes in nothing that the party does. A perfect example was the candidacy of David Duke a few years back in Louisiana. The Republican Party loyalists even took out ads, urging voters to vote for the opposing party’s candidate because they so despised what Duke stood for. The poor people of Louisiana that year had their choice between a racist and a convicted felon.

Because they believe in centralized power, progressives also proposed the deceptively democratic seventeenth amendment. This amendment changed the way Senators are chosen. Senators, in the Constitution as originally written, were representatives of the state governments, chosen by the state legislatures. This gave the states some clout in Washington and a way to limit legal encroachments on their authority by the central government. The seventeenth amendment put in place the popular election of Senators and the states lost much of their power to oppose the central government.

Because their ultimate goal is government by bureaucracy, progressives knew the traditional sources of government revenue, from tariffs, the sale of western lands, and the sale of government bonds, would never be enough to support the size of government they wanted. This was remedied by the passage of the sixteenth amendment, the income tax. As originally worded, the Constitution strictly prohibited a tax on income. Founders like James Madison, father of the Constitution, viewed such a tax as tyranny. Progressives eased the way by promising that the top rate, paid by the very wealthiest, would never go above 4% and that middle class tax payers would never have to pay more than 1%. They lied.

We got our first progressive president accidentally. When President William McKinley was shot, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest man to ever hold the office of president. Though some imagine him conservative, because of his belief in military strength, his domestic policies were progressive. In fact, when he finally split from the Republican Party in 1912, he named his own political party the Progressive Party and adopted as its symbol the Bull Moose. He favored all the progressive legislation eventually put in place by his presidential successors. Woodrow Wilson ran and was elected as a progressive.

Ever since that time, almost every American president has been a progressive. There have been some who were more moderate in their progressivism and some who, like Calvin Coolidge, were conservatives but did not do much to get rid of the gains made by the progressives.

Progressivism’s greatest opportunity came with the Great Depression. Because of the crisis they were able to put in many of their ideas with little effective opposition. Also for the first time many Americans began to believe the federal government should be responsible for their economic well being. Many Americans began to agree that most problems should have a federal government solution. America also began to get some of its first socialist legislation. Legislation that did such things as set a minimum wage. It also enacted its first permanent welfare legislation.

Progressivism would not face even a minimally successful challenge until Eisenhower and then not again until Reagan. But progressivism is in trouble today for the same reason the Soviet Union found itself in trouble. The promises of progressivism were extravagant and they have not been kept. The progressive welfare system was finally seen as fatally flawed in the 1980s and because of a brief resurgence of Republican control of Congress, finally received some modest pruning and reform from conservatives. It was perhaps the first sign of growing dissatisfaction with the progressives. A second blow has been the popularity of President George W. Bush’s tax cut. These seemed to me at the time to be at least the leading wedge of a scaling down of the progressive vision if not the beginnings of a reversal. Americans, I believed, were beginning to realize that the government hasn’t kept and perhaps can’t keep its promises.

All that changed with the recent election. What Progressive Socialism needed in this country was a charismatic figure. The extreme left seems to have found one in the person of Barack Obama. The more I read about this man, study his voting record, past associations, and pay attention to things he says in unguarded moments or in interviews that he thinks were long ago buried, or even what he now sometimes openly says, a tingle of fright runs through me. Leftists, because they refuse to make God central, often give that role in their lives to some fallible human and more often than not that fallible human abuses the power it gives him. This is what I fear America now faces in President-Elect Obama.

Much has been left out of this brief four part analysis. Perhaps, someday I will make this a book.

Part 3: What Allowed American Progressivism

Last time I promised to focus on the rise and influence of American Progressivism. The United States has not gone as far or as fast down the road of evolutionary socialism as Europe. One of the most important reasons for this cultural delay appears to have been the strong Christian influence revived by the Second Great Awakening.

One of the most influential social movements in American history is virtually ignored in many of today’s public educational institutions.   The reason for this is simple. The Second Great Awakening (like the also important first) was a protestant/evangelical religious movement. On the religious side some of the largest protestant denominations, especially Baptists and Methodists, received their greatest percentage of growth during and immediately after the awakening. The awakening also began a number of societal reform movements, many later hi-jacked by the progressive movement, that still endure. 

