Sunday’s Quote: An exemplar of redemption

c/o Randy Thomas

Having served as Special Counsel to President Nixon, Charles W. Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice as one of the “Watergate Seven.” His emergence from the Maxwell Correctional Facility in 1975 after a seven-month incarceration was the first step into a new life that ultimately garnered 15 honorary doctorates, the Templeton Prize and the Presidential Citizens Medal in lieu of impacting millions around the world for Christ. You can bet that Mr. Colson is now Home.

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“If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody.”
~ from a 1973 Boston Globe editorial, “Amen, Brother," quoted in Colson’s book, Born Again (p. 183)

“If I were the Devil”

Paul Harvey (1918-2009) was one of our finest broadcasters. Some 47 years ago, he offered a bit of commentary, under three minutes in length, that has proven more prophetic that he could have ever anticipated.

If I were the Devil - Paul Harvey (Warning for America) from anberlin_fan on GodTube.

Sunday’s Quote: Conviction and fortitude

c/o Thy Black Man

There’s a lot to like about Allen West. Anything but a typical politician, this 22-year Army veteran has spoken frankly about Islam and the War on Terrorism more than once. His most recent statement is no exception.

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“I want to extend my sincere condolences to the families of the Army Colonel and Major who were killed by Afghanistan security forces over this ‘burning Koran’ episode. If we had resolute leadership, including in the White House, we would have explained that these Islamic terrorist enemy combatants being detained at the Parwan facility had used the Koran to write jihadist messages to pass to others. In doing so, they violated their own cultural practice and defiled the Koran. Furthermore, they turned the Koran into contraband. Therefore, Islamic cultural practice and Parwan detention facility procedures support burning the ‘contraband’. Instead here we go again, offering apology after apology and promising to ‘hold those responsible accountable’. Responsible for what?

“When tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. This time it immediately led to the deaths of two American Warriors. America is awaiting the apology from President Hamid Karzai.”

~ Rep. Allen B. West (R-FL, 22nd congressional district); February 27, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: Securing the Republic

The older I get, the more I appreciate the Founders. One of them, an original Tea Partier, offered a bit of wisdom for some of the vexing ills we face today.

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“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign Invaders.”

~ Samuel Adams, from his letter to President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress James Warren; November 4, 1775

Sunday’s Quote: Christian America

It seems that many among the Left are driven, in part, by a yearning to dictate the prevailing opinion of the Founders (1, 2, 3), especially in regard to the consequent establishment of our country, by diminishing the philosophically Christian foundation that was otherwise undeniable for over two centuries. Their interpretation of the Treaty of Tripoli is just one example.

The construal of facts, for the sake of supporting their own conclusions, is put into effect to have the opposition believe that they are wrong, backwards, and nowhere near the mainstream. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

Our first President added the following:

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“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”
~ from George Washington’s Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia; May 10, 1789

Postscript: Painting by John Trumbull (1756-1843), currently displayed at City Hall in New York City. His work is easily among the best of the era.

Sunday’s Quote: Judging from where we came

c/o Metro UK

Note: I’m a Europhile and an unapologetic WASP, both of which are akin to my heritage and identity. So the following is of great personal interest to me.

A graduate of the prestigious Eton College (a world renowned English public school) and the similarly esteemed Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Kwasi Kwarteng is a Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Spelthorne constituency for the Conservative Party in the British House of Commons. He is also the child of parents who were subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana and later as immigrants to England. Accordingly Kwarteng’s new book, Ghosts of Empire, offers a distinct perspective about the oft-aspersed British Empire that one may not expect.

As an alternative to the predictable, almost requisite condemnation of the largest empire the world has ever known, Kwarteng instead assesses the kingdom somewhat more magnanimously by weighing both the Empire’s progressive influence with its impulsive callousness. The truth, as one review explained, is that the Empire “was the product, not of a grand idea, but of often chaotic individual improvisation,” the result of unconventional governors and attachés who nevertheless operated the royal enterprise with an unparalleled level of success that was more than one-sided.

Kwarteng’s perspective, once the historical norm, is now disparaged by those who view the Empire as a collection of oppressive White Europeans that merely exploited people from other parts of the world who were, in essence, their exact opposite. Not so unexpectedly, this has also become a gradually prevalent interpretation of our own United States.

