New Era World News

Intelligence Report
American Foundations #2

GREAT EMPIRES ARE CENTURIES in the making, “Rome was not built in a day”.  Nor is the turbulent modern world something that was born a few short-decades ago out of the turmoil of the psychedelic “sixties”. The youth revolution was merely the artifact of a still-evolving revolutionary paradigm hatched in the 18th century referred to as “classical liberalism” or just plain “liberalism”.  Liberalism is a broad-scale modern ideology that rests on three pillars of economic, moral, and political liberty.  Universities and libraries across the world hold volumes of difficult books, stack an immense array of specialized journals, and house numerous research institutes dedicated to advancing each of these pillars of liberalism.

Only a few specialists are able to grapple with the complex and oftentimes confusing ideas in each separate subject area. Assessing the full scope of liberalism, economic, moral, and political as an integral paradigm is an even more daunting task; all three fit together in a well-reasoned and well-synchronized package. Unfortunately, intellectuals seem to have a penchant for one pillar, usually the economic.  Sometimes they venture out and combine the political.  Those who specialize in morality tend to be philosophers of varying degrees.  Presenting the three in such a way that they seem to have separate, and oftentimes competing, identities adds to confusion that favors the spread of error.

Due to what seems to be broad scale confusion, many students, researchers, and lay men and women (simply trying to be well-informed), fail to synthesize the three and therefore fail to understand the program of liberalism.  Consequently, more often than not, almost everyone who explores the liberal universe ends up an advocate of some aspect, moral, political, or economic.  Then they end up in the strange position of arguing for one tenet of liberalism, let us say economic liberalism (capitalism) while reacting against other aspects of liberalism, let us say moral liberalism (free-choice ending in abortion).

Thus, we have Christian thinkers on both sides of the political spectrum.  Liberal Christians prefer moral liberalism (female clergy, homosexuality, contraception etc.) and conservatives favor economic and political liberalism (free markets and limited government). Since moral liberalism tends to stress individual free choice, people on the left tend to relativize objective values under the false pretense of “love” (divorced from wisdom) leading to unsavory conclusions such as right to choose an abortion according to the dictates of an unformed conscience; thus, they tend to be viewed as the “bad guys”. Christian conservatives, on the other hand, claim to hold Judeo-Christian values and advocate democracy and free trade so they appear, at least in their own eyes, as the “good guys’.

Although, liberalism is presented as an economic, political and or moral good by many so-called Christian intellectuals, Protestant and Catholic, on both sides of the political spectrum, “left” and right”, the truth is, the entire package of liberalism (economic-moral-political) is rooted in secularism  and anti-Trinitarianism and based on the ancient Luciferian idea that the God of Christian revelation is a petty overlord intent on keeping his followers enslaved in their littleness and unaware of their greatness (Genesis 3: 1-1). According to the total program” of liberalism as espoused by the leading lights of the American Revolution, human beings must be liberated and free to create economic, political, and social, systems according to human standards uninhibited by Christian ideas.  In short, men and women must be free to create a new type of society built on secular values as demonstrated below.

HOW DID IT GET THIS WAY?

The Christian Right

Protestants and Catholics on the political “right” tend to support traditional familial and moral values, which they claim are rooted in their Christian faith. When it comes to economic and political questions, they claim unswerving loyalty to the Constitution, to the Founding Fathers and to the “free market”. In short, they advocate private property, capitalism, and limited government based on the rule of law. Although it all sounds good, especially when placed side by side with nefarious and indolent liberal advocates of abortion looking for a handout with which to buy their next joint, upon closer scrutiny, the fabled “Conservative” story begins to fall apart – the truth is that 2/3’s of the so-called “conservative” program (the economic and political) is rooted in “liberalism” and an equal 2/3’s of the “Liberal” program (the moral and political) is likewise rooted in liberalism.  In short, both Conservatives and liberals are “liberal”.

