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The Foundations of the United States

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Del Tackett Del Tackett
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I have often asked my students what they believe are the foundations of the United States. The answers are usually led by “freedom” or “liberty”, then “the Constitution” or “the people” or “religious freedom” or “capitalism” or some other similar thought. They are usually shocked when I tell them that the Founders never viewed any of those as “foundational” to this nation. Because that is a bold statement, it requires us to look at the evidence and so we will need to consider a list of statements regarding the nation’s foundations from the Founders themselves. I hope you do not skip over these, for in so doing, you would miss their deep wisdom...a wisdom that continually amazes me.

Let’s begin with George Washington as he was delivering what he believed would be his final address to his beloved nation. He did not disappoint, for he dealt with a list of critical points that were necessary for the people to keep in mind if they were to keep the Republic. Here is an excerpt:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports...In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens...”

Washington believed that the “indispensible supports”, the “great pillars”, the “firmest props” of the nation were religion and morality. So, too, did John Adams:

“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”

Here we have the assertion that “freedom” is resting upon two foundations “alone”: religion and morality. This was also shared by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence:

“The only foundation for...a republic is to be laid in Religion.  Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”

Rush is saying that “liberty” and the "republic" can be found only on the foundation of religion and its subsequent virtue or morality. This link between religion and morality was also mentioned by Washington in his Farewell Address:

“…And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

There was a clear connection in their minds between religion and morality. Morality had to spring from a religious base. This is reiterated by Charles Carroll, also a signer of the Declaration:

“Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”

Carroll speaks of religion being the “solid foundation” of morals, but he also includes that it is the “best security” for freedom. Again, we have the consistent perspective that freedom can exist only if the people are moral and that morality can only exist if there is a solid foundation of religion. Samuel Adams puts it quite succinctly:

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundations of public liberty and happiness.”

Again, we have the expression that the “only solid foundations” for liberty, and now happiness, are religion and morality.

We will add one more before we summarize. This comes from Patrick Henry:

“The great pillars of all government and of social life [are] virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor…and this alone, that renders us invincible.”

Henry calls them the “great pillars” and goes even further in stating that it is not our army or navy that render us invincible, but it is the foundations of religion and morality.

Now, I know we have risked going on at length here, but we are faced with a deep hostility in academia that continues to ignore what is plain to anyone who would honestly care to investigate what the Founders really believed. It is important to keep in mind that “motives” are at play and if one is interested in removing God from the design of the state, then it is imperative to rewrite history as one of the means to do that…especially when the history of a nation is so clearly built upon a faith in God and walking according to His absolute moral truth.

So, the foundations of the United States were not “freedom” or “liberty” or the U.S. Constitution. They were found in this simple, yet profoundly wise understanding that if they were going to build a nation, and in particular a central government for that nation, and they wanted to make it small and bounded in such a way that it would not become a tyrannical beast, then, that limited form of civil government would require a corresponding large amount of self-government by the people...a people who would govern their own actions because of their faith in God and their consequential desire to walk according to His statutes. This is wonderfully expressed by Robert Winthrop:

“All societies of men must be governed in some way or other.  The less they may have of stringent State Government, the more they must have of individual self-government.  The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint.  Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.”

We will end this segment by acknowledging the wisdom that was able to foresee the consequences that would come to the nation if we ever left these foundations. Here is a warning from John Adams:

“We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Adams understood clearly that if we abandoned the foundations, then the U.S. Constitution would be worthless. This is expressed with even more foreboding by Daniel Webster:

“To preserve the government we must also preserve morals.  Morality rests on religion; if you destroy the foundation, the superstructure must fall.  When the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are waste paper.”

The true foundations of the United States are religion—a solid faith of the people in God and His Word, and morality—a desire to conduct themselves in a manner that is consistent with the absolute moral standards that God has established. When a nation has these firm foundations, then the civil government can and will remain bounded and will not rise to tyranny. People can walk the streets without fear, they can eat the fruit of their labors, they can worship and speak according to their conscience, they can pursue the dream to better themselves and make a better life for their families, they seek to make better communities and seek the good of their neighbors. This is sweet freedom and the liberty to pursue the American Dream that can only come from the right foundations.