To be sure, the very concept of our domestic exceptionalism first referenced in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America some 175 years ago is being supplanted by post-nationalist intellectuals among the left who, at their core, are abhorred — whether they admit it or not — by the very principles that developed America into a social and economic model coveted by billions. As it turns out, we elected a philosophical spawn of these left-wing ideologues to lead our nation just a few years ago, the consequences of which have been questionable at best.

A piece in The Wall Street Journal tied it all together a couple of days ago.

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“In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama said: ‘Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about.’ It was hardly a Churchillian rejoinder, but then it was a very demotic speech, and he is wrong. By almost any criteria, the American influence in the world has indeed waned since the Eisenhower administration, but it still has a good head start on the British Empire, which was antidemocratic, protectionist, slow to innovate and largely ruled over by the sportsmen of its only two great universities. America, by contrast, is — when it is true to itself — a proselytizing democracy, free-market and innovational, which has more than a dozen of the world’s top 20 universities.

“Where the British Empire does indeed hold a message for modern America is in the area of self-belief. Many of the British Empire’s worst legacies stemmed from a collapse in confidence among the British elite in the values and principles that had made Britain the largest empire in the history of mankind. Anyone who thinks that just such a spasm of self-doubt among America’s elite isn’t a problem in modern America doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
~ from “Now That The Sun Has Set” by Andrew Roberts, from his review of Kwarteng’s Ghosts of Empire in The Wall Street Journal; February 10, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: Class warfare

c/o Gateway Pundit

The term referenced above has been used, and will continue to be exhausted, from now to Election Day. There’s really no escaping it, so we may as well have a more distinct view of its meaning.

Presently class warfare consists of elected officials persuading the underprivileged to believe that their financial subjugation is solely the result of an affluent minority — let’s call them the “1%” — who doesn’t pay their “fair share.” While pandering and demonizing may offer the perception of sympathy for the less fortunate, it’s the riling of mass dissention that permits those same bureaucrats to deflect from their unprecedented fiscal recklessness, evidently for the sake of suffocating (if not eliminating) the economic model that has afforded so much, in exchange for initiating policies that both embolden goverment and penalize personal accomplishment.

This is not to imply that the tax code is an example of government at its best. Far from it. But the numbers don’t lie.

According to the American Enterprise Institute, the wealthiest 1% of the population earned 19% of the total income and paid 37% of all income tax in 2007, the year before Obama was elected (and long before chatter about “fair share” became commonplace). Moreover the top 10% accounted for 68% of federal tax revenue, while the bottom 50% — those of us below the median earnings level — earned a paltry 13% of the income and paid just 3% of the taxes.

Kiplinger’s updated numbers, which are nearly identical to the data above, can be found here.

The humble purveyor of this blog is not a one-percenter; not by any stretch. But I would like to be among them one day. And because no nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity, people would be wise to resist anything that could stymie their ability reach the pinnacle in this, the greatest of all nations.

No thank you, Mr. President. A fundamental transformation of our nation is not required. Taxes are not the real problem. Federal expenditures, and the pseudo-philosophy that drives such disbursements, are. Here is syndicated columnist George F. Will to expand upon the point.

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“Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

“The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth – to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of – the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.  . . .

“People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who became more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile.”
~ from “Government: The redistributionist behemoth” by George F. Will, The Washington Post; January 6, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: So is he, or isn’t he?

c/o The Moorfield Storey Blog

The dispute over Obama’s alleged socialist tendencies has been raging almost nonstop since before he won the presidency, the subsequent burnout of which could possibly result in the electorate neglecting to recognize the peril of embracing an ideology that is the antithesis of the philosophical tenets that maintained our remarkable homeland for over two centuries.

Listen, as it were, to a distinguished European voice from the past, and then compare his definition of socialism to the redistributionist policies our 44th President has implemented for the past three years.

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“[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; . . . that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.

“Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? . . . But is it possible? . . . Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?

“Finally . . . we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: ‘Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs.’ Everyone’s effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success.”
~ Political economist and member of the French assembly Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), a classical liberal considered a forerunner of the Austrian/Libertarian school of economics, from his essay “Justice and fraternity,” published in the academic periodical Journal des Économistes; June 15, 1848

Sunday’s Quote: A “change” for the better?

c/o FrontPageMag

While an array of social and political circumstances guarantee various echelons of upheaval on any given day, this current era may well mark the first time in which one could rightly contend that persistent feelings of something which looms on the horizon is, indeed, more than a mere gut feeling – an issue made worse by those in positions of authority whose apparent indifference suggests that the welfare of the Republic has been compromised by a more sorted agenda that is vastly inconsistent with our establishing principles.