Most conservatives are surprised, indeed shocked to find out that the economic and political platforms they fight so hard to conserve are in fact liberal platforms antithetical to the Christian tradition they claim to be protecting. Some have imbibed this liberal economic-political ideology along with strong doses of “God Bless America” for so long that they have failed to distinguish their political, economic, and religious ideas and have consequently become rabid nationalists ignorantly arrayed against the truth or, if exposed to it, either in a state of denial or humbly enlightened. What makes the unenlightened so certain of their “Christian Conservatism” is the radical moral position of their political enemies, the liberals on the left. Because they are so focused on and opposed to each other, they fail to see that they are both caught unaware in a confusing and cunning political game of “dialectical materialism” that makes “progress” toward Antichristian ends possible. This is a stealthy game first recognized by Engels, formalized by Marx, and then implemented by Lenin and Stalin.

Dialectical Materialism presents two alternative paths, each having the appearance of correctness because each contains some strong elements of the truth. However, neither idea is correct but holders of each believe themselves to be correct due to the perceived falsity of the other. Real truth, that is, the total program of truth as spoken by Jesus Christ, who referred to Himself as the “truth” is kept hidden by creating conflict between partially true and opposing ideas. Communist leader Vladimir Lenin realized that a carefully arrayed political conflict between two erroneous ideas makes “progress” toward a greater evil possible; i.e, in Lenin’s case, international communism advanced by promoting conflict between socialism and capitalism and in the unique case of the United States, Anti-Christian secularism advanced by promoting conflict between bourgeois Protestantism on the right or what might be called, “Americanism” and immoral Liberalism on the left. Because they are both incorrect or only partially correct ideas set in opposition, neither can lead to a prosperous Christian future. Partial truths, no matter how well presented, are in fact no truths at all; rather, they are harbingers of future evils.

“And what I do I will continue to do, in order to end this pretext of those who seek a pretext for being regarded as we are in the mission of which they boast. For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, who masquerade as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. So it is not strange that his ministers also masquerade as ministers of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds” (2 Corinthians 11: 12-15).

Although “liberals” and “conservatives” disagree on the nature of morality and on the economy, they both agree about democracy, popular sovereignty, and rule by secular law, which they have been taught to revere in the nation’s public schools, and even in the private schools, albeit to a lesser extent. Rule by law is the bond that unites them while moral and economic ideas divide them against each other until they morph, in this case, into a secular paradigm that includes them both.

Rule by Law

Americans, along with their British cousins, are fond of making the political claim that “rule by law” was a newly discovered idea born out a long tradition beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215 culminating and in the 18th century as a liberating invention emanating from the genius of men like John Locke, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson.  The truth is that the highly vaunted “rule by law” was in fact nothing new at all. Three thousand years before Jefferson ever penned ideas about rule by law, Moses (known as the “Lawgiver”) provided the Jews with a complex body of laws that reached into every part of their economic, political and religious lives. Moreover, rule by law was common to the Greeks and to all the nations of Christendom.  The former were ruled by the law of reason known as the “natural law” written into numerous Greek constitutions and the latter, like the Jews before them, were ruled by Mosaic Law, which was amended by Jesus who commanded “Agape”[1], the summit of law by which the Mosaic Code is to be interpreted and from which all other laws are to be derived.[2]

Thus, what was innovative to the Framers was not the rule of law. Nonetheless, the Framers were innovative men, very innovative.  They gave us not rule by law but rule by secular law (along with some new ideas about the structures of government).  The United States did not give the world its first written constitution, as just stated, both the Jews and Greeks had written constitutions.  What America gave the modern world was its first secular constitution based on human reason and the principle of popular sovereignty. This shocking American enterprise represented a radical break from the common law traditions regent in the nations of Christendom, which were based on faith and reason respectful of the sovereignty of God. This was indeed a new undertaking, one which prompted John Adams to boast:

 “It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service (the writing of the constitution) had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven…it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived by the use of reason and the senses (not faith and the bible)…Thirteen governments founded on the natural (versus supernatural) authority of the people alone.”

Thus, Thomas Jefferson referred to the whole thing as an “experiment:

“I am not discouraged by [a] little difficulty; nor have I any doubt that the result of our experiment will be, that men are capable of governing themselves without a master.” [3]

Christian culture and the rule by Judeo-Christian common law had made its way to the new world in the 16th and 17th centuries.  In fact, it was rule by English common law, and by laws newly derived from sacred scripture, that distinguished the Pilgrims and Separatists who insisted that they were God’s chosen people, the “City on a Hill” set apart to establish His kingdom under His laws, which were the sole source of light in the New England colonies and throughout all of original colonies. Rule by law, more specifically, by Christian common law, was simply an ancient artifact.  Indeed, it was a 17th century American artifact before the Framers ever articulated a letter about it. What was new in the 18th century was the secular idea of “liberty”, which connoted, above all else, liberation from God’s law and ecclesial interference in politics.