Before the Awakening, American Protestants funded very few foreign or domestic missionary efforts. The great denominational mission efforts, the Bible Societies, and many Christian charities had their beginnings in this movement. Christians also felt called upon to improve conditions for others through such movements as prison reform, more humane treatment for the insane, the provision of public education for those who could not afford it on their own, and most importantly, for many, the abolition of slavery. Almost all of the major abolitionists were directly influenced by one of the great preachers of the Awakening, the Presbyterian evangelist, Charles G. Finney. It was also in these evangelical circles that the idea of women receiving the right to vote first gained widespread support. They also favored voluntary temperance as an answer to the social ills brought on by widespread alcoholism. It is from this movement that such phrases as “tea-totaler”, “going on the wagon,” and “taking the pledge” came.

For a time, the awakening seemed to inoculate America from the intellectual poison that pervaded the European system. Most American religious institutions were very traditionally Christian and very Bible centered. But the education boom following the Civil War was going to change all that.

Americans had always emphasized education to an extent unprecedented in the history of the world. The first compulsory public education laws were found among the American Puritans in the 1600s. Americans were quick to establish colleges, almost all of which were church related. In the period following the First Great Awakening there was a boom in higher education, with the founding of many more religious schools. The Second Great Awakening also caused a further blossoming of higher education opportunities including some of the first for women and blacks. But these earlier booms had been overtly Christian. The one following the Civil War would not.

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Two things transpired to cause an educational boom in the period immediately after the Civil War. During the war Congress had passed the Morrill Land Grant Act. This act would make large tracts of western lands available for the support of public higher education and many states would imitate this action by the federal government (a good example is Texas). The other force that would help create this late 19^th century boom in education was the philanthropy of many of those capitalists and industrialists who helped to cause and profited from America’s huge post-war industrial and economic boom. They gave vast sums of money to existing and start-up institutions of higher education.

With all the new colleges being founded, there were not enough qualified faculty. Even if American colleges were to wait for future graduating classes from American institutions, it would take a long time to make up the deficit. The solution was to hire European faculty and to send American candidates to the European universities. Especially favored were the high reputation universities of Germany, where extreme religious liberalism and skepticism, evolutionary socialism, and ethnocentric identity politics (J. G. Herder) were already rampant. It would be through this avenue that modern religious liberalism would enter American denominations (and as it had previously done in Europe cause many church splits) and it would be through this avenue that the ideas that eventually became American Progressivism would come.

But a movement as strong as American Progressivism would need more than ivory tower intellectuals to bring about its spread. The ideas, like seeds, needed fertile ground. America in the late 19^th century was definitely fertile ground.

Americans believed in technological progress. After all, they lived in a land where technological inventions were almost monthly improving the quality of life. Social democrats would quickly realize that for their ideas to be accepted they could not be labeled “socialist.” The term “Progressive” would not only be more palatable, it would also fit in better with their Enlightenment inspired views of human nature and its mutability. Many Americans felt drawn to progressivism because it seemed to agree with their vision of a better future fueled by technological advance.

Another factor that prepared the way for progressivism was the lag that always occurs in the rise of living standards for the working class and for agriculturalists during the early phases of an industrial boom. Living standards rise first for the upper and middle classes and only later for those further down the economic chain. Among a literate people, and Americans had the highest literacy rate at the time, such a situation causes many people to assume that somehow others’ advances have come at their expense. Something socialists are always quick to take advantage of, since class envy is often the most successful tool for advancing their agenda in democratic societies.

Progressives got a further opportunity because of a new solution to an old American government problem. Late 19^th century presidents had a growing burden. The spoils system, whereby the party in power gave all government jobs to party loyalists, had created a presidential nightmare. Presidents seemed to spend half their administrations just making appointments. Every position of postmaster, for example, required a presidential appointment. The paperwork was overwhelming. The solution proposed was the Pendleton Act. This act began our current civil service system. While these new professional bureaucrats would make for more government agency consistency through the years, they would also be insulated from the political process. The new civil service would be the ideal tool for Progressivism.

These conditions would make the rise of American Progressivism possible. Next time, I will show what political tools progressives used to gain power and then how progressives held on to and used power to try to achieve their goals. I will then speculate on why they have not succeeded and now face a growing challenge.

Knowing the Enemy: Continuing History of Socialism

The last time that I wrote this blog, I promised to discuss the rise and influences on the forms of collective socialism that became most dominant in Europe and the United States. Like revolutionary socialism, these movements had their roots in the French Enlightenment view of progress and shared many of its views. Evolutionary Socialism, both in Europe and the United States, would also be influenced heavily by both Darwinian evolutionary thought and Herbert Spencer’s Social Darwinism. 

