Rare Jewel Insight: July 4, 2005
1. COMMENTARY
- “WWJD? - Go Forth on the Fourth”
2. A NEW DECLARATION…
3. TESTING THE SUPREME COURT DECISION
4. YOUR GUIDE TO RESTORING AMERICA
1. COMMENTARY
“WWJD? - Go Forth on the Fourth”
(by Rick Marschall, Managing Editor, Rare Jewel Magazine)
Happy birthday, America. Let us commemorate July 4, the date joined in our collective consciousness with the names boldly affixed to that glorious document, the Declaration; July 4, the phrase that is synonymous with “independence”; July 4, the occasion, now, for tens of thousands of used-car sales and another day off work. Let us commemorate it by asking “WWJD”?
And by this we mean What Would Jefferson Do?
Would he recognize the America that he helped birth? Would any of the Framers think twice about having pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor? Would Founding Fathers endorse -- or despise -- the changes wrought in the Federal system since they dared to dream, threatened the safety of their homes and families, and sacrificed in countless ways for generations yet unborn? Benjamin Franklin told an inquirer outside Independence Hall that he and his colleagues had fashioned “a Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” Have we kept it?
Is the traditional American Fourth of July frozen in time… frozen in amber? Is it a fossil?
On July 4 the American colonies -- settled to spread the Gospel; dedicated by prayer after prayer and flag after planted flag, to the cause of Christ; modeled on Biblical principles top to bottom -- became the American Nation. A “nation” is different than a “country.” Like the German word “volk,” it includes the inchoate concepts of shared precepts, common goals, and assumed rights… and responsibilities. People can move to China, and they will thereafter be Americans living in China. One can obtain a passport in, say, Nigeria, and be an American with Nigerian papers. Choose to live in Finland, and you will be known as a Finnish citizen from America. But anyone, from anywhere in the world, comes to the United States… and that person becomes an American.
Once that meant more than now. Should we be alarmed -- Would Jefferson Have Been Alarmed? -- that days before this year’s July 4 commemoration, the Supreme Court told sovereign Americans that they cannot display the 10 Commandments in certain places in the land? Or that individuals’ homes could be seized by governments in favor of profit-yielding shopping establishments? WWJD? If the King of England would have attempted either of these things, would Jefferson have accepted it? Why do we Christian Patriots accept it?
A “birthday present” this July 4 is an opportunity for Christian Patriots to turn their outrage into action. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, and both sides of the Court Watch instantly are ready to advocate and denigrate. Indeed much is at stake. We cannot have another moderate like O’Connor, whose chief legacy will be having mixed the mortar that cemented many liberal legal gains.
Does not the government that grew out of the first struggles for liberty on July 4, today work a thousand means of restricting our freedom instead of guaranteeing it? Has not the government that strains to provide everything we want… become so big as to threaten everything we have? Washington (George, that is; not the city that besmirches his name) famously warned his nation against “foreign entanglements”; recently we learn that George (Bush, that is, not Washington) is working in various ways to allow illegal immigrants to pour over our land; to establish common currencies and passports with countries to our north and south; to replace fair trade with “free” trade that benefits other countries that, to say the least, bear no affection for the United States. And these moves come from politicians whom Christian Patriots were grateful to elect, often as the lesser of several evils. Has our red, white, and blue come to stand for abortion, pornography, sexual perversion, the outlawing of prayer and acknowledgement of God? Happy birthday, America.One of the forgotten inspirations of Jefferson and his compatriots was Algernon Sidney, an Englishman of the 1600s. Neither John Locke (whose Treatises on Civil Government enjoyed greater repute through the years) nor Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, would have been written if not for the furor surrounding Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha (1679), which argued for the Divine Right of Kings. Locke and Sidney wrote persuasive and passionate defenses of individual, God-given liberty… for which they were persecuted. Locke fled to Holland, perhaps insuring his greater fame. Sidney was arrested and beheaded, perhaps insuring a right to our attention as a man willing to die for ideas.
