For instance, at WorldNetDaily the Benham Brothers recently wrote:
America was built upon a firm foundation, too; yet over the years it has been compromised.
Our first president said, “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
Now that is a firm foundation.The problem is he didn't say it. Rational Rant just did an excellent five part series on the history of that false quotation: Parts one, two, three, four and five.
8 comments:
But what GWash DID say was
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 labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness...
Substitute that for the bum quote and it the essay still works. Even works better, because the essay's partly about the "patriots" who stripped religion from public life.
And as often happens, this sort of nitpicking obscures the actual point of their article, which is non-political.
I'm so tired of this losing the forest for the trees.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/america-lets-rebuild-this-great-wall/#hfeGClrkLzzTjzVy.99
Psalm 11:3 states, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
What we can do is rebuild them! But we can’t start rebuilding until we turn back to God in humble repentance.
“Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).
We must realize though that political change is not required for repentance. Repentance is a matter of each individual acknowledging that he or she has turned from wholeheartedly serving the Lord and then turning back to God in individual obedience.
For too long, we’ve been waiting for our politicians to bring about political change for the nation. We can’t wait for that. We, the grassroots, must walk in repentance and obedience ourselves. Then we will be the true change that our nation so desperately needs.
In our marriages, our homes, our workplaces and our communities, we must return to the Lord with our hearts and our voices to ensure that this great “wall” called America doesn’t collapse on our watch. Those actions are going to require courage, though, because we’ll be living differently. But with that courage, we can instill in the next generation the value of a good foundation so that they too can rest secure.
We’re in for re-building this wall – starting with a foundation of repentance – and we hope you are, too!
Benham Brothers – “Our lesson: When foundations are compromised, things collapse.”
This is just too funny. First, If they’d read their Bibles prior to building, this would not have come as a surprise (or even Hendrix’ Castles Made of Sand for that matter).
Secondly, if they’d applied for the proper permits, had a proper architectural design for a commercial development, and submitted to inspection and sign-off they could also have avoided disaster (they’re lucky nobody got killed).
They failed in the realm of both kingdoms. I hope their building doesn’t collapse.
And, the difference between “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible,” and “Religion and morality are indispensable supports,” is that the first prescribes Christianity and the Bible as core necessities of governance and the second does not. At best, the second envisions religion in a supporting role in encouraging moral governance and makes no specific sectarian claims as to which religion. Nor does it claim religion is the only route to moral and virtuous citizenship or governance. The goal is morality and virtue to sustain the republic.
Washington’s actual words open a much larger door (and for grins and for the record I should point out that neither Washington nor any other founders/framers had designs on governing the world – at least not that I know of).
The primary blueprint for our national government resulting from the founding and framing, and I’m referring directly to the Constitution, which makes no divine appeals, prevents direct intrusion into governance of ecclesiastical and divine authority, and requires no religious testing and makes no preference to the religion of government officials. And, for these reasons, it drew early fire from clerics and divines as an atheistic document. The legacy of the rebellion and founding of this nation is that ecclesiastical authority was decoupled from governance of the nation and religion was left to the people where it should be. This was a thorough break with the old European order with its centuries of religious-political strife and clearly reflects the radical end of the spectrum of Enlightenment ideas and values.
The primary blueprint for our national government resulting from the founding and framing, and I’m referring directly to the Constitution, which makes no divine appeals, prevents direct intrusion into governance of ecclesiastical and divine authority, and requires no religious testing and makes no preference to the religion of government officials. And, for these reasons, it drew early fire from clerics and divines as an atheistic document. The legacy of the rebellion and founding of this nation is that ecclesiastical authority was decoupled from governance of the nation and religion was left to the people where it should be. This was a thorough break with the old European order with its centuries of religious-political strife and clearly reflects the radical end of the spectrum of Enlightenment ideas and values.
Religion was left to the states. God is in all 50 state constitutions.
There was an America before the Constitution; we are more than the sum of our federal laws and judges.
Although the scary part is that we are becoming less, that where the Constitution was our lowest common denominator, it's now seen as an inconvenient and unworkable ideal.
That's the true radicalism.
TVD - ”There was an America before the Constitution; we are more than the sum of our federal laws and judges.”
You fight the anti-federalist fight tenaciously.
There was barely an “America” as we know it after the revolution. There was barely an “America” under the failing Articles of Confederation. Geologically speaking there was a fairly stable continental platform and geographically and politically speaking there were the Americas to be concurred and subdued by someone (sans the original inhabitants).
There also were at the time, without a doubt, thirteen disparate* colonies on the eastern coast of the North American continent that united enough to win a rebellion against an imperial power and went on to refer to themselves as states – essentially, thirteen sovereign nations – as the union slowly faded under bankruptcy and division. But it wasn’t until after the adoption of the national constitution that the idea of nationhood, not just the idea of thirteen separate confederated sovereign states, really started to catch on. The idea of America – the United States as a unified and sovereign political entity – remained a vision of a few until there was a framework for a strong enough national government and a glue to make it stick. Until the Constitution there was little chance of a United America strong enough to function as a sovereign entity capable of competing with Europe, in its own right, or of providing a strong and viable defense against encroachment by those pesky foreign empires**. Or, for that matter, there was no entity to keep the states from devouring one another in civil and/or religious war.
We are the sum of our collective national experience gained under the laws and governance of the national and state constitutions, including our federal judges and laws. We simply are what we are and not what we were in 1765, 1776, 1789 or any other foreign land of history. I guess we’ll have to leave it to the imagination as to how the pre-national constitution “America” would have fared as separate competing sovereign nations – God or no God in their constitutions.