Dismiss this as conspiracy if you like, but Obama and his minions have made their intentions clear. Only those who refuse to see it will remain blind. But do not fret. Our past Commanders-in-Chief have offered rebuttals already.

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“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.”
~ Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States (R-MA, a legit small government Conservative), from his address to the Massachusetts State Senate; January 7, 1914

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“Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. All freedom-loving nations, not the United States alone, are facing a stern challenge from the Communist tyranny. In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn't alarmed simply doesn't understand the situation — or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve.

“Invasion and conquest by Communist armies would be a horror beyond our capacity to imagine. But invasion and conquest by Communist ideas of right and wrong would be just as bad. For us to embrace the methods and morals of communism in order to defeat Communist aggression would be a moral disaster worse than any physical catastrophe. If that should come to pass, then the Constitution and the Declaration would be utterly dead and what we are doing today would be the gloomiest burial in the history of the world.”
~ Harry Truman, 33rd President of the United States (D-MO, a Southern Baptist and card-carrying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who advocated Civil Rights), from his address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; December 15, 1952

Just sayin'

Original source unknown

Sunday’s Quote: Thoughts for the New Year

c/o Red Dog Report

A friendly acquaintance named René recently posted the following on Facebook:

I’m a RACIST for criticizing Obama. I’m a TERRORIST because I’m not afraid to stand up for what's right. I'm a TEA-BAGGER for supporting the Constitution. I’m a TROUBLEMAKER for asking unanswered questions. I’m a TRAITOR for blowing the whistle on my corrupt government. I’m a CONSPIRACY THEORIST for presenting documented facts.  . . .  I’m ANTI-AMERICAN for supporting Constitutionalists. Yep, GUILTY! Are U Guilty Too?

Food for thought indeed. And make no mistake, this is the year we need to turn it all around. Consider those who came before us.

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“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
~ The original motto intended for the reverse side of The Great Seal of the United States. Although largely attributed to polymath and all-around icon Benjamin Franklin, the committee (formed on July 4, 1776) was also made up by fellow Founders John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The Great Seal itself would not be finalized until 1782.

“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual. Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.”
~ John Hancock, President of the Second Continental Congress and holder of perhaps the world’s most famous signature; from History of the United States of America, Vol. II by Henry Adams [1921], p. 229

“Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God. What a Eutopia [sic], what a Paradise would this region be.”
~ John Adams, a Founding Father, the second President and first Vice President of the United States; from Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III [1782-1804], p. 9

What part of CHRISTmas do you not understand?

c/o Credo House Ministries

Instead of the usual Sunday’s Quote, I’ve opted to republish the same piece I’ve posted on this day for each of the past three years. . .

I could bloviate about those who seek to eliminate any trace of Christianity – or at least, the authentic criterion thereof – from the national landscape, just as I could reference any number of acts committed by the secular Left in the name of “separation of church and state” as if the phrase was pulled from the Constitution itself. But I will resist.

I could foil the pugilist with a comprehensive assessment, almost pretentious in length, regarding “separation of church. . .” (among other things) from Supreme Court decisions that were taken from their originally intended context to endorse a “progressive” disposition that concedes to practically anything but Christendom. Yet I will abstain.

Eschatology of the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant creeds warn the Believer about agreeable-sounding pontificators who employ abstract reasoning fused with arguments that take aim (in the seemingly nicest possible way) at the very axioms they hold most sacred; a ploy most commonly achieved by admonishing the born-again, yet inattentive adherent to yield to every outlandish form of pluralism for the sake, and in the name of, tolerance.

Even more, far too many Christians have become more consumed with what's “cool” instead of keeping their focus upon what is right (something to which I can truly relate), essentially abandoning the substance of their beliefs – and thus, depreciating the sacrifices made by those who came before us – because they became fearful of false characterizations by a faction that unabashedly hates the Truth for which we are called to give our lives if necessary.

I’m beating this war drum because of a slowly growing entente that abates the less passionate into submission with half-truths, platitudes, and double standards while laboring to dilute, or redefine, our long-established values that are almost entirely based upon the Holy Scriptures. And thus it may not be much longer before opposing the coalition of enlightened, altruistic, open-minded sojourners of egalitarianism will be deemed a “hate crime.”

So say Merry Christmas while you still can. The clock is ticking.

Sunday’s Quote: O’ the value of obscure sources

Note: Don’t bother reading if you’re of any Left-leaning orientation, as the following will almost certainly result in a convulsion.