In Europe two collectivist movements would emerge. One would be extremely nationalistic and ethnocentric. The other would be more internationalist and less prone to racism. In the first, the extreme forms of nationalism and identity politics inspired by Romanticism, especially that of the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, would combine with Darwinian biological thought to reinforce an only natural xenophobia to create a whole new species of Anti-Semitism. The result would be the Socialist political parties known collectively as Fascist in most of Europe and as Nazi in Germany. 

One of the biggest intellectual frauds ever perpetrated in academia has been the false association of these movements with conservative tendencies. Both proudly proclaimed themselves as socialist movements and behaved as socialists in their eagerness to regulate the use of private property to achieve government collectivist and utopian goals.  The real name of the party for which Nazi is the slang abbreviation, was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. 

The Nazis were the most extreme example of the ethnocentrism inherent in this variety of National Socialism. Inspired by the poisonous Jewish conspiracy literature of men like Count Gobineau and the new “science” of eugenics, inspired by Darwinian thought, Hitler came to believe that the creation of the perfect human society could only fully be realized by creating the perfect humans. Part of his program thus included the elimination of those he considered genetically detrimental to humanity from the gene pool. This was the major reason for the death camps in which over six million Jews and somewhat over seven million other people were murdered. Like Robespierre and the others, Hitler believed that the murder of millions was justified if it brought nearer what he considered the perfect society. Hitler too claimed to love humanity in the abstract.

Like its somewhat younger cousin in America, the other form progressivism in Europe would not go very far down the path of ethnocentrism. Instead, they tied social aspirations to calls for democratic equality and interpreted equality in terms of economic results. Being gradualists, and less impatient than men like Mussolini or Hitler, they believed they could work a little at a time through the democratic processes and educational institutions of the West to eventually secure a perfect society, in which there would be perfect “social justice.” They even often called themselves Social Democrats. Like their cousins, the American Progressives, the Social Democrats would have some clearly recognizable characteristics.

While the Social Democracy and Progressive Movements have included a wide and disparate collection of organizations and individuals, there is a matrix of shared beliefs and attitudes that they, for the most part, share. Like the Enlightenment and the Romantic movements before them, they follow the approach of the Greek sophist Protagoras, an approach that makes a human faculty the ultimate judge and final arbiter of morality and truth. For the Enlightenment, it was the intuitive element in human reason. For the Romantics, it was the intuitive power of human emotion. 

One of the key questions the disciples of Protagoras have to ask is which human or humans, since there are so many of us, makes the binding decisions? Thrasymachus, an early disciple of Protagoras, and Friedrich Nietzsche both believed it should be the one who is able to force his will on the others. For them questions of morality and truth are really only questions of power. Modern Deconstructionists follow this same line of argument in their studies to literature, history, and politics. The other problem deals with the transitory nature of human life and the problems of change. Since humans change and are changed by their fragility and mortality does that mean truth and morality change? If truth changes in what sense is it then truth?

The response of Social Democrats and Progressives, to the question of which human or humans should decide for the rest of us, is that experts trained in the social sciences should be in charge of all societal decision making ultimately. Thorstein Veblein thought government should be run by a committee of social engineers with extensive training in the social sciences. Because of this fundamental assumption, Social Democrats and Progressives tend to put government bureaucracies in control of as many of the day to day functions of society as possible.

These movements tend to believe, that for their goals to be achieved there must be central planning and the purposeful creation of order. They believe the only institution with the coercive power to create order and regulate society to such an extent is big government. Therefore, government must grow ever more intrusive by providing all needed social services and regulating all aspects of the economy and environment. Like earlier socialists, they tend to believe that humans and their ideas are merely the result of their education, circumstances, and environment. If all aspects of the society are controlled and regulated long enough the end result will be a much better and unselfish humanity living in a perfect society. (By the way, this is why Progressives and Social Democrats always seem to link all crime to poverty and a lack of education.) Progressives and Social Democrats see one of their most important goals as reeducation. They believe the purpose of education is not the transference of knowledge but the socialization of the individual. By the socialization of the individual, they too often mean making that person agree with their world view. One of the key points of their educational agenda is to instill the assumption that every problem requires a government solution.

While these are not conspiracies, they are, I believe, social movements that have done great harm to our ideals of liberty, personal responsibility, and private ownership. These were, and still are, much of what lured our ancestors to these shores. Our founders certainly would have found the ideals of the Progressives foreign. So, how did this set of ideals, so foreign, to the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence come to dominate American politics and society in the twentieth century?

