Our country
has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today. I lived through the Civil Rights and Viet Nam
eras, but those were more focused protests, while today we are divided on just
about everything.
I wanted to
figure out why. I wanted to know how we
got here
I read an
article in the paper about what it means to be an American. After reading the answer given and thinking
about the overall divisions in the country, I knew something was missing from
the discussion.
Then I saw
it, an issue so fundamental to everything that is going on, and nobody was even
talking about it. And what’s more, this
is the issue that will determine the future of our nation in every way that
matters.
The single
most important issue facing our country has to do with what it is that defines
America. I have read a number of
different definitions of what it means to be an American, but frankly they are
missing the point, because they are not going back to the sources.
The best
description of what America is is found in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed, — 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, 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.
God gave human beings unalienable rights, rights that precede
and supersede government, rights that the government cannot restrict, modify,
or take away.
But wait a second.
What God gave people unalienable rights, and how did the
Founders know that?
Every nation in the world at that time had their god(s) and
their religion(s), but no other nation had unalienable rights.
It was the God of the Bible, and the Bible and Christianity
were seen as the vehicles used by God to reveal Himself and His purposes to
humankind.
God gave unalienable rights to human beings. The courts would call that a religious
opinion. The Founders called it a fact.
If you don’t have Christianity, you don’t have unalienable
rights.
If you separate Christianity from the foundation of our
country, or if you deny the existence of God, or if you lump all the religions
together as being equal with no religion being more important or more true than
another, if our government cannot favor one religion over another, then you
don’t have unalienable rights.
Unalienable rights require a Higher Power, an authority higher than our
government that our nation as a whole accepts.
If there is no higher power, or if that Higher Power is not the God of
the Bible, then you don’t have unalienable rights. You only have what rights the government will
give you, and those are two very different things.
Unalienable rights have to do with things that you are free
to do without the government’s permission, interference, or restrictions. This is what our Founders meant by liberty,
or freedom.
Government rights are rights that require the government to
compel other people to do things for the sake of the people who have now been
given certain rights. Usually this will
require enormous amounts of money. or it will require a curtailing of certain
unalienable rights if they are seen to conflict with what the government wants
to give other people. For example: freedom
of speech ends if your speech is considered offensive to someone else. In other words, your freedom of speech is
determined by someone else, so you better be careful what you say, lest you
offend somebody and are held liable for your speech.
Our Founders also recognized that liberty requires high
moral standards. If people do not want
to do what is right as a general rule, freedom will lead to anarchy and
eventually back to despotism.
For 200 years, the moral code of our country was the Ten
Commandments, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would
have others do unto you, all from the Bible.
But that was ruled unconstitutional, because it was considered to be
religious sentiments.
Now they have been replaced with secular values: tolerance,
equality, fairness, and diversity. The
only responsibility here for individuals is tolerance, which can mean nothing
more than ignoring your neighbor. The
rest require the government to closely monitor society and people’s behavior to
ensure that everyone complies with these new highest values.
The First Amendment cannot guarantee freedom of religion
unless religion is consistent with the highest values of the land, otherwise
conflicts will inevitably rise, and secular values will take precedence,
because secular values are now higher than religious ones. And that is what is happening today.
This proves that our nation was never intended to be a
secular nation. It also shows again that
Christianity is at the root of our country, because religions all have very
different value systems. At that time,
Hindus routinely burned widows alive on their dead husband’s funeral pyre, and
Muslims then and now believe(d) in subjugating or killing those who will not
subject themselves to Islam. Our country
fought its first war against Muslim countries in Africa. Their leaders showed our leaders from the
Koran that it is the duty of Muslims to enslave or kill the infidels.
And, of course, the entire idea of establishment of religion
in the First Amendment has been entirely misunderstood, because people have not
read enough in the early documents.
The Founders did not want a national Church as they had and
still do in Europe. That the First
Amendment had nothing to do with our government recognizing God and
Christianity is evidenced by the fact that most if not all of the original
states had a State Church written into their earliest Constitutions. They soon came to see that they were simply
duplicating on a smaller scale the very thing many of them had fled from in
Europe, so this omitted in later versions of those Constitutions.
To say that we cannot talk about God in our public schools
is wrong, because how are we going to be able to teach our children about
unalienable rights if we don’t talk about God?