The Founders despised the “Holy Trinity” (known by faith supported by reason); the Trinity was a God in the process of being replaced by the “God of Nature” (known by reason alone). The Framers were turning the philosophical clock back to Classical Antiquity, to a time before the Christian era, thereby founding the new nation on ancient pagan foundations, Roman foundations to be exact. Because the Trinity cannot be known by reason unaided by faith, Thomas Jefferson belittled the Trinity calling it a

“Hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads” (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Smith, 1822).

Jefferson’s writing buddy, John Adams, in a letter to Jefferson regarding the Holy Trinity stated,

“Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us that three was one…and one equals three, you and I would never have believed it. We would never fall victim to such lies.”[4]

Men like Adams and Jefferson insisted that reason alone, even if it contradicts revealed truths, must be accepted. Unlike Boethius, Augustine, Aquinas, et al, they were unable to reconcile faith and reason.  Thus, rather than understanding faith as a gift from God, they saw it is a poison that will destroy the human mind and leave it a “wreck”.

“The Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck” (ibid).

The Framers were involved in an advanced program of replacing Christian common law rooted in faith and reason reaching back to the founding of Christendom with constitutional and statutory law rooted in reason alone. Starting with Charles the Great (Charlemagne) and Alfred the Great in the ninth century AD, English, French and German law codes were rooted in Mosaic laws, esp. the ten commandments and in the precept of divine love of the Gospels articulated by Jesus Christ.  When the Pilgrims and Separatists came to the new world, although not particularly fond of the Catholic faith, they were, nonetheless, establishing colonies steeped in Christian common law that had its origins in the Catholic faith propagated by the Catholic kings who had established Christendom. Hence, like Charles the Great and Alfred the Great before them, the Pilgrims and Separatists set about establishing new governments in the 17th century founded on the divine law revealed to Moses and amended by Jesus Christ.

What was new about the 18th century was the radical ideas of a revolution aimed at severing the modern world from its Christian roots.  The real revolution as John Adams afterward explained in a letter to his friend, Hezekiah Niles, was a “radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people.” [5]

According to Adams, the Christian political ideas of the people rooted in close to a 1,000 years of Christian common law had to be changed from allegiance to the Trinity (the God of revelation) as the source of law to a new allegiance toward a secular constitution rooted in the thoughts of 18th century deists, atheists, Unitarians and Epicureans who had become aspiring revolutionary political leaders taking all who would follow them into a new world order, a “New Order of the Ages”, “Novus Ordo Seclorum”.

Thus, the real revolution was in Adam’s own words:

 “…in the minds and hearts of the people, a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations….This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.” [6]

And exactly what sentiments and principles were to be altered?

“Those principles and feelings” that could “be traced back for two hundred years and sought in the history of the country from the first plantations in America.”[7]

More precisely, the Christian ideas of divine law and divine sovereignty that the Pilgrims had brought with them to the new world had to undergo revolutionary change.

Due to economic and political stress leading to intense desires for democratic self-rule, America’s first Christian inhabitants (already well acquainted with religious self-rule and, as a result of the “Great Awakening”, newly acquainted to the need for greater religious equality and further democratic reform in their churches that preceded and accompanied the revolution) were easily motivated to rally against English tyranny that threatened their religious and political independence. What many failed to realize was that in wresting the power, or what is called the sovereignty, from the British Crown and passing it directly to the people, the Framers had also wrestled God’s sovereignty (detailed in the state and colonial charters of the colonists) and replaced it with secular constitutional law, which became the new “supreme law” of the land.