I recently stumbled across a treasure trove of books I didn’t know were in my possession. By chance I turned to the epilogue of the first one I picked up, saw a 60-year-old picture of Ronald Reagan, and read a tribute that reflects the central thesis of what made our country special while validating how far the entertainment industry has fallen from the beaten path.

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“The American image is still one that celebrates freedom, space, and opportunity. It turns sour, as it has in contemporary films, when those virtues are denied or perverted. Today’s Hollywood is quick to exploit the sourness, the disillusion, and the cynicism, but for all that Americans still like to think of themselves in terms of John Wayne. Wayne took a rapping from youngsters in the seventies, but as those youngsters have grown older they tend to share the regret that the Duke is gone. The mood of America as it entered the eighties was markedly conservative.

“The election of Ronald Reagan to the highest office in the land is an affirmation of the American return to conservatism. Reagan himself was of the generation of the Hollywood macho giants. He came from that age of American innocence in which a man could make it on his way – without government help or hindrance, by God! Reagan was well in line with the good old American image. He came from a working family, worked his way through college, excelled at football, got a job as a sports announcer in small-time radio, and worked his way up.  . . .

“What could be more American? The story of Ronald Reagan is itself like a Hollywood movie of the Golden Age. The fact that the American public elected him is strong evidence of an almost desperate yearning for the images of the American past. The fact that such a yearning exists gives hope that all is not lost. The Spirit of ’76 may be battered, but it is not moribund.”
– from Hollywood and the American Image [1981] by Tony Thomas

On This Day in History

c/o Library of Congress

AD 37 – Nero, fifth Emperor of the Roman Empire, was born in present-day Anzio, Italy. Known for a reign filled with excessiveness and despotism, Nero is also noted for seemingly countless executions, including those of his mother, his stepbrother, and many of the early Christians against whom he placed blame for the Great Fire of Rome. With assassination all but imminent, Nero committed suicide in AD 68, bringing the 54-year rule of Julio-Claudian dynasty to an end.

1791 – Authored and introduced to the 1st United States Congress by James Madison as the limitations on our government in regard to personal liberties, the first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution (better known as the Bill of Rights, pictured) became law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly, providing the three-fourths needed by the States to make it official.

1939 – Gone with the Wind premiered at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. The film earned 10 Academy Awards (a record that stood for 20 years) and is ranked sixth in the American Film Institute’s list of the Top 100 Best American Films of All Time. It was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry in 1989.

1966 – Walt Disney died in Burbank, California 10 days after his 65th birthday.

1973 – Facing pressure from members of the Gay Liberation Front and psychiatrist/gay rights activist Ronald Bayer, among others, the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association voted 13-0 to remove homosexuality from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The APA, for the record, has been criticized (more than once) for employing an inferior diagnostic process in lieu of a more unempirical structure that elevates the opinions of the prominent few. Author and psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser has referred to the DSM as “phony diagnostic categories,” arguing that “it was developed to help psychiatrists . . . make money.”

2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa was reopened to the public after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous slant (3.97 degrees, or 3.9 meters). Engineers expect the nearly 700-year-old freestanding bell tower to remain stable for another 200 years.

2005 – The parliament of Latvia (northeast Europe) amended its national constitution with Article 110, formally eliminating same-sex couples from being entitled to marry and adopt.

Information initially obtained from Wikipedia; confirmed and revised (when necessary) through various sources.

The Iron Lady speaks

The UK’s first (and still only) female Prime Minister arrived in 1979 determined to reverse a “precipitous national decline” similar to the one encroaching our nation today. And she succeeded. So take a moment to observe the manner and conviction in which The Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher responded to the opposition during her final Q&A in the British House of Commons on November 22, 1990 – and then consider how these brief exchanges compare to the debate raging here in America today.

“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.”
– Margaret Thatcher; May 4, 1979

Sunday's Quote: From one Founder to another

c/o Encyclopedia Virginia

The Founders are referenced with increasing regularity on this blog because time has proven them more honorable, stalwart and wise than the majority of those who lead us today. Thus, if some socialist-friendly liberal ever attempts to lecture you about what the Founders meant, perhaps throwing this back at him/her will be of some assistance.

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“The selfishness and corruption of Europe I have no doubt about, and therefore wish most sincerely that our free Republics may not suffer themselves to be changed and wrongly wrought upon by the corrupt maxims of policy that pervade European Councils--where artful and refined plausibility is forever called in to aid the most pernicious designs. It would seem as if there were a general jealosy [sic] beyond the water, of the powerful effects to be derived from Republican virtue here, and so we hear a constant cry from thence, echoed & reechoed here by all Expectants from the Treasury of the United States--That Congress must have more power--That we cannot be secure & happy until Congress command implicitly both purse & sword.