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7
The True State of Our Union, 2016
Our President will offer, on Tuesday, his State of the Union address. However, it will most likely not be a true state of our nation, but rather another political posturing speech, just like we have heard for years, from both Republicans and Democrats. This is unfortunate, for our nation needs a true, honest assessment of where we are as a culture. It is in that spirit I offer my humble perspective. This is what I would wish for the President to say as he stands before Congress and the American people: ... To the people of this great country, I offer to you my honest assessment of the state of our nation…and it is not good. We are greatly blessed in America. We have abundant resources, rich farmland, and beauty beyond description: from the Grand Canyon to our waterfalls, from our mountains to our coastlands. We have been blessed with great people: people who have come here from all the nations of the earth, seeking the American dream. They have been hard working, good people, courageous in the face of trials and heroic in the face of enemies. We have been blessed with more than we can enumerate. And, I suppose, the Hollywood and political style would have us gush and fawn over each other in our lofty positions and applaud all kinds of supposed accomplishments as if these blessings come from our own making. It would be in keeping with most of our recent State of the Union addresses to therefore give you a long list of all the grand things that the Federal government needs to do for the American people and to smile and look into the camera and assure them that we are taking good care of them...and things are going quite well. But they are not. We are not healthy… Nor are we strong. In fact, I believe we are now, more than ever before in the life of this nation, vulnerable to destruction. This has not come as the result of an external power or force. It has not come from our current war with terrorism. I do not speak of our military might, but I speak of the state of this nation’s soul. We hang over a perilous ledge…at best, we are sliding into an insignificant oblivion. We are in a state of decay…we are rotting away from within. We have succumbed to a deep selfishness. It is eating away at our character, our strength and our core like an aggressive, unchecked cancer. Despite all the current cries for secularization, we were founded with a clear belief that the health of this nation would rest upon two foundations: religion and morality[1]. This was not to be understood that religious particulars would be legislated, but that we, as a nation, recognized the fundamental existence of God and His declaration of things that were right and things that were wrong, and that the citizenry would then govern themselves according to those transcendent laws. It was this self-government that allowed for a minimum of civil-government and therefore a maximum of personal freedom…freedom to work hard and to enjoy the fruit of one’s labor…to use that fruit and selfless efforts to raise a family and to aid one’s neighbor in distress. This was the American dream. In our great foolishness, we have now discarded those foundations. We have traded self-government for self-indulgence. We have traded transcendent Truth for self-centered identity and self-centered lust. The desires of the heart now trump any notion of divine righteousness. We have tossed aside these critical Foundations…Foundations that for years sustained and propelled us into being the greatest nation in the world. Now we chase the mirage and illusion of self-gratification and false notions that right and wrong are determined by the individual…by man himself. And these false notions are now supported and propagated by all the centers of influence in our culture: Hollywood, media, academia and even the President, the Supreme Court and Congress. And, as with every lie and deceit, its promises are false. Instead of selfishness bringing us happiness and pleasure, it reaps us strife and groaning. In the end, a self-centered culture is a hateful and violent culture…a culture seething with the seeds of its own destruction. Our cities teeter on the brink of bursting into riots and flames. We can no longer stroll safely at night on our streets. Our families are no longer secure in their homes. Our children are no longer safe in their schools. Our pursuit of selfishness and hedonism has brought the true state of our nation to one that is filled with violence. We lead the world in crime. We commit approximately 10 million crimes every year…nearly 26,000 every day[2]. No other nation comes close to us. Every day we murder 40 people and rape 320[3]. As such, we also lead the world in incarcerations. Of all the prisoners in the world, we account for 25% of them. Our prisons are overflowing[4]. The backbone of our culture, our families, are in serious trouble. For every 7 marriages this year, there will be nearly 4 divorces.[5] And when we have babies, fewer are within the security and nourishment of a mother and father. Half of our first babies are born to unwed mothers; a third of our children live without a father[6]; if you are a black baby conceived in this nation, the odds are greater that you will be aborted than that you will be born alive[7]. Since 1973, we have killed 55 million of our babies, about a million a year, and we abort more of our offspring every single day than the terrorists murdered in the World Trade towers on 9/11[8]. The true state of our Union should cause us to weep. We lead the world in producing pornography. 