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Our Rationale
I. "If I Were President" Speech by Jack Kamrath, President of AHEF
II. In Support of the Pledge of Allegiance by Jack Kamrath, President of AHEF
III. The Almost-Chosen People by Paul Johnson, Author and Historian
IV. Historic Quotes on American Freedom and Civic Education
V. Current Quotes on American Freedom and Civic Education
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I.
"IF I WERE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES"
Draft of Speech for
NATIONAL AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH
A Proposed Yearly Program Initiated By The President and The Congress
by Jack Kamrath,
President of the American Heritage Education Foundation, Inc.
"If I Were President" Speech (PDF Format)
On September 11, 2001 our nation experienced the greatest single foreign attack on our homeland in history.
Two thousand seven hundred and ninety-two unsuspecting, innocent men, women and children were brutally murdered on that day three years ago.
We are here today to remember and memorialize those brave brothers and sisters who were taken from us in order that they will never be
forgotten.
What words, what memorials, what monuments can adequately express our grief and sense of loss of these family members of our total American Family? Certainly there should be special memorials to remember each and every one of these heroes. Yet at the same time, we all have a sense that mere physical monuments are not enough to honor those that were killed on that awful day of September 11, 2001. Abraham Lincoln said it best at Gettysburg in 1863 after 7,000 brave soldiers died in three days of war between brothers who fought and died for what they believed. President Lincoln stated the following and I ask each of you to very carefully listen to his great challenge: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Lincoln's words reverberate today through our great nation louder and stronger than ever before. America was attacked on September
11th not for our land, industry, ports or airfields.
We were attacked simply because of our beliefs, values and ideals as Americans that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. When I became your President, I took an Oath of Office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America to the best of my ability. The President of the United States is also sworn to protect the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. When our country was attacked for our beliefs, values and ideals, it placed on the Office of the President a challenge to lead our nation in this war of ideas and ideals. For this reason, it is my emphatic responsibility to alert and inform our citizens that our nation is now under a relentless, cunning and devious attack upon the very foundations of our democratic republic. This enemy will surely destroy our nation if it is not defeated. This enemy will undermine our economy and lead directly to the corruption and destruction of our society if it is not defeated. This enemy will destroy our homes and families with more certainty than any physical weapon of mass destruction if it is not defeated. This enemy is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and, tragically, is instigated by our own hand against ourselves. The scourge and plague of IGNORANCE is the lethal disease from which no self-governing people can possibly survive.
The Congress and I stand together today to begin anew the fight against IGNORANCE.
This fight is in honor and memory of those that perished three years ago on September 11, 2001. One may fairly ask, "How can IGNORANCE lead to the destruction of the freest society and greatest economy ever achieved by the mind of man"? As your President, I respectfully ask you to please listen closely to the following lessons of history and to the heritage of our nation, the United States of America.
The concepts and ideas underlying the notion of self-government based on our Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution
are very advanced intellectual concepts that were never attempted until July 4, 1776.
For thousands of years, man did not know how to understand, express and implement the meaning of individual freedom for every man, woman and child. Modern man's recorded history is 5,000 years old on a planet that is many millions years old. What types of governments or societies existed on earth by man prior to 1776? With virtually no exception, all nations were organized in one form or another under 'Ruler's Law" in which all power and decision-making rested in one central, authoritarian person, family or group. Ruler's Law still exists today in many forms including monarchy, autocracy, plutocracy, aristocracy, oligarchy, empires and military dictatorship. Ruler's Law possesses very definite characteristics—all power is concentrated in the Ruler and government power is exercised by compulsion, force or decree. The people are treated as subjects of the Ruler with no freedom or rights except those handed out by the Ruler. The people are generally structured into social and economic classes with the thrust of the government being from the Ruler down, not from the people up. Under Ruler's Law, freedom is not considered a solution to anything because problems are solved by issuing new edicts, taking more in taxes from the people or simply destroying any opposition to the Ruler. The land is treated as the realm of the Ruler. Finally, the transfer of power from one Ruler to another under Ruler's Law is often by violence resulting in such countries having a strong history of blood and terror in both ancient and modern times.
Through very enlightened education and overcoming centuries of ignorance and the tradition of Ruler's Law, the American colonists came to
realize that the King of England and the English Parliament would never voluntarily release their control over their American colonies. These early Americans were neither brash nor impatient.
They knew their classics and their history—Biblical, Greek, Roman, European and English. They were familiar with the writings and philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero, Francis Bacon, Richard Hooker, John Locke, David Hume, Sir William Blackstone, Sir Edward Coke and Adam Smith. None of the Founders could have brought a more profound or comprehensive training in history and political philosophy than the great Virginian, Thomas Jefferson. The depth and breadth of his education are astonishing. At the age of sixteen he had entered the college of William and Mary in Williamsburg as an advanced student. At the age of nineteen he had graduated and immediately commenced five years of intensive study with George Wythe, the first professor of law in America. He often studied fourteen or more hours per day and often knew more than his professors. He gained proficiency in five languages and studied the Greek and Roman classics as well as European, English and Biblical history.
In studying the origins of freedom and self-government before writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson made a significant
discovery. He saw that at one time, the Israelites, after coming out of Egypt between 1490 and 1290 B.C. practiced the earliest and most efficient form of representative government in an otherwise tyrannical
world.
The Israelites were led by Moses who organized the 600,000 Israelites into groups of a thousand families with one leader per group. Further in his studies, Jefferson also learned that the Anglo-Saxons, who came from around the Black Sea in the first century B.C. and spread across Northern Europe copied Moses early form of representative government. The Anglo-Saxons became an extremely well organized and efficient people in their day. Jefferson greatly admired these laws of representative government and called these laws 'Ancient Principles'.
For seventeen days, Jefferson composed and revised his rough draft of the Declaration of Independence.
The major portion of the Declaration is taken up with a long series of charges against King George III of England. Most of these abuses were nearly all copied from Jefferson's draft of the Virginia Constitution and his summarized view of the Rights of British America. To copy these charges into the Declaration would not have taken him more than a day or two at most. What was Jefferson doing the rest of the thirteen or fourteen days? It is clear that he spent this remaining time trying to structure into the first two paragraphs of the Declaration at least eight of the 'Ancient Principles' in which he had come to believe in strongly. His views and writings are well documented. We are able to identify the following fundamental principles as the foundational ideas of the Declaration of Independence and therefore the basic foundational structural philosophy of the United States of America and it's creation. It is essential that all Americans know and understand these eight great principles:
1. Sound government should be based on self-evident truths. These truths should be so obvious,
rational and morally sound that their authenticity is beyond reasonable dispute
2. The equal station of mankind here on earth is an obvious and inherent aspect of the
Law of nature and of nature's God.
