Topic : Fourth of July

I walked through a county courthouse square
On a park bench, an old man was sitting there.
I said, “Your courthouse looks kind of run down.”
He said, “No, it’s all right for our little town.”

I said, “But your flag pole leans quite a bit,
And there’s a ragged old flag flying from it.”
He said, “Have a seat,” so I sat down.
He said, “Is this the first time you’ve been to our little town?”

I think that it is.” He said, “We don’t like to brag,
But we’re sort of proud of that ragged old flag.”
“You see it got that hole in it there,
When Washington was crossing the Delaware.”

It got powder burned the night that Francis Scott Key
Was watching and writing, “Oh say can you see.”
It got kind of pulled apart at New Orleans
With Packingham and Jackson tuggin’ at her seams.

She almost fell at the Alamo
With the Texas flag, but she waved on through.
She got cut with a sword at Chancendorville
And another cut at Shiloh Hill.

There was Robert E. Lee, Beauregard and Brag
Oh, the south wind blew hard on the ragged old flag.
In Flanders field in World War one
She got that big hole with a Bertha gun.

She turned blood red in World War Two
And hung limp and low before it was through.
She went to Korea and Vietnam
You see, She went where she was sent by her Uncle Sam.

She waved from ships on the briny foam
But they weren’t waving her much back home.
In her own good land, she was abused.
She was defiled, dishonored, burned, refused,

And the government for which she stands
Is scandalized in many lands.
She’s wearin’ threadbare, she’s mighty thin,
But she’s a good flag for the shape she’s in.

She’s been through the fire before
And I know she can take a while lot more.
So we put her up in the morning
And take her down every night.

We never let her touch the ground
And we fold her up right.
On second thought, I do like to brag
Cause I’m mighty proud of That ragged old flag.

Source unknown

A few years ago, a substitute teacher wrote in the Washington Post about the depressing experience he had while teaching three advanced government classes in a suburban Virginia school. He decided to poll his students on the basic question of whether the American system of government was morally superior to that of the Soviet Union? Fifty-one of the 53 high school seniors he asked—the brightest high school seniors in one of the best school systems in the country—saw no difference between the two.

These children could not morally distinguish between their own nation built on the basis of each individual having God-given rights, and another nation that has operated for over 70 years on the assumption that man is a mere creature of the state. Not coincidentally, the two children who did comprehend a difference were Vietnamese boat children. They had received a valuable education in reality when they experienced the collapse of their homeland into the darkness of totalitarianism.

Children at Risk, J. Dobson & G. Bauer, Word, 1990, p. 180

Fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. Their conviction resulted in untold sufferings for themselves and their families. Of the 56 men, five were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the Revolutionary Army. Another had two sons captured. Nine of the fifty-six fought and died from wounds or hardships of the war.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships sunk by the British navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts and died in poverty.

At the battle of Yorktown, the British General Cornwallis had taken over Thomas Nelson’s home for his headquarters. Nelson quietly ordered General George Washington to open fire on the Nelson home. The home was destroyed and Nelson died bankrupt.

John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their thirteen children fled for their lives. His fields and mill were destroyed. For over a year, he lived in forest and caves, returning home only to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later, he died from exhaustion.

Kenneth L. Dodge, Resource, Sept./ Oct., 1992, p. 5

Lord Jesus, thou who art the way, the truth, and the life; hear us as we pray for the truth that shall make all free. Teach us that liberty is not only to be loved but also to be lived. Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books. It costs too much to be hoarded. Help us see that our liberty is not the right to do as we please, but the opportunity to please to do what is right.

Peter Marshall, Before the U.S. Senate

Edward Gibbon, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has attributed the fall of the Empire to:

1. The rapid increase of divorce; the undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.

2. Higher and higher taxes and the spending of public monies for free bread and circuses for the populace.

3. The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal.

4. The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy was within, the decadence of the people.

5. The decay of religion—faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life and becoming impotent to warn and guide the people.

Quotes from the tape “Our Godly Heritage” by Wallbuilders, Inc., PO Box 397, Aledo, TX 76008 817-441-6044

Do not let anyone claim the tribute of American patriotism if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics.

George Washington from his Farewell Address to the Nation:

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind.… It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in the sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.

Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892.

