Why is our government so broken and dysfunctional? Why is America in decline domestically and internationally? How did we go from being the freest, strongest, and most prosperous nation the world has ever seen to where we are now. We need to look to our past to resolve our problems of today. The following will help provide some perspective: • John Adams - Signer of the Declaration of Independence and Second President: [W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with 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. - [ I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue. • General of the Army George Washington - General Order One issued on July 9, 1776 to the Continental Army: [E]very officer and man will endeavor so as to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country. - General Order One issued on May 2, 1778: To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian. • George Washington - Inaugural speech April 30, 1789; The propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained. • Washington’s farewell address to the nation, September 19, 1796. - 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. • And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined educated minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National Morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. • President Abraham Lincoln’s Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, April 30, 1863; It is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our heart, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of reddening and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! • George Mason - Father of the Bill of Rights: As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities. (Constitutional Convention 1787) In America today the quotes above from our founders are not politically correct but they are the tough love we need to hear. So where do we go from here? Jim J.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:07:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015