THE FOUNDERS' WORLDVIEW
AUTHORITY AND EDUCATION
HISTORY REVISITED
Whether we know it or not, history is now taught from an Atheistic/Humanistic point of view. No longer do we learn history along a time line to witness the cause and effect of events. We are told that history is cyclical; it repeats itself; and all events are by random chance. The providential view revealing purpose and design is no longer found in history.
Before our history books were revised intentionally to eliminate the understanding of our Christian heritage, historians like Benson J. Lossing wrote the truth. The Founders established our nation on fixed, uniform and universal principles. Those principles provide the basis for the concept of the rule of law from which flows the richness of individual liberty and local self-government.
In his 1867 History of the United States, Lossing discusses these principles, their source and practice as pertaining to our nation.
Principles, like the ultimate particles of matter, and the laws of God, are eternal, indestructible, and unchangeable. They have existed in the moral realm of our world since the advent of man; and devious as may be their manifestations, according to circumstances, they remain the same, inherently, and always exhibit the same tendencies. When God gave to man an intelligent soul, and invested him with the prerogatives of moral free agency, then was born that instinctive love of liberty which, through all past time, has manifested itself in individuals and in societies; and in every age, the consciences of men have boldly and indignantly asked, in the presence of oppression,
If I'm design'd yon lordling's slave,
By Nature's laws designed;
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?
If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty or scorn?
Or why has man the will and pow'r
To make his fellow mourn?
(Burns)
Nations, like men, have thus spoken. The principles of civil and religious liberty, and the inalienable rights of man which they involve, were recognized and asserted long before Columbus left Palos for the New World. Their maintenance had shaken thrones and overturned dynasties before Charles the First was brought to the block; and they had lighted the torch of revolution long before the trumpet-tones of James Otis and Patrick Henry aroused the Anglo-Americans to resist British aggression. From the earliest steps in the progress of the American colonies, we have seen the democratic theories of all past reformers developed into sturdy democratic practice; and a love of liberty which had germinated beneath the heat of persecution in the Old World, budded and blossomed all over the New, wherever English hearts beat, or English tongues gave utterance. Nor did English hearts alone cherish the precious seedling, nor English tongues alone utter the noble doctrines of popular sovereignty; but in the homes of all in this beautiful land, whatever country gave the inmates birth, there was a shrine of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed. Here king-craft and priest-craft never had an abiding-place, and their ministers were always weak in the majestic presence of the popular will.
Upon the bleak shores of Massachusetts Bay; upon the banks of the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and the James; and amid the pine-forests or beneath the palmettos of the Carolinas,and the further South, the colonists, from the very beginning, had evinced an impatience of arbitrary rule; and every manifestation of undue control by local magistrates or distant monarchs--every effort to abridge their liberties or absorb their gains, stimulated the growth of democratic principles. These permeated the whole social and political life in America, and finally evolved from the crude materials of royal charters, religious covenants, and popular axioms, that galaxy of representative governments which, having the justice of the English Constitution, the truth of Christian ethics, and the wisdom of past experience for their foundation, were united in "the fullness of time," in that symmetrical combination of free institutions known as the REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
Today our nation is faltering under the rule of circumstances governed by changing, discriminatory laws of men misguided by the theory of evolution with its situational ethics. If our nation is to survive such deception, we need to learn the Christian principles that once prevailed, how to apply them--and, then, put those principles into action.
8
Neil F. Markva 20