Source unknown

• The purest principles of morality are to be taught. Where are they found? Whoever searches for them must go to the source from which a Christian man derives his faith—the Bible.
  Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 1844
• Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government.
  People v. Ruggles, 1811 (2 decades after the 1st Amendment)
• Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. First Amendment
• By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing.
  Runkel v. Winemiller, 1796
• The First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state, but that wall is a one directional wall; it keeps the government from running the church, but it makes sure that Christian principles will always stay in government.
  Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, January 1, 1802, in an address to the Danbury Baptists
• Had the people, during the Revolution, had any suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle...At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect ... in this age there can be no substitute for Christianity. ... That was the religion of the founders of the Republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants ... The great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  House Judiciary Committee Report, March 27, 1854, after a one year study brought about by a suit to force the separation of church and state.
• Challenges to the Constitutionality of the government being run by Christian principles continued throughout the late 1800s finally arrived at the Supreme Court. In the case of Reynolds v. United States, 1878, the court pulled out Jefferson’s speech in its entirety and confirmed that Jefferson also said that Christian principles were never to be separated from government. The Supreme Court used Jefferson’s speech for the next 15 years to make sure that Christian principles stayed part of government. It remained this way until 1947, when, in the first time in the Supreme Court’s history, the court used only eight words out of Jefferson’s speech. The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.
  Everson v. Board of Education, 1947
• First time in the Supreme Court’s history, the court used only 8 words out of Jefferson’s speech. There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it. Dr. William James, The Father of Modern Psychology
• If this court doesn’t stop talking about separation of church and state, someone will think it is part of the Constitution
  Bear v. Colmorgan, 1958
• The first separation of religious principles from public education. This is the case that removed school prayer. There were no precedents cited. The court did not quote previous legal cases or historical incidents. A new direction in the legal system - no longer constitutional.
  One of the justices, in a stinging dissent, Engel v. Vitale, June 25, 1962
• It is unconstitutional for a student to pray aloud.
  Reed v. Van Hoven, 1965
• The Court declared a four-line nursery rhyme unconstitutional because, although it did not contain the word “God”, it might cause someone to think it was talking about God.
  DeCalv V. Espain (could not get the names exactly), 1967

Sources unknown

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our Country.”

The 22 word prayer that was declared to be unconstitutional and which led to the removal of all prayer from public schools in the case Engel v. Vitale. This little prayer acknowledges God only one time. The Declaration of Independence itself acknowledges God four times.

Within 12 months of Engel v. Vitale, in two more cases called Abington v. Schempp and Murray v. Curlett, the court had completely removed Bible reading, religious classes/instruction. This was a radical reversal of law—and all without precedental justification or Constitutional basis.

If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be, and had been, psychologically harmful to the child. (Abington v. Schempp, June 17, 1963).

The Court’s justification for removing Bible reading from public schools. The Court at this time declared that only 3% of the nation professed no belief in religion, no belief in God. Although this prayer was consistent with 97% of the beliefs of the people of the United States, the Court decided for the 3% against the majority.

What happens when a nation stops basing its judgments on a Biblical basis?

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. George Washington

• If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon and to perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments; this is not a permissible objective.
  Stone v. Gramm, 1980, challenging the right of students to “see” the 10 Commandments on the wall of a school. The Court even the defined the posting of the document as a “passive” display, meaning someone would have to stop and look on their own volition.
• What does it mean when the Court declares something to be unconstitutional? It means that the Founding Fathers would have opposed this, would not have wanted this. We have staked the whole future of American civilization not on the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
  James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution

Source unknown

Dramatic loss of national morality after 1963:

• Unwed birth rates 15-19 yr. olds shot up
• Unwed birth rates 10-14 yr. olds shot up 553% by 1983.
• Sexually Transmitted Disease rates 15-19 yr. olds shot up 226% by 1975.
• Divorce had been declining for 15 consecutive years prior to 1963. After, the number of divorces tripled every year until 1983.
• SAT scores declined for 18 consecutive years after 1963; unprecedented in our history. We are now graduating a generation of students that, academically, knows less that their parents.
• Violent crime up 544%.

Source unknown

• It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! - Patrick Henry
• The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: that it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity. - John Quincy Adams
• Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers. - John Jay, 1st Chief Justice of Supreme Court. One of the three men most responsible for the Constitution
• The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion in the world that deals with the heart. - Thomas Jefferson
• We 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. - John Adams
• Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson, inside the Jefferson Memorial
• Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side. My great concern is to be on God’s side. - Abraham Lincoln, when asked if he though God was on our side.
• He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world. - Benjamin Franklin, 1774, Ambassador to France
• The church must take right ground in regard to politics. Politics are a part of a religion in a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God...He will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.- Charles Finney

Sources unknown

The U.S. is #1 in the world in:

• Violent crime
• Divorce
• Teen pregnancies (industrial world)
• Abortions
• Illegal drug use
• Illiteracy (industrial world)

Source unknown

“...ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16

What were the ancient paths? Everyone appointed to public office must say:

“I do profess faith in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost...one God and blessed forevermore; and I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration. Delaware Constitution, 1776 (consistent with the First Amendment)

Source unknown

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.

George Mason, summarizing discussions on the floor of the Constitutional Convention

Notice what happened after 1962-63.

• The Court ruled that Secular Humanism is a legitimate religion equivalent to Christianity under the law.- Tricosso v. Watkins, 1963 and again in 1986.
• Atheism is ruled a religion. Court decision in 1977

Why is it not a Separation issue for Humanism and Atheism and Witchcraft to be taught in our public schools'

The Rebirth of America, A. S. DeMoss Foundation, 1986, pp. 225ff

French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, after visiting America in 1831, said,

“I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields, and boundless forests—and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world commerce, her public school system, and in her institutions of higher learning—and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.

America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!”

Source unknown