90% of the world’s pornography comes from our nation[9]. We are sexually addicted and obsessed. Our movies and music and media are awash in what was once considered sinful and vile. The state of our nation is truly shameful. We have lost our sense of morality and it is costing us dearly. Try to imagine this next statistic: in one year, we will contract 20 million sexually transmitted infections. That’s 54,000 people infected every day…a fourth of them are teenagers.[10] This is well beyond a level that we should label as an epidemic and plague—but we don’t speak of these things because it would dampen our lust for sexual freedom and reduce ticket sales at the theater. We are the world’s leading user of illegal drugs[11]. Approximately one in ten of us is addicted to alcohol or drugs[12]. Every day, our drinking and driving snuffs out the lives of 28 human beings[13]. We spend $50 billion federal dollars every year fighting illegal drugs while we spend $100 billion a year using them[14]. We are a nation of self-centered addicts. Our drug and alcohol addictions lead the world, but they are nothing compared to the astounding percentage of our people who have sexual addictions…people who are addicted to pornography or addicted to gambling or video games or other pathologies that have a death grip upon us, destroying our lives, our families and our fruitfulness. This, too, is a national epidemic. We are sinking fast into mental numbness and dumbness as well. Out of the top 22 developed countries, our upcoming millennial generation ranks dead last in math, dead last in problem solving, and near dead last in literacy. This is a continual decline over decades. After four years of college, our Millennials score no better than high school seniors in Japan or Finland or the Netherlands. Researchers call our Millennial scores “abysmal”[15]. Instead, our teens consume nearly 9 hours a day of entertainment on smartphones or TV[16]. By the time they are 18, our children will have witnessed approximately 400,000 murders on TV and by the age of 21, they will have spent 10,000 hours playing video games[17]. Even the future state of our nation does not look promising. We adults aren’t much different. We average nearly 6 hours a day in front of the television…a big screen TV that is most likely on a credit card. Our personal consumer debt is over $2.5 trillion. The average family owes $16,000 in credit card debt. Our students owe $1.3 trillion in school loans[18]. But the biggest runaway spending is found in Washington. The Federal debt is beyond imagination. Our debt has gone from $7.3 trillion in 2004 to over $18.8 trillion today with no sign of slowing down. This debt is now higher than our GDP—the total of ALL the goods and services produced in our country. We pay almost $230 billion a year in interest on that debt. The debt load on every taxpayer in America is now over $157,000[19]. But, in reality, the $18.8 trillion debt is a phony number. The real debt is found in our unfunded obligations, obligations to pay things in the future like Social Security and Medicare. This is the real debt of our nation. We currently have unfunded liabilities that total over $100 trillion dollars….a debt load of $1 million dollars for every taxpayer in our nation[20]. It is more than the total of the ENTIRE world’s output. This debt is beyond understanding. It is a house of cards awaiting a puff of wind to blow it down. Are we so blind that we cannot see any of this? Despite the political posturing, we have fewer people in the workforce today than in 2000. We play with numbers to keep a respectable unemployment figure by moving millions of people into a growing pool of what we call “not in the labor force”…currently over 90 million[21], but the reality is that many of them are of working age who desire to be employed full-time but the jobs are not there. That may partially come from the fact that we also have the largest trade deficit in the entire world[22] and that our high corporate tax rate is causing businesses and jobs to move to other countries[23]. All of this is transforming our nation into an ever-increasing welfare state. Over half of our people receive redistribution benefits from the Federal government. Few Americans are saving wisely and 76% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, which means over three-fourths of our nation are loaded with debt and are one paycheck away from financial disaster.[24] How can we be so foolish? We are increasingly becoming a nation of dependents and wards of the State. We are becoming slaves to a Federal Beast that grows without restraint. The power and reach of the Federal government has become unrecognizable by our founding standards. The President and Supreme Court craft laws in defiance of the Constitution. The President thumbs his nose at the Constitution’s requirement to get Senate approval for foreign treaties. [I can guarantee that the President’s State of the Union that will be delivered Tuesday will be filled with political posturing, back patting, and that everything proposed will lead to a larger and more powerful Federal Beast. And in so doing, our people will descend deeper and deeper into dependent wards, and with it, our productivity will continue to shrivel and dry up.] And in all of this, we simply turn a blind eye and go back to our TVs and smartphones…because we are addicted to our self-centeredness. Our military has increasingly been stripped of any notion of Absolute truth…a military that was once feared by enemies, but cheered by the liberated French. Why? Because they carried a belief in an absolute moral foundation. No longer. Our military academies and military services have become a playground for social policies and political correctness and there is growing list of incidents that are creating a very “hostile” environment for the religious freedom of military members in order to crush the notion of Transcendent Truth....leaving only "State" truth.