In the process of ratifying the new secular constitution (1789), the Christian descendants of the Pilgrims, Separatists, and other denominations devoted to Christ, settled for the separation of the Christian faith from politics and the privatization of religion, which thereafter became a purely individual and private matter. God was no longer identified as the source of law.  As James Monroe, the fifth US president asserted, God is no longer sovereign:

“The people are the highest authority in our system, from whom all our institutions spring and on whom they depend.” They themselves “formed it.”[8]

Monroe sounds like Aaron being rebuked by Moses for letting the people turn their back on God. Aaron, instead of accepting the blame, places it on the people; “They themselves asked for an idol.” And Aaron answered Moses:

“Let not my lord be offended: for thou knowest this people, that they are prone to evil. They said to me: Make us gods that may go before us….And I said to them: Which of you hath any gold? and they took and brought it to me: and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out” (Exodus 32:23-24).

When an abused “people”, led by a select group of men who doubted the divinity of Jesus Christ and the existence of the Holy Trinity, are given rhetorical praise against an oppressive king, and by the force of this oppression are led to believe that they are the source of law, it is not surprising that God’s laws are abandoned, forgotten, and omitted and that a secular constitution that contradicts and nullifies His revealed divine laws “came out” of the fires of revolution. For example, the supreme first commandment to have no other Gods (no idols or false gods) before the Trinity is contradicted by the very first amendment of the Constitution that sanctions worship of any god and prohibits congress from implementing any law that names Jesus Christ as God or that gives preference to divine law, thereby abrogating such law and replacing it by man made law indifferent to revelation and divided from it by an artificial “wall of separation”.

In constructing this wall, the Framers might have been protecting religious liberty, but they were also manifesting their preference for reason and laws of their own making. By abandoning revealed divine law, and replacing it with a law based solely on practical reason, they violated the most sacred precept of the divine law,, the first commandment. Due to their use of reason alienated from faith, they crafted an amendment that opened the door to legalized idolatry, the right to honor, adore, and worship any false god that in the opinion of the people is morally licit rather than patiently tolerated as a right of conscience, which it should be.

“And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments.  He who saith that he knoweth him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar” (1 John 2:3).

After acting like Aaron, they then acted like Peter who thought that his human reason was superior to the wisdom of God.  To which Christ responded:  “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (Mark 8:33).

Because the Constitution is the product of human reason alone, it does not contain any evidence that it is a Christian document inspired by revealed law (the mind of God), or that it is to be interpreted according to precepts of the Christian faith.  Rather, it declares that the “people” are the sole authors and arbiters of law: “We the People of the United States…do ordain, and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”[9]

Since Article Six informs us that the Constitution is the “supreme Law of the Land” and that “anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State” that are “contrary” have no standing, clearly the people are supreme, which is a validation of the well known sentiment of the Enlightenment: “vox populi, vox dei” (“the voice of the people is the voice of God”).

Here it is of first import to note that Christian common law had its origins in the eight and ninth centuries when King Alfred the Great (849-899), compiled the “Book of Dooms”[10] or “Judgments” and thereby codified his own laws, and those of his English predecessors, founding them all on the Mosaic Decalogue, various Mosaic precepts, and the agape of the Gospels. Alfred ratified the Code and the unity of Mosaic and Christian law by solemnly citing the Gospel: “Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfill.” Alfred finished his introduction to the Code by referring to the divine commandment:

“As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them”, and then declares, “From this one doom, a man may remember that he judge every one righteously, he need heed no other doom-book.”

According to the revered English statesman, Sir Winston Churchill,

 “The great Alfred was a beacon-light, the bright symbol of Saxon achievement, the hero of the race.” … cherishing religion, learning and art in the midst of adversity and danger; welding together a nation, and seeking always across the feuds and hatreds of the age a peace which would smile upon the land.”[11]

Across the Channel from England, Charles the Great (748-814)[12] the first Holy Roman Emperor, had already done the same thing, or something very similar, issuing royal ordinances rooted in both the Mosaic and new laws recorded in scripture to be the common law of his vast realm. It was Alcuin, the leading scholar in Charlemagne’s court, who cautioned Charlemagne against using the phrase vox populi, vox dei because it was an irreverent and false idea and contrary to the laws established on the divine law instituted by Charlemagne:

“And those people should not be listened who keep saying, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God,’ for the turbulence of the mob is always close to insanity.”[13]