Continued below.
[Since we can’t know the future, we can speculate that maybe someday the dreams of the modern anti-federalist secessionists and nullifiers will come true – maybe the second time’s a charm – and we’ll find out what 50 or so sovereign monarchies and/or republics and various confederations can actually do. (I’m guessing Russia and/or China will be the biggest winner(s) – with Putin obviously taking Alaska just for the fun of it, although the Canadian/British/French alliance could get a few of the northern, formerly sovereign states, the Dutch could make a play for New York, while Spain and Mexico, possibly with French duplicity, could take back much of the southwest, and I assume that Hawaii will just do what’s in its best interests way out there in the ocean. If the southern states could have just kept cotton as king and prevented anything smacking of progressivism from occurring they might have inoculated themselves somewhat from the threat of takeover - perhaps surviving as a block known as the tribal lands. India could be a surprise contender. Of course, our modern Patriot Militias would put up a spirited resistance for some time – possibly even after the shooting started.) At least Jonathan Swift gave us a proposition for sustenance to carry us through the dark times if they come.]
*They were disparate in origin, political theory and practice, economic theory and practice, religious theory and practice, and temperament/loyalties, to name a few ways that they clashed. Most had designs on the western territories.
**At the very least strong enough to forge a way to actually field a unified and, most importantly, a paid army and navy.
As a side note, I got to see Joseph Ellis speak the other night on his new book, which I’m about ½ way through, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789. The Quartet emphasizes and illustrates the arguments, without the satirical embellishment, that I allude to and focuses on Washington, Madison, Jay and Hamilton (with shout outs to R. Morris, G. Morris and Jefferson) as the main protagonists leading to the possibility of a viable national political operating under a national constitution. Compelling story and good writing.
Just a quick thought, if the idea is just to get more God in government then how come the advocates always rail against the founders as Deists? That would count.
And, since we can’t know the future, maybe someday the dreams of a God-administered government (featuring the True God, of course) will come to fruition and we can all unite behind a fearless strongman to bring it together, like a Charlemagne or a Cromwell or someone more modern like Spain’s General Francisco Franco who was a strong adherent of tradition and order and was very pleasing to the Catholic Bishops and Popes in his quant quasi-fascist, totalitarian, military-dictator kind of way (OK, so the religion was a little one sided with all of these guys but at least they brought more religion, and let’s face it, more Christianity (no Deism), to the public sphere).
I guess there’s always the Pinochet model…he was a Roman Catholic after all, but I’m not sure how much religion he brought back to the public sphere. Regardless, his leadership provides a strong conservative model, and a modern successor would probably be, in a quant quasi-fascist, totalitarian, military-dictator kind of way, amenable to the religious right in a law and order kind of way, especially if there’s a David Barton – famous leading historian building a good backstory – in the Junta.
Although, I just can’t imagine that all of “we the people” would voluntarily give it up for a strict Christian hegemonic or theocratic republic but, then again……
In the meantime though, I guess we’ll have to keep slogging our way forward via our republican democratic and constitutional system inherited from our fore fathers. A system holding together an ideologically egalitarian system with its free and diverse citizens, even though it means no official religious hegemony and no real dictator.
The framework we’ve inherited gives us a republic with democratic representation and guarantees individual rights including the right of conscience and expression from which religious freedom springs. As history shows, incorporating too much God and Christianity into government is a recipe for totalitarian repression and civil discord ameliorated or remedied only through the sword….or firearm. (As the founders and framers knew – Christian government? Which/whose Christianity?*) As our buddy Ben said, if we can keep it.
* If the Bible has been removed from schools it is as much because Catholics rebelled against the dominant Protestant evangelization in the schools using the wrong Bible – damn those Protestants for corrupting the souls of Catholics, sending them to the fiery and eternal torments of hell. Alternatively, damn those Papists for working to remove the proper Bible from the public classroom and condemning our nation to the big-time Judgement with a capital J – we may as well not have religion in the public classroom. (And, lawdy, think of our Jews (the Judeo part) and Unitarians, and Mormons and, shudder, even our R2Kers, etc., etc. And, that’s not even taking into consideration our moral, upright, and patriotic sorta-believing and unbelieving citizens seeking equal representation.)
Well, that should be enough to get a discussion going. Back to my springtime enjoyments - only a few more weeks until the solstice.
Anonymous jimmiraybob said...
Just a quick thought, if the idea is just to get more God in government then how come the advocates always rail against the founders as Deists? That would count.
The Deist god is not a lawgiver, nor does he enforce the laws. He might as well not exist.
As for the monotheistic God of Providence, of justice, logic and love, the foundation of morality and of human dignity**, that'll do. He is indistinguishable from Jehovah.**
*""Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an auonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct heir of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk (p. 150f)." "--Jurgen Habermas
http://www.habermasforum.dk/index.php?type=news&text_id=451
**Locke, Reasonableness:"Experience shows, that the knowledge of morality, by mere natural light, (how agreeable soever it be to it,) makes but a slow progress, and little advance in the world. And the reason of it is not hard to be found in men’s necessities, passions, vices, and mistaken interests; which turn their thoughts another way: and the designing leaders, as well as following herd, find it not to their purpose to employ much of their meditations this way.
Or whatever else was the cause, it is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and proper business of morality. It never from unquestionable principles, by clear deductions, made out an entire body of the “law of nature.”
And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers, and compare them with those contained in the New Testament, will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour, and taught by his apostles; a college made up, for the most part, of ignorant, but inspired fishermen."
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