3. This equality of man as a self-evident truth presupposes that man's Creator made human beings equal in
their rights, equal before the bar of justice and equal in the eye of the Creator.
4. Because these rights and equality have been bestowed by the Creator on each individual, they cannot be
violated and/or removed by a Ruler. They are therefore unalienable.
A person may have other rights in written law which are 'vested' by statute, but vested rights are not unalienable and can be changed or removed at any time by other human beings.
5. Among the most important of the unalienable rights are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, so long at this pursuit does not invade the inherent rights of others.
6. The most basic reason for a community or a nation to establish a system of Government is to assure its
people that the unalienable rights of the people shall be protected and preserved.
7. And because of this, it follows that no office or agency of government has any right to exist except with
the consent of the people or their representatives.
8. It also follows that if a government, either by malfeasance or neglect, fails to protect those rights or,
even worse, begins to violate those rights, then it is the duty of the people to regain control of their affairs and change or remove the government in order to serve the people better.
These eight 'ancient principles' that Jefferson crafted into the Declaration of Independence are as timeless and relevant today as when
they formed the nation's foundational structure in 1776.
These principles are not Republican or Democratic Party principles. These are American principles. They unleashed a pioneering, innovating and trailblazing experience of freedom, education, creativity and ingenuity that for over 200 years has been the marvel of the world in our advancing social progress based on the freedom of the individual.
At the same time, it is clear from numerous studies, tests and research in recent years that our nation is beginning to forget, has
forgotten, or even worse for our younger generation has never learned not only Jefferson's eight ancient principles, but the other key fundamentals of America's 'playbook'. We all understand that if a team
does not know the plays or the strategy of a game plan, then the team will fail and collapse in achieving its goals. The great philosopher, Will Durant, said, "Civilization is not inherited: it has to be learned and
earned by each generation anew. If the transmission should be interrupted by one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again."
The outstanding professor of history, Roger Wilkins, said, "I believe that somehow every student in every college of the United States
ought to be taught fundamental lessons that say democracy is precious, democracy is perishable, democracy requires active attention and that democracy requires hard work."
Our greatest American philosopher and statesman on the concept of freedom itself, Thomas Jefferson, said, "If a nation expects to remain
ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
As your President, it is my duty to not only defend the ideas and ideals of the United States, it is also my duty to promote their study
and understanding by our people. The learned professor of classics and history, Donald Kagan, stated it very clearly when he said, "the unity of our country and the defense of freedom require that its citizens
understand the ideas, history and traditions that created them."
Kagan said further, "The institutions and ideas that provide for freedom and improvement in material conditions cannot flourish without an understanding of how they came about." It is clear that when a free nation based on self-government and an informed citizenry forgets its history and its heritage it is in serious trouble by its own negligence and ignorance.
For this reason, the Congress and your President approved a new K-12 history program entitled 'Teaching American History' which is now in
effect throughout the country.
And for this reason, I want to ask each of you within earshot of my voice to ask yourself, what are the key fundamental, timeless and enduring ideas and ideals underlying our national philosophy? If someone from another country asked me as President what America's key philosophical foundations were, I would answer him or her by saying that I believe that there are four fundamental and vital characteristics of the United States of America.
I believe that the first and most important characteristic of our country is FREEDOM. The founders of our nation were not
royalty—they were all common people without class distinctions or nobility. This fact is extremely important. Through their intense study and hard work in educating themselves the colonists came to understand
that they were not free because the King of England declared them so or because they were nobleman of some sort.
Their intense and thorough studies taught them that they were free because they believed that a Creator endowed all men, including 'commoners', with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. With the strength of their philosophical belief that their freedom was a gift from God and not a privilege granted by a monarch, the founders committed to each other their lives, fortunes and sacred honor toward achieving ultimate freedom from England. Freedom in the United States has always been viewed as a gift from God because it affirms the idea, whether one is a believer and non-believer, that freedom for us all is unalienable and cannot be taken from us by another human being. In this sense, our nation is and always has been a God-loving nation. We have a very deep sense that if there were no God, then there could never be any lasting freedom for any of us. This heritage in America of God's gift to us of freedom is by far our nation's most fundamental and most important characteristic. If you are a non-believer of a God or a Creator, you are still a vitally important part of the American family and your beliefs and ideas are respected. And, equally, believers hope that you will understand and respect their ideas in the fundamental connection between God and freedom as a historical fact of the United States.
I believe that the second most important characteristic of our nation is UNITY. After our founders and forefathers gained their
freedom through a long, demanding and difficult war with England, they found that it was very difficult for so many diverse and different colonies and peoples to agree on how to govern themselves. There were so many
different nationalities, personalities, strengths, weaknesses, interests and characteristics among the colonies and colonists. I think that the best analogy in describing our young nation in these early days
is to think of it as a new family with thirteen new members, all born on the same day as full-grown adults.
Imagine trying to have these family members agree on anything much less on how to organize and govern themselves! Whatever differences they had, and there were many, the original thirteen colonies somehow knew, above all else and in spite of their great differences, that they must unite together for their own survival or surely they would perish separately. In looking back over the last 228 years, I believe that we can all see and understand that a unified American family is one of the strongest national families ever created and an enormously important national characteristic. The first words of our Constitution, We The People…help to express our national unity. One of our first national mottos adopted in 1776, E Pluribus Unum, is Latin for the phrase, 'From Many, One'. The recent focus on diversity for merely the sake of diversity without the corresponding understanding that diversity has always been and will always be only one characteristic of the American Family clearly tends to divide and separate us. This is completely uncharacteristic of our people. We are not and have never been the Diverse States of America. We are and always have been the United States of America. As Americans we have the right and the duty to express our individual beliefs. We also have the duty and responsibility to listen to our fellow Americans. If all sides of an issue are discussed, heard and understood by everyone, then the great common sense of the American people and the great American spirit of understanding and unity will then hold us together as a nation as it has done for 228 years.
I believe that the third most important characteristic of America is PROGRESS.
Our nation's incredible social, economic, transportation, communication, health and living advances since 1776 as a result of our FREEDOM and our UNITY are unequalled in history. Let me give you just a very few examples of this progress just since 1902, a little over 100 years ago:
- In 1902, the average life expectancy was 47 years.