[25] Nothing should frighten us more than to think that we would desire to build a military or police force that believes truth lies within their own heart or within whatever orders are handed down from the State…that might is what makes right. We have an enemy that has attacked our homeland and yet we are too squeamish to label the worldview behind it. We cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge the existence of evil nor the existence of sin because to do so is to acknowledge a Transcendent truth that exists beyond our self-centered fantasy. Instead, we look for environmental causes of evil behavior and point a finger at guns while we ignore the violence and sex and hedonism in our movies and music. Hollywood or the media is never held accountable, nor the educational system or public policies that continue to destroy our families and our culture. And we are back to the heart of the issue. For the true State of the Union lies here, in the selfish casting off of the Transcendent for the temporary; seeking our hedonistic pleasure for today while selling our souls and our future. Do not be fooled. Selfishness eventually spawns hatred and violence. If you do not affirm me, I will spew such animosity toward you that you will be swept away with its fury. If you do not bake me an affirming cake, we will destroy your bakery. If you do not take affirming photographs, we will destroy your studio. If you do not allow a man who identifies as female to use the women’s restroom, the state of Washington will now shut down your business. If you do not affirm my self-selected gender identity with the proper pronoun, New York will now prosecute and fine you a quarter of a million dollars. Our selfishness has reached the level of stark absurdity…backed by legal and political tyranny. Somewhere in all of this, the founding generation must be shaking their heads in disbelief at what is happening to this nation. Our selfishness and rejection of absolute Truth is sucking us into a monstrous whirlpool that leads downward to utter darkness. We are committing cultural and national suicide and yet we continue to affirm and gush over each other and party while the nation crumbles beneath our feet. Does anyone care enough to fight this? Does anyone care enough to stand?...to stand for what is right…for what is true…for what is good? The Governors of the States must stand against the tyranny of the Federal Beast, but it must be the people who will stand and say no to the path that we tread. For the true State of the Union, which hangs by a thread, can be changed only if the people demand a change. But the change must begin within. If we continue to pursue our pleasure and entertainment, if we continue to abdicate our responsibility for the health of our families and this nation, if we continue to allow Hollywood and academia and the media and the Government to lead us down this path, then we, as a nation, are going to die. And the death may come in a night…it may come so swiftly that the world will stand in awe at our downfall. But health will not come over night. We live in a fallen world where you catch diseases quickly, but you don’t catch health. You can fall and break a bone instantly, but healing it takes a lot of time. If we are to regain our health, if we are to restore what is broken, it will require the courage and strength and long-term commitment of the people…if we still have the character to do so. It will come by first falling to our knees in repentance before the God who made us…the God who gave us a land flowing with milk and honey…the God who has sustained us through war and countless trials…the God before whom we now stand and shake our fist in His face. It will come by an examination of our personal lives and the pathologies that infest our social systems. It will come by both individual and national commitments to that which is True. And it will come by a sustained walk of turning back to the God to whom we owe all things…to the God who can reduce us to rubble with one puff of His breath. And if we do not, may God have mercy on us and our children. ... Though the state of our Union is perilous, Remnant, there is a reason why we remain. It is for this time that we have been preserved. May we stand for Truth in the times in which we live. Pray, dear Remnant, for repentance, Tuesdays, noon eastern.   [1] https://truthencounter.x362.com/resources/1247/the-foundations-of-the-united-states?tagid=3548 [2] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/browse-by/national-data [3] ibid [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Stateseration_rate [5] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/marriage-divorce.htm [6] http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/03/22/the-real-reason-the-american-dream-is-unraveling/ [7] http://www.blackgenocide.org/black.html [8] http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/03/22/the-real-reason-the-american-dream-is-unraveling/ [9] http://techcrunch.com/2007/05/12/internet-pornography-stats/ [10] http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats14/std-trends-508.pdf [11] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-leads-the-world-in-illegal-drug-use/ [12] http://www.drugfree.org/new-data-show-millions-of-americans-with-alcohol-and-drug-addiction-could-benefit-from-health-care-r/ [13] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html [14] https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/07/how-much-do-americans-really-spend-drugs-each-year [15] http://www.ets.org/s/research/30079/index.html [16] https://www.commonsensemedia.org/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-infographic# [17]http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/publications/reports/stateindustryviolence/main.asp [18] http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html [19] http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html [20] http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/01/17/you-think-the-deficit-is-bad-federal-unfunded-liabilities-exceed-127-trillion/ [21] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/LNU05000000.txt [22] http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.pdf [23] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/economist-explains-9 [24] http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/ [25] http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=106938