NEXT TIME I WILL FOCUS ON THE RISE AND INFLUENCE OF AMERICAN PROGRESSIVISM.

Some Background on the Socialists and other Collectivists

Today I was thinking about collectivist social reformers, especially those who have been influenced by progressivism and socialism.  Out of that morass of arrogant human ideologies that have plagued us since the French Enlightenment, the scariest have always been put forward by those who, while claiming to love “mankind”, obviously in the abstract, were willing to sacrifice individuals to their utopian dream of reshaping human nature itself.

Here we find the tyranny inherent in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s concept of the “General Will”, where the rights of the individual are sacrificed to the common good.  When, in the French Revolution, Robespierre tried to carry out Rousseau’s vision thousands were executed because they were seen as obstructions to a new “Republic of Virtue.”  This vision of liberty, equality, and fraternity became, in fact, a dictatorship of the “Committee of Public Safety” which killed people for disagreeing with its definition of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

This helps distinguish the American Revolution from that of the French.  The original flag of our revolution was a rattlesnake.  Below it were printed the words, “Don’t tread on me!”  Notice that personal pronoun.  The American Revolution was all about people being left alone by would be human saviors of the human race.  According to the founder of modern Conservatism, Edmund Burke, it was actually the British Parliament not the Americans that were the revolutionists.  They were the ones who tried to take away the traditional rights, that Americans believed were God-given, in the name of a political and economic philosophy called Mercantilism.  A more stark contrast than that between Rousseau, Robespierre, and our founding fathers is hard to imagine. 

As the nineteenth century progressed so did the ideologies of collectivism.  Both the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx and his ilk and the evolutionary socialism of groups like the British Fabians emerged.  Both believed the problem of society was too much focus on the individual.  Both claimed that all human problems came from human selfishness and that they had the solution to it.  Since they believed that human nature was the product of physical causes (circumstances and the ideas they create), all that needed to be done to change human nature was to change the social and political environment of humans.  Force people to do “the right thing” long enough and it will become part of human nature.  If you make people “share” long enough they will do it without questioning why they should.

The socialists soon realized that the only human institution available with enough coercive power to force people to change their behavior involuntarily was government.  So, they believed that first people who thought like them must gain control of government and then they could use its power to change other people’s behavior and “save” mankind.  They thought selfishness was, at least, partly the result of private ownership so the goal would be to eliminate the private and “selfish” use and ownership of resources.  The revolutionists, like Marx, believed this could only be done through violence.  The evolutionists, like the Fabians, believed the process could be gradually achieved through influence in the educational and political structure of the society.

Many people listened to the socialists, as many still do, because they saw that some people seemed, to them “unfairly”, to have a lot more worldly goods than others.  From believing that the well-off should share many took the fatal step of believing it was right to force people to share.

In the eastern hemisphere and in the Caribbean and Central America, the revolutionaries were able to overthrow several governments and use a “dictatorship in the interest of the workers” to begin trying to create the new humanity.  The Soviet Union was one such attempt.  Out of “love for mankind” leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Fidel murdered millions of people who offered any perceived opposition to their vision of the perfect society.  And as recent years are showing the revolutionaries attempts to create a new humanity failed miserably.

In the West, the evolutionary socialists are still at work and they have made major strides in the Western democracies toward achieving their goal of governmental control by likeminded people.  While in Europe, the term “socialist” was an acceptable political term; it soon became apparent that to call one self a “socialist” was not likely to gain much public support in America.  Early on, the term got a bad reputation here.

NEXT TIME I WILL CONTINUE WITH AN OVERVIEW OF EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE SOCIALISM

Freedom Philosophy and Education

Today I was thinking about our school’s freedom philosophy and the “liberal arts education” we claim to provide. Many people today, who consider themselves conservative, are put off by the phrase “liberal education” or even “liberal arts education.” They confuse current popular political usage of the word “liberal” with its historic meaning in the phrase “liberal education.” In actuality, the phrases “liberal education” and “liberal arts education” mean “those studies that equip a free person.”

Liber was the Latin adjective used to describe a person who is free, unrestricted, and/or independent. In contrast servus meant slavish and dependent. In both the ancient Greek and the ancient Roman systems of education, certain abilities were considered appropriate only for the free man. No slave would be taught these specifically mental skills. The Romans called these skills artes liberales, the abilities befitting a free man.