“So that our confederation must be perpetually changing to answer sinister views in the greater part, until every fence is thrown down that was designed to protect & cover the rights of Mankind. It is a melancholy consideration that many wise & good men have, some how [sic] or other, fallen in with these ruinous opinions. I think Sir that the first maxim of a man who loves liberty should be, never to grant to Rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly & indispensably necessary for the safety and well being [sic] of Society. To say that these Rulers are revocable, and holding their places during pleasure may not be supposed to design evil for self-aggrandizement, is affirming what I cannot easily admit. Look to history and see how often the liberties of mankind have been oppressed & ruined by the same delusive hopes & fallacious reasoning. The fact is, that power poisons the mind of its possessor and aids him to remove the shackles that restrain itself.”
– Richard Henry Lee, from a letter to Samuel Adams; March 14, 1785

Perhaps better known as Robert E. Lee’s great uncle, R.H. Lee was both a signer of the Articles of Confederation and the author of the Lee Resolution, by which the Second Continental Congress declared the Colonies to be independent of the British Empire. In fact the initial drive towards independence was led by an alliance known as the “Adams-Lee Junto.”

Some cartoons that recently caught my attention (for all the right reasons)

Sunday's Quote: Chesterton on government

c/o Catholic Authors

There's a lot of talk about how our federal system should function. Here's one of the all-time greats to break it down for us:

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"AN honest man falls in love with an honest woman; he wishes, therefore, to marry her, to be the father of her children, to secure her and himself. All systems of government should be tested by whether he can do this.

"If any system – feudal, servile, or barbaric – does, in fact, give him so large a cabbage-field that he can do it, there is the essence of liberty and justice. If any system – Republican, mercantile, or Eugenist – does, in fact, give him so small a salary that he can’t do it, there is the essence of eternal tyranny and shame."
– from Chesterton's March 25, 1911 contribution to The Illustrated London News. The ILN, for the record, was the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper. Launched in 1842, it folded in 2003 after 161 years in print.

Sunday's Quote: The Founders and God

Official portrait of our fourth President

Note: I missed my self-imposed deadline by just a bit. I'll be timelier in the future.

Those who painstakingly laid the foundation of what would become the greatest of all nations spoke frankly about religious tolerance. Yet the intended context of their mutual perspective, which was centered almost entirely upon the tenets of Christianity, is often overlooked, if not dismissed, by a newer breed that swears the Forefathers who authored the Constitution and all its associated doctrines had no intention of instituting God as the cornerstone of our grand republic.

Aside from the fervently irreligious, Believers are also faced with another contemporary nemesis that openly intends to employ their peculiar, if not troubling canons – proven to be the antithesis of the American core – as a means of conquering the unbelieving infidels. And just as shocking, these sanctimonious hordes now have advocates working on their behalf deep within the corridors of power.

One of our nation's finest contributed something to this conversation that remains as pertinent as when he initially spoke it 226 years ago:

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"Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. . . .

"Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm, to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinion. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. Every relaxation of narrow and rigorous policy, wherever it has been tried, has been found to assuage the disease. The American Theatre has exhibited proofs that equal and compleat [sic] liberty, if it does not wholly eradicate it, sufficiently destroys its malignant influence on the health and prosperity of the State.

"If with the salutary effects of this system under our own eyes, we begin to contract the bounds of Religious freedom, we know no name that will too severely reproach our folly. At least let warning be taken at the first fruits of the threatened innovation. The very appearance of the Bill has transformed "that Christian forbearance, love and charity," [Virginia Declaration of Rights, art. 16] which of late mutually prevailed, into animosities and jealousies, which may not soon be appeased."
– James Madison, in a speech to the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia; June 20, 1785

Sunday's Quote: What was once "liberal"

c/o Martin Ward

Those of the left-leaning persuasion are generally not aligned with the Christian tradition. A handful of exceptions notwithstanding, it seems most of those who claim the label of modern liberalism are anything but Christian. But it hasn't always been that way.

Having suspected that the liberal of yesteryear is today's Conservative, it's nice to have one of the greatest of all thinkers – identified by some as a "classical liberal" – confirm the obvious:

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"TRUTHS turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right.

"We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them.

"It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed."
– from Chesterton's Heretics