- Only 14% of US homes had a bathtub. Most of us washed their hair with borax or egg yolks.
- Only 8% of homes had a telephone.
- There were only 8,000 cars and 144 miles of paved roads in the country. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
- Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California which was only the 21st most populous state.
- The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour, and the average worker earned between $200 and $400 per year.
The following inventions had yet to be discovered: the airplane, helicopter, insulin, penicillin, antibiotics, radio, television,
computers, copy machines, word processors, washing machines, windshield wipers, vacuum cleaners, air-conditioning, frozen packaged food, the microwave, pop-top cans, ATM machines, the compact disc, the rocket
engine, cyclotrons, or the space shuttle all of which were invented by Americans.
In understanding our nation's great progress, there are four key factors that determine the rate of economic progress that the people of
a country can achieve. These four factors are freedom, capital investment, energy and education. These are the vital ingredients to increased output of goods and services necessary for each generation to
do as much as possible in raising living standards through increased productivity. At any time, for any reason, a deficiency in any of these four factors will adversely impact our economic progress.
Freedom must be maintained through minimal intrusion of our lives by government.
Capital investment must be maintained through a modest and reasonable tax structure. Energy in efficient and creative levels must be maintained to provide the fuel for better health, better living conditions and increasing opportunity. Education must be maintained, increased and expanded in order that our economy and quality of life is sustainable.
In building a stronger America, we directly contribute to building a stronger and better world because of increased production of goods
and services to all countries with whom we trade. The road to economic progress for the United States and all countries is the creation of more goods, services and jobs for all, not in dividing existing wealth
that ceases to grow.
We must always strive to grow the economic pie so that more people can eat well, survive and prosper as opposed to all trying to eat merely the same size pie that never gets bigger. A pie that does not grow will surely result in the starvation of all.
I firmly believe that the fourth most important characteristic of the United States is RESPONSIBILITY.
In addition to our incredibly generous people who literally give away billions of dollars every year to important charitable causes, an astonishing 48% of our adult population contributes nearly five volunteer hours per week across the country in the fields of education, health, human services, youth development, religion, foreign aid and other similar areas of need. This level of voluntary gifts, contributions, donations and time far exceeds that of any country in the history of mankind. So while we are far from perfect and need to keep striving to do better in every way that we can, our free market economy based on free political institutions has proven itself to be enormously successful both in improving our own standard of living and then in providing extra wealth to help those that are less fortunate or unable to help themselves. Americans contribute enormous amounts of time and resources to try and help their fellow man both at home and throughout the world. This characteristic of RESPONSIBILITY in helping our fellow man comes from, as we all know, the best Biblical tradition of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.
In conclusion, I firmly believe that the four greatest fundamental characteristics of our country are FREEDOM, UNITY, PROGRESS and
RESPONSIBILITY.
I would add further that, while we can do more and must never be satisfied or complacent, we can take a moment to acknowledge that this ingenious system of self-government so ably designed by our Forefathers, has worked incredibly well to help millions upon millions of our citizens live and work with dignity, peace and happiness.
Yet in spite of our great achievements, it is common knowledge today that a large number of our schools, colleges and universities that
teach and train our young people routinely criticize the American system and way of life as being irredeemably flawed.
It is almost as if many of our nation's school teachers, administrators and professors hold in contempt the fact that our system of freedom and free-enterprise is working well and steadily moving forward for the benefit and improvement of as many of our citizens as possible. Certainly it is important that students and citizens understand and improve on our flaws and imperfections. Yet our students and citizens must also appreciate the degree to which the basic ideals of freedom, unity, progress and responsibility under our democratic republic have helped the most people in history find a better way of life. These unique American characteristics, when combined with our great love for our fellow man is in the best tradition of our Judaeo-Christian heritage in the United States of being our brother's keeper.
It is critical that our nation's history, heritage, advancement and goodness not only be constantly remembered and celebrated, it must be
studied and relearned anew by each generation.
If this is not accomplished, then our young generation today and future generations will not understand, appreciate and maintain our fundamental national characteristics that it received from the previous generation. I stated at the beginning that we were attacked on September 11, 2001 simply because of our beliefs, values and ideals as a nation and as Americans. As your President, I have joined with the Congress to begin our national rebirth in honor the 2,792 that perished on September 11th for no other reason than that they were Americans. In their honor, this September and every September hereafter is hereby proclaimed NATIONAL AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH for the purpose of relearning, expressing and promoting across our land the great ideas of freedom, unity, progress and responsibility, and our many other great national ideals, that are the structural foundations of the United States of America.
It has been said that, "IDEALS ARE LIKE STARS, YOU WILL NOT SUCCEED IN TOUCHING THEM WITH YOUR HANDS.
BUT LIKE THE SEAFARING MAN ON THE OCEAN'S WATERS, YOU CHOOSE THEM AS YOUR GUIDES, AND FOLLOWING THEM YOU WILL REACH YOUR DESTINY."
The destiny of the United States of America is still to come. In seeking this destiny, we must always be guided by our proven
ideals and our proven heritage. The heritage and history of America, while not perfect, is based on truth, love of our fellow man and a beautifully designed system of self-government.
As your President and as your Representatives in Congress, we want the American people to know that we choose America and its foundational ideals and ideas as our guides. We must all preserve and strengthen them in order that our children and grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren can preserve and strengthen the United States of America.
Thank you for allowing us into your homes tonight to honor and memorialize our fellow Americans that were lost on September 11, 2001 with
the establishment of this NATIONAL AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH.
And thank you for all that you do as Americans for yourselves, your family, neighbors, friends and your fellow man. May God always bless the United States of America.
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II.
_________________________
IN SUPPORT OF OUR PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE:
Attorney General's Defense of the Pledge Does Not Go Far Enough
September 16, 2005
The source of our unalienable rights cannot be removed by the stroke of a pen from a King or from a Congress
By Jack Kamrath
Co-Founder and President
American Heritage Education Foundation
In Support of Our Pledge of Allegiance (PDF Format)
Texas' Attorney General Greg Abbott wrote an excellent op/ed piece in your September 16, 2005, issue of the Houston Chronicle newspaper. Mr. Abbott discussed some of the cultural and legal history of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in the public square. However, I felt that he did not go far enough to explain the basic, structural nature between Freedom and God in America. I respectfully submit the following additional arguments in support of our Pledge of Allegiance and its including the phrase, "One Nation Under God."