The phrase “liberal arts” passed into the English language through the French phrase arts liberaux. In Medieval England the expression soon, in such phrases as “liberal education,” took on the sense of “befitting a person of free social status” as opposed to serfs or slaves. So, in these phrases, it is obvious that the word “liberal” has no particular political meaning or context except freedom.

In fact “liberalism,” in this sense, was the dominant political philosophy of our founding fathers. They believed people should be responsible for their own choices, without the interference or protection of government. James Madison, properly nicknamed the Father of the Constitution, believed that federal government’s role was limited by this emphasis on freedom. The committees that put together the Declaration of Independence believed that each person had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People have the right to pursue happiness. They do not have a right to happiness. Happiness is a result of choices and freedom consists in making choices.

It is troubling that some have injected a socialist political agenda into the “liberal arts” at some institutions of higher learning. What makes it so upsetting is that socialism has always measured equality in terms of the lowest common denominator. It has discouraged excellence by punishing achievement in order to achieve sameness. To enforce equality requires exactly that, force. Coercion is the opposite of choice and, therefore, the opposite of freedom.

To raise the lower to the level of the higher in ability, talent, accomplishment, etc. has always been harder than to lower the more able, talented, or accomplished through the use of coercive limitation. Let us say we want to make Cato, your humble writer, who is over fifty, overweight and out of shape, equal in base running to the best on your typical college baseball team. If our goal is equality in base running then the easiest solution is to make the other runners carry extra weights, to limit their freedom of movement and speed. We will never be able to make Cato as good as they are because of his age and some old injuries, among other things. The only way to make it “fair” in a socialist sort of fairness is with the weights on the other runners.

This is exactly the problem. Socialism has always gone for this type of quick fix with only the issue of equality as a goal. Almost never has the goal been improving everyone’s lot in life, even if that means there may remain some inequalities. Our new President-Elect, during his campaign showed his goal was not lifting all the boats, so that all of us benefit (best done by getting government out of the way). No, he said his goal is to make things fair. To do this he must strap the heavy weight of taxes on our most financially successful. Will this really better the country? No. In fact if the government takes it upon itself to redistribute the money people earn to those who did not earn it, it destroys the incentive of the productive (the players who are normally able to steal bases and help our team win) because now they know their efforts will reap them no benefit. But you say, surely it will encourage the currently non-productive to do better. No. They will have no incentive to do better. You have after all made them equal to the best. Why should Cato go to the gym, watch his diet, etc so that he can get better if he is already as good as every one else (those players carrying all the weights) at base running?

Worse than that; the cost of trying to equalize the runners on our baseball team has led to added costs for the program. Not only do we have to pay for all those weights but now more players are getting injured because of them and leaving the team. What happens when “the rich” have been equalized so that they don’t have the money to invest in new ventures? What happens to the team in my illustration when it faces competition from teams that aren’t worried about equality but are concerned about base running? 

Besides all that, our government does not seem to know how to fix problems without following the procedure I will now proceed to outline. There is some new social problem that everyone says government should do something about. To address the problem Congress passes legislation raising money for a new agency that the President says we need. Of course, ultimately this money comes from taxes. Because the new agency needs housing for its offices in Washington, a new and costly government building uses part of that money. Because government says it wants effective leaders for the new agencies and effective administrators expect big salaries, more money is set aside for this purpose. Then, of course, we need money for the support staff, building maintenance, etc. Next government needs regional offices or state offices to coordinate the agency’s efforts at the regional or state level. And, of course, these offices need their own buildings, managers, support staff etc. Now, to get the help down to local level, where we need to address this new social concern, local offices, administrators, support staff, etc are needed. Now, finally, several years later we are finally ready to begin using government to help “solve” the social problem but the appropriated money has all disappeared in creating the delivery system for it. This is why private charity is so much more productive in actually getting help to people who need it.

Freedom philosophy and private charity, the way our founders handled it by the way, are much more productive both for producing wealth and for helping those in need than any government run charity. Besides, there is no virtue in me if I only help the poor because government sticks a gun to my head and says I have to. Then to add insult to injury, government takes out most of the money for itself and gives the person it is claiming to help mere pocket change (If you would like to know more about how our founders handled charity I recommend Marvin Olasky’s book on that issue).

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A freedom philosophy means our focus is not on equaling everyone’s lot in life. It means we want to enable those who will make the effort to improve their own lot in life. Our “liberal arts education” should focus on liberty and not silly socialist twaddle that only leads to equal misery. 

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.