Such ideas as vox populi vox dei, popular sovereignty, and rule by secular law were radical developments slowly fructifying in the annals of secular history until ready for birth in the 18th century Age of Reason. The apotheosis of reason was, in many ways, a reaction to the extreme faith alone position of the Reformers, which often times seemed to the avant garde of the 18th century, to be opposed to reason. The Protestant Reformation had paved the way for the “mob” to individually interpret the meaning of the most sublime mysteries of faith, thereby democratizing religion, which aided the movement toward political democratization, further strengthened by contract theorists such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, who taught that the voice of the people is always correct especially when it has been prepared by education to say what it has been trained to say or to ask for what it has been conditioned to ask for. Since the people were needed to overthrow the Catholic aristocracy, their voice became increasingly important in the affairs of men.

Thus, throughout the colonies, ideas about the voice of the people, being the voice that would ratify the Constitution, became equivalent to the voice of God. It found its way into print in the works of Thomas Paine and John Trenchard, both radical Whigs who helped prepare the way for the American Revolution and the new Constitution.  Paine and Trenchard both ridiculed the voice of God in scripture and praised the voice of reason and the voice of the people who would validate reasonable arguments when presented to them. Because Paine, detested the bible, “I detest the Bible as I detest everything cruel”, he believed that,

“The Age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.” Consequently, as he argued in “Common Sense “and “The Age of Reason”, Christianity had to be replaced by a religion of reason confirmed by popular sovereignty. Thus, in his “Dissertations on Government” (1786), Paine stated: “In republics, such as those established in America, the sovereign power…remains where nature placed it—in the people.”

The acclaimed Trenchard argued in Cato’s Letters (Number˙ 60), that

“There is no Government now upon earth which owes its formation or beginning to the immediate revelation of God, or can derive its existence from such revelation.”

It is odd that informed thinkers like “Cato” failed to see that the colonial governments all had their beginning in such a revelation, vestiges of which existed at the time he was writing in all of the founding documents of the original 13 colonies.

For example, the “Original Constitution of the Colony of New Haven, Connecticut (1639) specified that both the origin of law and the system of government were to be drawn from revelation.

“We all agree that the scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in duties which they are to perform to God and to man, as well in families and commonwealth as in matters of the church… so likewise in all public officers which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we will, all of us, be ordered by the rules which the scripture holds forth… and we agree that such persons may be entrusted with such matters of government as are described in Exodus 18:21 and Deuteronomy 1:13 with Deuteronomy 17:15 and 1 Corinthians 6:1, 6 & 7…”

Connecticut remained a theocracy until 1818, well after the Revolution, and even then, Christianity remained the preferred religion.

But, new ideas were in the air, a sort of kulturkampf against American Protestant culture and forms of government derived from Christian revelation. Men who were able to blend tenets of Christianity along with new liberal ideas of the Enlightenment, thereby making the latter more palatable, began to make their appearance in the colonies. Men such as Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) the “Founding Father of the Scottish Enlightenment”, imbiber of Locke, and teacher of Adam Smith and David Hume, joined a long train of others whose ideas were becoming fashionable among the colonial elite.  Like Smith, Locke, Hume, et al, Hutcheson was an avid proponent of liberalism. His works in moral and political philosophy were used as textbooks at Yale, Harvard, and the College of Philadelphia. Three of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were his students. They and a host of others were treated to such anti-Christian ideas as

“Nor has God by any revelation nominated Magistrates, showed the nature or extent of their powers, or given a plan of civil polity for mankind” (Francis Hutchenson˙ Moral˙ Philosophy˙ p˙ 272).

In other words, Leviticus and Deuteronomy were to be ignored; men were now free to create a new government without consulting the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whom the Framers were ready to slowly discard.

Later, Chief Justice John Marshall memorialized these sentiments in the landmark Marbury v Madison (1803) case whose brief reads:

“The people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected.”

Not God’s law, but any “opinion” validated by the people will suffice. Marshall made no bones about it.  In the same case he outright ruled that any “law repugnant to the constitution is void”.