13
What in the World is a Free Press?
One of the many skirmishes with the current President, and there are many, is focused on the notion of a free press. Last Thursday over 300 news organizations, in a coordinated effort against the President, published editorials in defense of a free press. But what in the world is a “free” press? In the upcoming Engagement small-group series (launches late 2019) we will take some time talking about what has happened to various words in our culture. One of those is the word “freedom”. When a people become totally self-centered, as I believe we have, then “freedom” becomes all about me and my right to do whatever I want. We’ve even upped the ante on this in the last thirty years by divinizing the individual such that we believe our heart is the source of truth, which by default makes us each a little god. If I am divine, and my heart tells me that I’m a boy and not a girl, even at age 4, or I want to marry the soil (as Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens did in 2014) then who are you to speak against the gods? This has become the modern view of “freedom”. Unfettered by a transcendent Truth, we all become gods. However, we are insanely impotent little gods and we need the power of the press or the State to confirm and codify and adjudicate our god-ness and force the culture to accept and bless our “freedom” to act as precious little divines. This notion now carries over into the new understanding of the “freedom” of the press. The Founders weren’t interested in “freedom” as we want to define it today. They believed the foundations of this country were its solid stand on a belief in God (and therefore a transcendent right and wrong) and the people then acting morally in accordance with that transcendent Truth. Freedom was found in the right of an individual to become as fruitful as they were gifted and determined to become without the suppressing caste of ancestry or royal rights and without the tyranny of the State or any other power circumventing that liberty. The “free press” was critical to this dream because it would provide an essential “balance of power” to the State or Labor or the Church or to anything that would threaten those foundations or the freedom and liberty of the people. The Press was to be the nation’s non-political “umpire” whose power was to call attention to the people of violations toward this exceptional dream. But what happens when the press begins to align with one side over the other? What would happen in a baseball game if the umpire never called strikes against one team and never called balls against the other? Do we rejoice because the umpire is “free” to call them the way he likes, helping his “side”, rather than according to the rules? During the last administration, the President declared he would not enforce a law enacted by Congress (DOMA) because he didn’t like it. The press should have created a firestorm that scorched the political land. No President, who has taken an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and to faithfully fulfill the position as head of the Executive Branch, which executes the laws enacted by Congress, should ever, ever be allowed to act as if he were supreme to the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch. Yet it happened and the press was silent. Why? Because the mainstream press has become aligned with a naturalistic worldview and its political party. Conservatives have long protested this growing deep bias in the press. Studies have shown that the major news organizations are over 90% manned with left-leaning people. There is nothing inherently wrong with that! But, if the press doesn’t hold both sides accountable, then is it really “free” in the sense that the Founders dreamed and for which they fought? I don’t think so. Here is what needs to happen. When the President chides them over this issue, instead of firing back as if they are without fault, let them take a serious internal look and ask themselves if they are guilty of betraying the true notion of their profession. Ask themselves if they would have allowed Madonna to talk about “blowing up the White House” if it were against a blue President or if they would tolerate repeated attacks on a blue President’s wife and children. When I was at the White House, under a red President, I saw the unmerciful attacks in the press upon Justice Clarence Thomas and the derision that arose over the Vice President spelling “potatoe”. Then I left and saw a blue President use his power and influence to seduce a young intern in the Oval Office and the press and the feminists virtually turned a blind eye. I want the press to call a fair game. I want them to take the current President to task when he is wrong. I want bad cops and bad judges and bad politicians exposed. But those strikes need to be called on both sides, not just one. It’s a little comical though, and I suppose we ought to try to find something here at which we can laugh. The President is yelling at a bad Ump, and the Ump is desperately trying to throw the President out of the game, but he can’t and the Ump is growing unhinged because of it… all to the extreme delight of the President, who gleefully fires off another raspberry. It is making for a wild and crazy game. Let’s hope and pray it ends in something good for the nation.  
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