The hullabaloo and confusion over reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools or exhibiting the Ten Commandments in 'the public square'
is an important reflection of our nation's increasing case of 'civics amnesia' over the last thirty or forty years. Our citizens and students, in large part, have not been taught the first and most fundamental
philosophical concept of America. This educational deficiency is a very well-documented fact (for example, see E Pluribus Unum at www.bradleyproject.org).
As a result, we Americans squabble among ourselves over the key founding philosophy of America - a philosophy that should unquestionably unite us.
This first and most fundamental idea of America is understanding the philosophical concept of Freedom.
The Founders of our nation were not royalty. They were all common people without class distinctions, royal titles, or nobility. This fact is extremely important. Americans then and now were and are all 'equally common' people. Through their intense study and hard work in educating themselves, the colonists came to understand that they were not free because King George declared them so or because Freedom was a birthright due to being a nobleman. Their intense studies taught them that they were free because they believed that a Creator endowed all men, including commoners, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With the strength of their philosophical belief that their Freedom was a timeless, permanent gift from God and not a privilege granted by a monarch, the founders gathered enormous internal strength to make a most radical decision to break away from their Motherland after concluding that the king would never voluntarily release his grip over his subjects. This decision was terribly controversial at the time because the entire populace in the colonies was not fully educated or cognizant of the philosophical arguments and reasonings related to the widening western civilization concept of Freedom and the rights of the individual.
From those calamitous days in the late 18th century, Freedom in America has always been viewed as a gift from God because it affirms the critical philosophical ideas that, whether one is a believer or non-believer, Freedom for us all is an eternal or essentially "spiritual" state of the human existence that cannot be removed by another human being. If one believes that one human has no right to impose or coerce another human, then it follows that the most important word in the Declaration of Independence is, arguably, 'unalienable.' That is to say that without the understanding of the idea that the gift of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are permanent and unchanging rights for all, man is at the mercy of other men and any man-made law that can be given or taken away at any time by the stroke of a pen.
All true, thoughtful Americans have a very deep sense that all Americans, regardless of their belief of non-belief in a God, accept the
philosophical Founding of America as, for the first time in history, a nation conceived on this new and unique idea of the equality of all men in the eye of a Creator or a spiritual force that looks upon all human
beings as totally equal.
Both believers and non-belivers of a God or Creator are historically respected as equally important members of the American family.
Both have also always been ready and willing to defend the philosophical concept of Freedom because they seem to know and understand the fundamental connection between God and Freedom as a historical fact of the
United States' founding, regardless of their personal beliefs.
The inclusion of God "in the public square" through our Pledge of Allegiance, a public display of the Ten Commandments, or some other
similar symbols should be a comforting and unifying tradition to all true Americans.
Those public displays are not forcing any form of religion on any other citizen. These displays are simple reminders that America was designed and conceived on the fundamental concept that every person's freedom was a natural, God-given right emanating from a higher power than mortal man.
If the outward words "Under God" were removed from the Pledge and other similar national symbols, words that the majority of Americans
understand and appreciate, you can be sure that America would more quickly slide backwards toward tyranny and oppression of men dominating other men. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "If a nation expects
to remain ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
America is not perfect. It took many more decades for our black brothers and sisters, for example, to achieve Freedom.
But Jefferson and Washington, for example, two of the Founders who owned slaves because they were born into a pre-existing system of slavery, designed and put in place a system based on unalienable rights that would remain a permanent philosophical fact of America and eventually result in permanent Freedom for all slaves and their descendants. Did this take longer than it should have? Certainly. But lest any of us forget, it took 1776 years from Jesus' birth (and thousands of years before that) for the common white man to light the first flicker of Freedom's flame for himself and to define it for all others in America's Declaration of Independence. Can Americans today preserve and strengthen this comforting and unifying idea? We can only hope so--and work to overcome the kind of ignorance in our schools and in our society that our Founders knew was capable of destroying what they had signed.
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III. _________________________
THE ALMOST-CHOSEN PEOPLE
Essay delivered at the first annual Erasmus Lectures sponsored by
First Things and the Institute on Religion and Public Life
by Paul Johnson, Author of works of history, philosophy, and religion
The Almost-Chosen People (Copyright 2006, First Things) (PDF Format)
Reprinted by permission of First Things (www.firstthings.com)
Published in First Things (June/July 2006). Copyright © 2006
When Abraham Lincoln called Americans "the almost chosen people," he used an apt phrase, as valid now as when he coined it a hundred and
forty years ago. It perfectly expresses the close but at the same time slightly uneasy relationship between the American republic and the religious spirit. That the Americans are exceptional in their attitude to
religion is obvious to all, and never more so than today. But visitors from old Europe are struck by the way in which high church attendance and an often blatant religiosity coexist with the passionate pursuit of
materialism. They are inclined to agree with Cotton Mather, who made the point as long ago as 1702 while documenting what he termed "Christ's great deeds in America" that "religion brought forth prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother....There is danger lest the enchantments of this world make them forget their errand into the wilderness."
The notion of a chosen but flawed people is directly related to America's historical origins, for the first settlers were undoubtedly
animated by a sense of divine mission. The work most widely read among them, after the Bible, was Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which vigorously expressed the dynamic myth that the English
were the Elect Nation. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most English people believed that their country had received Christianity directly from Christ's disciple Joseph of Arimathea, that the Emperor
Constantine was British (his mother Helena being daughter of the British King Coilus), and that he had Christianized the whole civilized world, as Foxe put it, "by the help of the British army."
The myth was most tenaciously held among the Protestant sectarians, especially the colonists. The explorer and navigator John Davis
stated, "There is no doubt but that we of England are this saved people, by the eternal and infallible presence of the Lord predestined to be sent unto these Gentiles in the sea, to those Isles and famous Kingdoms,
there to preach the peace of the Lord." The Virginia colony was to be the greatest experiment in post European Christianity. In a sermon to the Virginia Company in 1622, the poet John Donne, dean of St. Paul's,
declared, "Act over the Acts of the Apostles; be you a Light to the Gentiles, that sit in darkness. God taught us to make ships, not to transport ourselves, but to transport Him. You shall have made this island,
which is but the suburbs of the old world, a bridge, a gallery to the new; to join all to that world that shall never grow old, the kingdom of heaven." Governor Winthrop, sailing the Atlantic on the Arabella, wrote, "We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us."
It was inevitable that such elect nation builders should place their government in a religious frame. So, in a sense, did all Christian
nations. But where, in the old world, state authority drew its divine sanction from traditional sacral kingship, in America it took the form of conscious dedication by democratic assemblies expressed in formal
documents. Those sailing on the Mayflower in 1620 "for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith" stated their desire "solemnly and mutually in the presence of God" to "covenant and combine
ourselves together in a civill body politic."