Sidney wrote in Discourses Concerning Government (Sect. II, Par 13), “All human constitutions are subject to corruption and must perish unless they are timely renewed and reduced to their first principles." What a concept. WWJD? Thomas Jefferson agreed: he copied this sentence prominently into his Commonplace Book.
Jefferson was the author of the cornerstone phrase, “endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights.” In his day the radical aspect to this was not that he acknowledged a Creator God, but that rights were the basic birthright of Americans. Today, Jefferson’s descendents prattle about “rights” and “fairness” and entitlements but consider a mere mention of a Creator to be radical… or -- just wait, you see it coming already -- a criminal act. Happy birthday, America.
Here’s another quotation of Thomas Jefferson, inheritor of the ideals of Christian Patriots like Locke and Sidney, and prime author of the precious documents we commemorate (or should) this weekend:
"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without… rebellion…. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that [Americans] preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural [fertilizer]" (Letter to William S. Smith, Nov. 13, 1787. See Jefferson On Democracy, Saul Padover, ed., 1939, 20).
Therefore, please, note that it is not we who rain on the birthday party. The shades of Locke and Sidney; of Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington; of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt; and of -- perhaps more important than any of these supernal names -- the countless and nameless Christian Patriots and pioneers and mothers and fathers and soldiers and sailors who insured the safety and prosperity we enjoy for at least the moment… would THEY attend America’s birthday party?
Or would they send their regrets?
2. A NEW DECLARATION…
The Declaration of Dependence is a new declaration of the same Revolution that America’s Founders began. It is also an emphasis on a particular aspect of the original Declaration of Independence that America’s shapers today have forgotten…the DoI not only declared our nation’s independence from Great Britain but clearly declared likewise our nation’s DEPENDENCE on God. The two Declarations are inseparable.
The Declaration of Dependence is a grassroots movement that multiplies our strength by unifying our message. It is a tool that Christian Patriots use as a standard of measure to judge current and potential public office-holders in terms of their capability to protect and preserve our One Nation under God. [See “Testing the Supreme Court Decision” below]
If you have not done so already, read and sign the DoD today at: http://www.DeclarationOfDependence.org.
3. TESTING THE SUPREME COURT DECISION
On Monday, June 27 the Supreme Court handed down its decision in two Ten Commandments cases. In one of these,McCreary v ACLU (of Kentucky), the Court held that displays inside two Kentucky courthouses were unconstitutional because they went too far in endorsing religion.
We can easily use the Declaration of Dependence (DoD) to measure the validity of this Court decision and therefore the philosophies of those who concurred in this case’s Majority Opinion.
The DoD reminds us that the Supreme Court must make its interpretations of the US Constitution based upon the original intent of the Framers of our constitution and Founders of our nation. Original intent was the Founders’ preferred standard by which to measure case law. On June 12, 1823, in a letter to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
Writing the Majority Opinion in the Kentucky case, Justice David Souter states:
“The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the ‘First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.’”
The DoD states that the Framers of our Constitution specifically chose to base our form of government and our system of laws upon “…Biblical principles, sustained by a reliance on God, and nurtured by its Christian heritage.”
Justice Souter, and the four justices (Ginsburg, Stevens, O’Connor, and Breyer) who concurred in this Opinion, fail the DoD test because they fail to understand that any civil society and its system of laws must be based upon some moral standard. Religion and nonreligion (if such a thing even exists), are simply belief-systems that answer the question, “Why are we here and by whose rules will we play?”
Such belief-systems, whether we call them religion or nonreligion, all include one standard or another for moral conduct (e.g., if a belief-system esteems the right to life as given by God, then killing an innocent person is outlawed as a crime). Thus, it is impossible to separate government from religion.
The real question is, “Upon which belief-system will our government rest -- upon which system of beliefs and moral conduct will our government base all of its laws?” America’s Founders chose Christianity. Souter and his gang of four clearly reject this truth in favor of a secular humanist belief-system that portrays man, instead of our Creator God, as the supreme lawmaker.
With this decision, these five Supreme Court Justices are subverting the Constitution rather than upholding it consistent with the Founders’ original intent.
4. YOUR GUIDE TO RESTORING AMERICA
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