The entire founding of our country is not being taught in
our schools, at least the parts that are most important in establishing the
true nature of our country, because it has to do with God. And we certainly aren’t teaching it to the
millions of people who have been moving to our country over the years. Well, that would be culturally
insensitive.
When our children and the millions of immigrants start
voting, getting elected to public office, and making our laws, they will not do
it with the knowledge of what made the United States unique among the nations.
So over the course of a few generations, our country will
change as surely as if there had been a war and we were taken over by a foreign
power. We will have lost everything that
made us what we are. But because it is
happening slowly, over generations, nobody is alarmed. All the changes that are happening in our
country are seen as inevitable, good, a sign of progress, or as just another
political debate as there have always been.
Our country is at the tipping point. This can be seen by how close most elections
are.
More and more people will question why the religion question
is that important. Below are five inevitable
changes that have followed on the heels of our secularization as a nation.
1.. Our country
has no uniqueness, so we can and should follow the lead of other nations with
regard to health care, gun laws, welfare, speech codes, globalization. To think differently is considered to be arrogance
and willful blindness.
2. As a secular
country, government now assumes the role that God used to play in people’s
lives. Government now is the provider,
protector, and benefactor of the people.
This comes at an enormous expense to our country:
a) This
is why government spending will never be cut.
b) This
is why our federal debt has ballooned so much so quickly and will not come down. People have a right to so many things that
cost so much money.
c)) This
is why socialism, or a version of it, is almost inevitable. People have a right to be taken care of.
3. What were
unalienable rights now have become government-given rights.
a) Freedom
of speech has to be limited to protect people from hate and offense.
b) Secular
values are higher than religious ones, so religions freedom must be limited
where religious values differ from secular ones.
c) The
right to life assumes the right to defend that life. But the State believes it has the right and
duty to restrict, regulate, and closely monitor that activity under the guise
of public safety.
4. Our new
moral code is failing to restrict bad behaviors. Our country has become an unsafe place.
a) We
may say that crime has not risen, risen that much, or even falling in some
cases, but we are falling to acknowledge at what price. We have made it much harder to get away with
a crime at an incredible expense: the cost of technology, additional police personnel
(salaries, enormous pensions).
b) People
are afraid to walk alone, at night, or in less public places. Heck, they are afraid in our public
schools. It used to be common to leave
cars and house unlocked. We weren’t
worried that someone was going to steal from or rob us.
c) Guns
must be restricted or banned for public safety reasons. Your right to bear arms can be qualified: it
is only for hunting, recreation, within your home, limited to only a few shots
before reloading, and, of course, guns must always be unloaded or disassembled
when not in use.
d) We
now require security guards everywhere: schools, churches, all public
places. We have to keep hiring more and
more police and install more and more cameras, all at great public expense.
e) We
have to be inspected, searched, and restricted for public safety in more and
more places.
1) Schools
are now locked down.
2) We
now have to be screened to fly on an airplane, go to a ball game. We are restricted on things we can bring in
and at more places, e,g. liquids, backpacks.
5.. Our
religious neutrality has allowed for the presence of a burgeoning Muslim
population in our country. To even
express concern for this prompts a knee jerk reaction of horror, because we
have become conditioned to think only of our common humanity. Ideas are not relevant. Religions are all equal. Worldview is code for racism.
But:
a. this
is the only reason we now have airport security screening everywhere.
b. While
individual Muslims are just that, individuals who we are taught to judge and
respect as individuals, the history of Islam and what it looks like in a Muslim
majority country is plain for all to see.
We can see the future of our country in Europe today and in any of 50
Muslim majority countries. If you like
what you see, don’t worry, it’s coming to America.
c. The
fact is that Islam has a goal of making the entire world Islamic. The basic strategy is mass migration to
non-Muslim countries and then mass reproduction. The West is not reproducing at even
maintenance levels. We are teaching our
daughters that it is more important to have a career than a family. It is only a matter of time before Muslims
will have a majority in the various countries.
All of the above are natural and inevitable results of our
country separating itself from our founding principles. We need to have, I don’t want to say, a
debate. We need people to confront and
challenge the current thinking.
Jefferson said that if our government doesn’t secure our unalienable
rights, we should alter or abolish it and institute new government.
We’ve got to get this information into the public
consciousness and get everyone talking about it. It is not a debate, but it will look like it
for a while. We have to demand our
country back. There is no more important
issue in our country at this time. If we
lose here, we lose everything.