No one who studies the key constitutional documents in American history can doubt for a moment the central and organic part played by
religion in the origins and development of American republican government. The 1639 "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut"—the first written constitution in the modern sense of the term drawn up by popular convention
and the first to embody the democratic idea—states in its prolegomena that the state owes its origin to "the wise disposition of the divine providence" and that "the word of God" requires "an orderly and decent
Government established according to God" to "maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel." Where specific provision was not laid down, magistrates were to administer justice according to the rule of
the word of God," and both governor and magistrates swore to act "according to the rule of God's word."
The same principle, that the Bible was to supply any defect or omission in the written law, was articulated in the first New England law
code, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties of 1641, which was based on "humanity, civility, and Christianity." It did not seem possible to these founders to distinguish between government on the one hand and religion
(by which they generally meant Protestant Christianity) on the other. As William Penn put it in his Preface to the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania (1682), "Government seems to me a part of religion itself, a
thing sacred in its institution and end...an emanation of the same divine power that is both author and object of pure religion."
The danger was that such quasi religious societies would become total societies on the medieval Christian model, tolerating no dissent
from established creeds. But they did not do so for two reasons. In the first place, even the churches were run by laypeople, not by the clergy. So they stressed morals and behavior rather than theology and
doctrine.
Since religious establishments were popular rather than hieratic, a distinctive American religious tradition began to emerge. There was
never any sense of division in law between laity and clergy, between those with spiritual privileges and those without—no jealous confrontation between a secular and an ecclesiastical world. America was born
Protestant and did not have to become so through revolt and struggle. It was not built on the remains of a Catholic Church or an establishment; it had no clericalism or anticlericalism. In all these respects it
differed profoundly from the old world, which had been shaped by Augustinian principles and violent reaction to them. The word secular never had the same significance in America as in Europe because the word
clerical had never conveyed an image of intolerance and privilege. America had a traditionless tradition, making a fresh start with a set of Protestant assumptions, taken for granted, self-evident, as the basis for
a common national creed
In any case, in a frontier society it was impossible to preserve sectarian discipline and uniformity: dissenters simply moved on. Roger
Williams broke away from strict New England Calvinism to found Providence, Rhode Island, which he called "a shelter for persons distressed for conscience." His 1644 constitution defined "the form of government
established in Providence Plantations as democratical, that is to say a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part, of the free inhabitants."
This was the first commonwealth in modern history to make religious freedom, as opposed to an element of toleration, the principle of its
existence and a reason for separating church and state. As its 1663 charter puts it, "No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called in
question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and who do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all...may from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully
have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments."
It is important to grasp that American society embraced the principles of voluntarism and tolerance in faith in a spirit not of
secularism but of piety. Almost unconsciously the consensus grew that voluntary adherence to one faith, and tolerance of all others, was the foundation of true religion. In this respect English and American society
bifurcated as early as the 1650s. While England was debating whether to have a Presbyterian or a Congregationalist settlement, and then in practice getting an Anglican one, the former governor of Massachusetts, Sir
Henry Vane, was expounding the principles of civil and religious liberty, arguing that they were inseparable and that freedom of religious belief was essential to the maintenance of a Christian society: "By virtue
then of this supreme law, sealed and confirmed in the blood of Christ unto all men...all magistrates are to fear and forebear intermeddling with giving rule or imposing in those matters." This document, and the
sentiments it articulated, were more instrumental in determining the spirit of the American Constitution in religious matters than were the writings of the Enlightenment.
It is probably true that the American Revolution was in essence the political and military expression of a religious movement. Certainly
those who inspired it and carried it through believed they were doing God's will. Its emotional dynamic was the Great Awakening, which began in the 1730s. The man who first preached it, Jonathan Edwards, believed
strongly that there was no real difference between a political and a religious emotion, both of which were God directed. The right kind of politics were, to his way of thinking, no more than realized eschatology. He
said he saw no reason why God should not "establish a constitution" whereby human creatures should cooperate with him and all might know that the hour was coming when God "shall take the kingdom"; he looked for "the
dawn of that glorious day."
Edwards saw religion as the essential unifying force in American society, and that force was personified in his evangelical successor
George Whitefield. Until this time America was a series of very different states with little contact with each other, often with stronger links to Europe than to their neighbors. Religious evangelism was the first
continental phenomenon, transcending differences between the colonies, dissolving state boundaries, and introducing truly national figures. Whitefield was the first American celebrity, as well known in New Hampshire
as in Georgia. His form of religious ecumenicalism preceded and shaped political unity. It popularized the real ethic of the American Revolution, which was not so much political as social and religious—the beliefs
and standards and attitudes that the great majority of the American people had in common. It was a Christian and to a great extent a Protestant ethic, infinitely more important than the purely dogmatic variations of
the sects.
It is worth remembering that the key state in the formation of the union—Pennsylvania—was the most diverse in religion. It was a
Presbyterian stronghold, the headquarters of the Baptists, a state in which Anglicanism was strong and Catholicism flourished, home to a variety of Mennonites, Moravians, and German pietists, as well as the founding
Quakers. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were thus framed in an appropriate setting (it was also the center of America's economic communications). The institution of religious freedom and of a
state that did not distinguish between faiths was the work not so much of millenarian sects revolting against magisterial churchmen as of the denominational leaders and statesmen themselves, who saw that pluralism
was the only form consonant with the ideals and necessities of the country.
Even those most strongly influenced by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment acknowledged the centrality of the religious spirit in
giving birth to America. As John Adams put it in 1818, "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. [It] was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties
and obligations." He saw religion, indeed, as the foundation of the American civic spirit: "One great advantage of the Christian religion is that it brings the great principle of the law of nature and nations, love
your neighbour as yourself, and do to others as you would that others do to you, to the knowledge, belief and veneration of the whole people. Children, servants, women and men are all professors in the science of
public as well as private morality....The duties and rights of the man and the citizen are thus taught from early infancy."
The United States of America was not, therefore, a secular state; it might more accurately be described as a moral and ethical society
without a state religion. Clearly, those who created it saw it as an entity, to use Lincoln's later phrase, "under God." The Declaration of Independence in its first paragraph invokes "the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God" as the entitlement of the American people to choose separation, and it insists that men have the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" because they are so "endowed by their Creator."
