Showing posts with label Founding Fathers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Founding Fathers. Show all posts
Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Forgotten Wisdom
“Sacred and undeniable.” That’s how Thomas Jefferson originally described the basic American rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Of course, Ben Franklin changed these to “inalienable” rights, and a printer’s error resulted in them becoming “unalienable.” Still, the meaning was clear. Or at least it was 233 years ago—when the U.S. government existed as a “necessary evil” that lived within its means, not a self-perpetuating Orwellian nightmare propped up by trillions of dollars in bad debt. At its inception, American government was created to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and yet sadly, today it is more often than not a force against these elemental American rights. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined,” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45. “Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” Really? Then how are we to explain the unprecedented centralization of power we now see in Washington D.C.—a process fueled by billions in unfunded mandates and strings-attached bailouts? The Tenth Amendment might as well no longer exist in this nation, because what’s dictating decisions in state capitols and municipal halls all across America is all too often the promise of federal largesse—or conversely the threat of it being withheld. For example, take welfare for the poor—another subject on which our founding fathers had some thoughts. “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means,” Ben Franklin wrote in 1766. “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” He almost sounds like an angry conservative. How true. And after decades of ignoring this wisdom, our nation finally began to see the light in 1996 when it passed a welfare reform law that incentivized states for reducing—not creating—dependence. A novel idea, right? Sadly, fifteen years of progress on welfare reform was undone earlier this year by President Barack Obama’s so-called “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” which reinstituted the failed “bounty system” of the past. And what about private property rights, which exist to protect the one form of wealth that most Americans get to hand down to future generations? What would our founding fathers think of court cases like Kelo v. New London, which granted the government sweeping power to strip individuals of their property? “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence,” John Adams once wrote. On so many levels, the cost of America’s failure to heed its own founding wisdom is staggering. Already saddled with over $10 trillion in debt, the federal government has spent, lent or pledged an additional $13 trillion since the beginning of this most recent economic downturn – a scarcely-comprehensible number that has failed to stem the steady tide of job losses. “The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale,” Thomas Jefferson wrote. Needless to say, this mountain of debt will take generations of Americans decades – if not centuries – to erase, and that’s assuming government finally figures out how to stop adding billions to the top of the pile. So what’s to be done? How can we reverse the damage our nation has done to itself by ignoring its founding wisdom? Ironically, for that answer we must turn to the architect of the strong central form of government – the father of “implied powers” himself, none other than Alexander Hamilton. “If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” Sounds like a plan to me.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Was America Founded As a Christian Nation? (Part II)
1. THE FOUNDERS NEVER “WANTED TO ESTABLISH A SECULAR NATION.” In fact, they repeatedly and insistently averred that the survival of liberty and the prosperity of the United States required a deeply religious society and a populace passionately committed to organized faith. In his Farewell Address of 1797, President Washington (who had also served as presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention) unequivocally declared that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle…Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” His successor as president, John Adams (also known as “The Atlas of Independence”) wrote to his wife Abigail in 1775: “Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. A patriot must be a religious man.” Thomas Jefferson, who disagreed with Adams on so many points of policy, clearly concurred with him on this essential principle. “God who gave us life gave us liberty,” he wrote in 1781. “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?” Jefferson’s friend and colleague, James Madison (acclaimed as “The Father of the Constitution”) declared that “religion is the basis and Foundation of Government,” and later (1825, after retiring from the Presidency) wrote that “the belief in a God All Powerful, wise and good…. is essential to the moral order of the World and the happiness of men.” Far from insisting on a “secular nation,” the founders clearly believed that any reduction in the public’s fervent and near universal Christian commitment would bring disastrous results to the experiment in self-government they had sacrificed so much to launch. Elias Boudinot of New Jersey, who served as President of the Continental Congress in the last stages of the Revolution (1782-83 wrote: “Our country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies of the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be the introduction of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society.”
Was America Founded As a Christian Nation?
Numerous skeptics and modern historians raise an interesting question that has been hotly disputed in recent years; whether or not America was founded as a “Christian Nation.” Generally, secular humanists have tried to refute this claim by contending that certain key Founders believed merely in a deistic God which didn’t intervene in human affairs. They would be on safer ground if they had instead said that there were strains of religious unorthodoxy in the thinking of certain key Framers. The problem is that when those who claim the Founders were deists, define deism, they can’t make that definition fit the concept of God expressed by the Framers themselves. It is clear that there was a solid belief in a God who actively manages and intervenes in human affairs. Thomas Jefferson reflecting of the injustice of slavery stated… “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” This indicates a God who judges the deeds of humanity. Benjamin Franklin, considered one of the least religious Founders, made this observation during the constitutional convention… “In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor… Have we now forgotten this powerful friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs his affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, it is probable that an empire can rise without His aid?” Notice here that as Franklin approached the end of his life he found convincing proof that God was actively involved in human interventions. George Washington acknowledged the same intervention… “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.” Patrick Henry asserted a view in his time not much different from what those on the Religious Right claim to be historical… “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of faiths have been afforded asylum, and freedom of worship here.” Often quotes are given to show that the Founders had a disdain for Christianity, which was notably communicated in their private writings. One quickly discovers upon careful examination that the context of many of these sentiments are a criticism against “Erastianism,” namely, the atrocities committed because of regulation and domination of religion by the state. As one might expect, the views of certain key Framers often changed over the course of their lives. A young John Adams stated in his diary… “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there contained! Every member would be obliged in conscience to temperance, frugality and industry: to justice, kindness and charity towards his fellow men: and to piety, love and reverence toward Almighty God….What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.” John Adams diary entry Feb. 22., 1756. While this may not have been his exact sentiments late in life, it is interesting to note that when Thomas Paine published his treatise against Christianity, “The Age of Reason,” many distinguished Americans voiced outrage. That included this denunciation… “The Christian religion is, above all the Religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of Wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and Humanity. Let the Blackguard Paine say what he will; it is Resignation to God, it is Goodness itself to man.” John Adams retorting to Thomas Paine in his diary, July 26, 1796. The atheist historian Perry Miller questions the claims of deistic foundations presented by modern historians… ” Actually, European Deism was an exotic plant in America, which never struck roots in the soil. ‘Rationalism’ was never so widespread as liberal historians, or those fascinated by Jefferson, have imagined.” Nature’s Nation pp.110 (1967). I believe that while some of America’s Founders were unorthodox in their religious opinions, yet their basic world view was bathed heavily in a populist Christian Zeitgeist. Things really aren’t much different today. A recent Barna survey shows that less than 10% of those identifying themselves as Christians, can answer in the affirmative to all seven questions that the survey used to delineate Christian orthodoxy. A lack of fidelity to biblical doctrine is the staple of main line Christian denominations. There is more than one meaning to the idea that America was founded as a “Christian Nation.” Simply quoting selected citations from certain key Founders tells us little about the social undercurrents of the time. It is interesting that more than a full century after the Constitution was drafted, this is what the Supreme Court concluded about the matter… “Our laws and institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of The Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian… This is a religious people. This is historically true.” -The Supreme Court Decision 1892 -Church of the Holy Trinity vs. The United States.
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