The authors appeal, in their conclusion, to "the Supreme judge of the world" and express their confidence in "the Protection of Divine Providence."
Equally, those who were called to govern the new state saw it as a political society within a religious framework. Washington began his
first inaugural address with a prayer to "that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations," asking him to bless a government consecrated "to the liberties and happiness of
the people." He added that in "tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good" he was certain he was expressing the sentiments of Congress as well as his own, for "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."
When finally relinquishing office in 1796, Washington again expressed the wish that "Heaven may continue to you the choicest tokens of
its beneficence." In a memorable passage he pointed out that "religion and morality are indispensable supports" of "political prosperity" and that the "mere politician" ought to "respect and cherish them." Nor, he
added, was a purely secular morality enough in itself: "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." Virtue and morality were the "necessary
spring of popular government" and no one who supported it could "look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundations of the fabric." In Washington's eyes, at least, America was in no sense a secular state.
What is still more remarkable is that during the nineteenth century the cold, secularizing wind that progressively denuded government in
Europe of its religious foliage left America virtually untouched. The Civil War, like the Revolution, was the political and military expression of a religious event, the product of the second Great Awakening, just
as the Revolution was the product of the first. Lincoln, like Washington, saw the Deity as the final arbiter of public policy, but in addition be articulated what I would call the most characteristic element in
American political philosophy—the belief that the providential plan and the workings of democracy are organically linked.
As he made clear in his first inaugural address, the dispute between North and South, and its resolution, would illustrate the way in
which the democratic process was divinely inspired: "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?...If the Almighty Ruler of
Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people." He
added that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land" could still solve "our present difficulty."
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, he appealed both to world opinion and God for approval; or, as the text has
it, "I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favour of Almighty God." Lincoln confided to his cabinet that the timing was determined by what he considered to be divine intervention in the
Battle of Antietam. The Navy Secretary Gideon Welles noted in his diary, "He remarked that he had made a vow—a covenant—that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle he would consider it an indication of
the Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of the slaves. He was satisfied it was right—and confirmed and strengthened in his action by the vow and its results."
Probably no man ever reflected more deeply on the relationship between religion and politics than Lincoln, the archetypal American
statesman. To clarify his own thought, he wrote on a slip of paper, "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God
cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present Civil War it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human
instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest and wills that it should not end yet. By
his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, fie could give the final victory to
either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
These reflections he recast into a famous passage in his second inaugural address. It is impossible to imagine Lincoln's European
contemporaries Napoleon III, Bismarck, Gambetta, Thiers, Garibaldi, Cavour, Marx, or Disraeli thinking in these terms. Gladstone, it is true, might have done so, but he would not have ventured to publicize his
thinking in a critical address—or even to his cabinet colleagues. Lincoln did so in the certainty that most of his countrymen and women could and did think along similar lines.
It is because religion was the determining factor in the two decisive events of American history, the Revolution and the Civil War, that
Americans have continued to accord it a special place in their political process, both at the popular and at the highest level. At the time of the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines,
President McKinley said he was "not ashamed" to admit to a gathering of his fellow Methodists that "I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it
came to me this way....There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Philippinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as
our fellow men for whom Christ also died."
No European imperialist, whether a Joseph Chamberlain or a Jules Ferry or a King Leopold, would have dared to justify himself in such a
manner, rightly fearing accusations of humbug. But McKinley was patently sincere; no American thought otherwise. No wonder, then, that President Wilson, the first American head of state to operate on the European
scene, seemed so rich and strange a figure to European politicians. Keynes, observing him at the Versailles Peace Conference, did not see him as a politician at all: "The president was like a Nonconformist minister,
perhaps a Presbyterian." He "thundered commandments from the White House," and when he came to Europe "he could have preached a sermon on any of them or have addressed a stately prayer to the Almighty for their
fulfillment, but he could not frame their concrete application to the actual state of Europe."
I believe Keynes's reaction was typical of Europeans. Even today, if European observers were asked to single out what they believe to be
the single most pervasive characteristic of American public men in this century, I think they would point to the quasi-religious character of their rhetoric, whether that of a puritan like Coolidge or a Catholic
like Kennedy, men of strong faith like Hoover and Reagan or cynics like Roosevelt and Johnson.
For the truth is, the political culture of the United States is strongly religious, and the reason why it is religious, unlike Europe's,
is that the political process and the religious establishment have never been perceived to be in conflict. The harmony of religion and liberty in the United States was the first thing that struck Tocqueville. "In
France," he wrote in Democracy in America (1835), "1 had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."
He held that religion was "the foremost of the political institutions" of America, since republican democracy, with its minimal use of
authority and the power of government, could not survive with out religious sanctions, voluntarily accepted. The point was reiterated more than a century later by President Eisenhower, probably as typical of mid
twentieth century American religious attitudes as Lincoln was of those prevailing in the mid nineteenth century. Eisenhower said in 1954 that "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt
religious faith." He added—and this is still more characteristic—"and I don't care what it is."
Eisenhower's indifference to credal distinctions reflected faithfully the Erasmian nature of religious America. It was and is concerned
with moral conduct rather than dogma; American religious groups were judged not by their theology but by the behavior of their adherents. Thus the very diversity of the sects constituted the national religious
strength, since all operated within a broad common code of morals, and their competition for souls mirrored the competition of firms for business in the market economy. In both cases the role of the state was to
hold the ring and make that competition fair. The First Amendment no more made America a secular state than its antitrust legislation made it a socialist state. By the twentieth century, the American republic had
come to rest on a tripod of forces: religion, democracy, and capitalism. All were mutually supportive; each would fall without the others. Indeed, any two would fall without the third. When Coolidge said that "the
business of America is business," he might equally well have added "and the religion of America is religion." That was exactly what Eisenhower meant.
The positive merits of American religious pluralism explain why the growth of the state education system never became, as in Europe, a
source of conflict. It was nonsectarian without being nonreligious, and its moving spirit, Horace Mann, contended that religious instruction should be taken "to the extremest verge to which it can be carried without
invading those rights of conscience which are established by the laws of God, and guaranteed by the constitution of the state." In the early stages, the public schools taught a kind of generalized Protestantism as a
form of "character-building." Later, as the makeup of American society broadened to include millions of Catholics and Jews, the specifically religious element was further diluted until it disappeared altogether and
was succeeded by what might be called the Spirituality of the Republic, itself based upon the Protestant ethical and moral consensus. So the American Way of Life came to be adopted as the official philosophy of
American state education.
Jews and Catholics were able to accept the public school system and the broader national ethic it reflected because the concept of
libertarian plurality in religion coincided exactly with their interests. In the 1850s the Irish, nearly all of them Catholics, constituted 35.2 percent of all immigrants, and altogether over 3.5 million of them
went to America to escape Protestant government and Protestant landlordism. In 1884, for the first time in history, a leading Catholic prelate was able to endorse a state that did not accord a special status to his
church: "There is no conflict between the Catholic Church and America," said Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, "and when I assert, as I now solemnly do, that the principles of the church are in thorough harmony
with the interests of the republic, I know in the depths of my soul that I speak the truth."
For immigrant Jews, the motive of religious freedom was still stronger. In the years 1881 to 1914 over two million of them came to the
United States, constituting ten percent of all immigrants in the early years of the twentieth century. The overwhelming majority of them came from Russia, Rumania, and Galicia, and their primary motive was to escape
systematic discrimination and active persecution on religious grounds. What attracted them to America, above all, was not its secularity but its religiosity; America was not just neutral regarding religions; it was
benevolently neutral. For Catholics and Jews alike, America had a unique appeal: their religious practices were not merely tolerated they were respected.
Had America's open-door policy been maintained in the 1930s and 1940s, there is little doubt that most of the victims of the Holocaust
would have found refuge there, just as in the past two decades millions of persecuted Catholics from Indochina and Cuba have equated religious freedom with American citizenship. In the 1980s, as in the days of the
Mayflower, the United States is the first and obvious choice of anyone anywhere in the world dislocated in the cause of religious freedom. Such a Country cannot accurately be described as a secular state; indeed, it
is America's continuing role as the primary refuge of the persecuted that underlines its religious exceptionalism.
Equally important is the way in which the religious impulse maintains its importance in the dynamics of American public life. This has
its negative as well as its positive aspects, however; for if religion is a unifying force by underpinning republicanism and democracy, it can also be a divisive one. Indeed, it is often both at the same time. The
first Great Awakening inspired the Revolution and so created America. But it also divided colonial society: a quarter of the nation remained neutral; a quarter was loyalist—forty thousand of them migrated to Canada.
The second Great Awakening abolished slavery and launched and won the Civil War, but in the process it tested the Union almost to destruction and left wounds that did not heal for a century. The third Great
Awakening (1875 1914) produced that great, unsuccessful, and tragic experiment in social engineering Prohibition, which divided the nation in half, set town against country, Catholic against Protestant, native
against immigrant, and Middle America against the rest. \
What we are seeing now is a fourth Great Awakening, and it too is proving divisive in some ways. In no period has American exceptionalism
been more marked, have American religious patterns diverged more sharply from those of the West as a whole, than in the twentieth century. In Europe, nearly all religions were in numerical decline by 1914, a trend
never since reversed. In Britain, for instance, church attendance, as a percentage of the population, peaked in the 1880s (as did institutional atheism). In the United States, church affiliation was 43 percent of
the population in 1910 and in 1920; but by 1940 it was 49 percent, rising to 55 percent in 1950 and 69 percent in 1960, then falling to 62.4 percent a decade later.
The postwar afflatus, followed by a relative decline that has continued in the mainline churches, has concealed a steady and cumulatively
formidable growth in religious conservatism, most marked in the Protestant churches but by no means confined to them. The fourth Great Awakening has gathered speed slowly but now appears to be maturing. Like its
predecessors, it is having political consequences, the first being the phenomenon of Reaganism and the revulsion from the liberal collectivism of the 1960s and 1970s. What seems to have happened is that as the
mainline churches began to decline, they sought the mutual protection of ecumenicalism through the National and World Council of Churches and the common political platform of ever more extreme forms of liberalism.
This move provoked an angry conservative response from their disenfranchised rank and-file that took the form of a new and nonelitist variety of ecumenicalism, a de facto unity that stretches across the sects and
even into Catholicism.
This popular ecumenicalism is based upon a common reassertion of traditional moral values and of belief in the salient articles of
Christianity not as symbols but as plain historical facts. What is unusual about this fourth Awakening is that for the first time it embraces Catholics. Indeed, it appeals to many nonpracticing Christians, and even
non Christians who feel that the Judeo Christian system of ethics and morals that underlies American republican democracy is in peril and in need of reestablishment. The phenomenon has no counterpart in Europe. It
reminds us that religion and politics are organically linked in America, movements in one echoing and reinforcing movements in the other. just as the strength of religion in America sustains and nurtures democracy,
so the vigorous spirit of American democracy continually reinforces popular religion. Thus, while America remains the world's most powerful and enthusiastic champion of democracy, it is likely to preserve its
exceptional role as the citadel of voluntary religion.
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IV. _________________________
HISTORIC QUOTES ON AMERICAN FREEDOM AND CIVIC EDUCATION
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas
Jefferson
"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." --Thomas Jefferson
"I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
--Thomas Jefferson, inscribed on Jefferson Memorial
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable
rights.
Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. We solemnly publish and declare that these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." --Declaration of Independence, inscribed on Jefferson Memorial
"I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God
governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings that
'except the Lord build they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of
Babel." --Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention Address on Prayer
"The Foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people." --John Adams
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal....
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." --Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
"Under this Constitution the boundaries of freedom have been enlarged, the foundations of order and peace have been strengthened, and the
growth of our people in all the better elements of national life has indicated the wisdom of the founders and given a new hope to their descendants." --James Garfield
"A representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated, and the exercise of the legislative, executive,
and judiciary authorities is vested in selected persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will, in my opinion, be most likely to be happy, regular, and durable." --Alexander Hamilton
"As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it, in reason,
morality, and the natural fitness of things." --John Adams
"A union depending not upon the constraint of force, but upon the loving devotion of a free people; and that all things may be so ordered
and settled upon the best and surest foundations that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations." --Rutherford B. Hayes
"The great essential to our happiness and prosperity is that we adhere to the principles upon which the Government was established and
insist upon their faithful observance." --William McKinley
"The philosophy of the schoolhouse in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next." --Abraham Lincoln
"I should like to think that America should stand as a land of opportunity and enthusiasm and riches. By riches I mean not only raw
materials, armies, navies, railroads, ships, and cities, but a whole people full of good will toward the world, loyal to its own flag and beautiful continent, ready to work to educate its whole people."
--Mrs. J. Borden Harriman
"Knowing as we do that the foundation of national greatness can be laid only in the industry, the integrity and the spiritual elevation
of the people, are we equally sure that schools are forming the character of the rising generation upon the everlasting principles of duty and humanity?
Are children so educated that when they grow up they will make better leaders or only grander savages? However loftily the intellect of man may have been gifted, however skillfully it may have been trained, if it be not guided by a sense of justice, a love of mankind and a devotion to duty, its possessor is only a more dangerous barbarian." --Horace Mann
"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." --Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863
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V. _________________________
CURRENT QUOTES ON AMERICAN FREEDOM AND CIVIC EDUCATION
"'In no country,' wrote Noah Webster, 'is education so general--in no country, have the body of the people such knowledge of the rights
of men and the principles of government.
This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will guard our constitutions.' Today, America's children are barely acquainted with their country, or the principles on which it was founded." Ben Boychuk, "Without Understanding Civics, Freedom Dies," Investor's Business Daily,
November 24, 1999.
"The recently released survey of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (known as the nation's report card), shows nearly 60
percent of high-school seniors lack even a basic knowledge of U. S. history." --Don Feder, Conservative Chronicle, May 27, 2002.
"I spend a lot of time with teen-agers, and frequently conduct focus groups to learn about their attitudes. ...I have not yet found
a single student who could tell me the years when the Civil War, World War I, and World War II were fought. Not one could name all the Presidents since World War II.
Only one could even place the correct decade in which Dwight Eisenhower was President. Of the teen-agers with whom I work, only two could approximately identify Thomas Jefferson. Only a few could articulate in any way at all why life in a free country is different from life in a non-free country. In a state of such astonishing ignorance, young Americans may well not be prepared for even the most basic national responsibility--understanding what the society is about and why it must be preserved." --Benjamin J. Stein in Political Opinion, cited in Readers' Digest, 1987.
"So many of the blessings and advantages we have, so many of the reasons why our civilization, our culture, has flourished aren't
understood; they're not appreciated. And if you don't have any appreciation of what people went through to get, to achieve, to build what you are benefiting from, then these things don't mean very much to
you. You just think, well, that's the way it is.
That's our birthright. That just happened. But it didn't just happen.... And at what price? What grief? What disappointment? What suffering went on? I mean this. I think that to be ignorant or indifferent to history isn't just to be uneducated or stupid. It's to be rude, ungrateful. And ingratitude is an ugly failing in human beings." --David McCullough cited in George Archibald, "'Amnesia' to History Is Called Threat to Liberty," Washington Times, May 21, 2003.
"A new study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) finds that the disease afflicting education reaches the nation's most
elite colleges and universities.
...The danger is that they will be hobbled citizens unable to understand, defend or promote the constitutional principles and framework that make freedom a possibility in the first place." --Matthew Robinson, "No Knowledge, No Freedom," American Scene, Human Events, March 30, 2000.
"[The Albert Shanker Institute] report contends students get a distorted account that their country is irredeemably flawed.... The
new report says recent studies of text books confirm a 'strong negative bias' about the story of America." --Associated Press, FOX News, "Public Schools Fail to Teach History, Study Charges," September 9, 2003,www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,96865,00.html
"An ignorance of the past also has political implications.
Politicians increasingly rely on an uninformed public to slip through unconstitutional legislation limiting our freedoms. If only for self-preservation we would be wise to reconsider the past." --Cal Thomas, "Americans Suffering From Bout of Cultural Amnesia," June 3, 2004.
"...If relentless cries for relevance and diversity
should ever lead to dismantling the program of common studies of Western civilization, then all students--including minority students--will be left ill-prepared for the role we all face as participants in a
democratic society. Our system of government under law--itself a triumph of the Western tradition--will inevitably suffer." --Jose A. Cabranes, "Our Common Ground," Wall Street Journal, June 9, 1995.
"The U. S. escaped the divisiveness of a multiethnic society by a brilliant solution: the creation of a brand-new national
identity. The point of America was not to preserve old cultures but to forge a new, American culture." --Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "The Cult of Ethnicity, Good and Bad."
"In recent years, educators have lost the conviction that there are certain things citizens should know.
Now, they are having second thoughts. There are widespread cries of alarm that America--a nation founded by men steeped in philosophy and history--has evolved into a land of cultural illiterates. Waves of best-selling books and scholarly reports are making the case that even as Americans go to school more, they come away knowing less." --Alvin P. Sanoff et al. "What Americans Should Know," U. S. News & World Report, September 28, 1987.
"People need as much information as possible to make good decisions, Jefferson knew, especially when it came to government. 'Every
government degenerates when trusted to the rules of the people alone.
The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositors,' he wrote. 'And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.' Jefferson understood that firsthand knowledge is the most accurate, and he strove to gather his own information." --Michael Mink, "Founding Father's Right Touch," Investor's Business Daily, July 7, 2003
"Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for
one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again." --Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
"It is scarcely possible to reduce an enlightened people to civil or ecclesiastical tyranny.... Deprive them of knowledge, and they
sink almost insensibly in vassalage. Ignorance cramps the powers of the mind, at the same time that it blinds them to their natural rights." --Noah Webster
"I believe that somehow every student in every college of the United States ought to be taught fundamental lessons that say democracy is
precious, democracy is perishable, democracy requires active attention and that democracy requires hard work." --Roger Wilkins, Professor of History and American Culture, George Mason University
"Freedom and responsibility are equally yoked.
Only when they are in tandem can we cultivate the vast field of opportunity and have an orderly society. Freedom requires about as much courage to live with, as it does to get." --Clarence Thomas, "It's a Dirty Little Secret: Freedom Necessarily Entails Responsibility," Americans for an Informed Public, July 1996.
"I
have in mind the Founding Fathers' idea of an informed citizenry. This is the basic principle that underlies our national system of education in the first place--that people in a democracy can be entrusted to decide all important matters for themselves because they can deliberate and communicate with one another." --E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know
"History has taught us that freedom cannot long survive unless it is based on moral foundations.
The American founding bears ample witness to this fact. America has become the most powerful nation in history, yet she uses her power not for territorial expansion but to perpetuate freedom and justice throughout the world." --Margaret Thatcher, "The Moral Foundations of Society,' The
Bottom Line Quarterly, Bellevue University, Spring 1995.
"It is even more important to pass stories of American courage and character to the next generation.
To capture their imaginations. To raise a monument in their hearts. It is the way our democracy renews its promise, by celebrating American heroes and American values, without hesitation and without apology. Let us resolve to teach America's story to America's children." --Austin Bay, "A Creaking Pulley and An Honored Flag," Houston Chronicle, June 13, 1999.
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