America may have been a Christian nation committed to the law of God, the Holy Trinity, but its government was going in another direction; it preferred the “God of Nature” or some other God. It is difficult to say which one, if any, since none are mentioned in the Constitution, but all are protected. Cornelis de Witt, a 19th century political historian understood what was going on:

“The men who effected the American revolution were not all of them believers. In different degrees, Jefferson, Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, John Adams, were free-thinkers, but without intolerance or display, without ostentatious irony, quietly, and almost privily; for the masses remained believers. Not to offend them, it was necessary to speak with respect of sacred things; to produce a deep impression upon them, it was requisite to appeal to their religious feelings; and prayers and public fasts continued to be instruments resorted to whenever it was found desirable, whether by agitators or the State, to act powerfully on the minds of the people.”[14]

By the time that Protestant divines woke up to what was happening, it was already too late. Pastor Timothy Wright, President of Yale Seminary was one of the first to take note (1812):

 “The nation has offended Providence. We formed our Constitution without any acknowledgment of God; without any recognition of His mercies to us, as a people, of His government, or even of His existence. The [Constitutional] Convention, by which it was formed, never asked even once, His direction, or His blessings, upon their labours. Thus we commenced our national existence under the present system, without God.”

A short time later in 1863, interpreting the Civil War as divine retribution for failure to found the Constitution on principles of Christian Law, eleven Protestant denominations from the Union States (not the southern Confederacy) joined hands for the purpose of amending the Preamble taking sovereignty out of the hands of the people and placing it back where it belongs, in the hands of God. Pennsylvania attorney, John Alexander drafted the amendments, which read:

“We, the people of the United States recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”[15]

The following year, the National Reform Association submitted a similar amendment:

“We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among the nations, his revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the inalienable rights and the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to ourselves, our posterity, and all the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”[16]

Some of America’s Protestant leaders were waking up to the fact that their forbears had acquiesced to a New Order of the Ages introduced on the tails of a secular document, which dethroned the Holy Trinity and placed the power to rule and to make supreme laws in the hands of men, men who claimed ultimate authority to rule in the name of the people.  What the nation needed were God-fearing champions like Gideon who after routing Israel’s enemies refused supreme power and declared allegiance to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob instead:

“The Israelites then said to Gideon, “Rule over us—you, your son, and your son’s son—for you saved us from the power of Midian.” But Gideon answered them, “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you. The LORD must rule over you.” (Judges 8:22-23).

If the Framers had been as gallant in serving the Trinity and in recognizing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the ultimate and sovereign source of power and authority as Gideon had been, perhaps we would not be experiencing the economic, political and moral malaise, which are the inevitable result of a long train of liberalism rooted in the sovereignty of human reason enshrined in a secular constitution that prefers the rules of men to the rule of God.

_________________________

ENDNOTES:

[1] Divine Love not merely human love, but the willingness to die for love of another.

[2] The truth is, that even the Magna Carta, the “poster child” of democracy and rule by law”, was rooted in the common laws of Christendom.  The Magna Carta was not a progressive innovation; if read carefully, it is clear that the Magna Carta is an assertion of ancient Christian rights long established by Christian common  law.

[3] Letter to T. B. Hollis (1787)

[4] Stephen Frederick Uhl, (2009) Out of God’s Closet: This Priest Psychologist Chooses Friendly Atheism, Golden Gate Publishers.

[5] James Q Wilson, American Government, p. 26: https://books.google.com/books?id=AjIaCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=%22James+Q+Wilson%22+american+government++%22the+real+revolution%22&source=bl&ots=D-CCNk_afE&sig=pQTmdPhsSLG_4cnQwLdwWtJcoNE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioprbr2frKAhUBVSYKHZQWAGoQ6AEIRTAH#v=onepage&q=%22James%20Q%20Wilson%22%20american%20government%20%20%22the%20real%20revolution%22&f=false

[6] Letter to H. Niles (1818).

[7]  ibid.

[8] James Monroe,  May 4, 1822, Views of the President of the United States.  http://press pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles20.html

[9] The specious AD argument does not work.  Some Christian ideologues who prefer ignorance to truth have scoured the document looking for just one reference to God. Finding none, they resort to the signature date which contains the words “In the year of Our Lord”.  And then mockingly proclaim that the “secularists” are obviously wrong, as if this one miniscule thread redeems the entre document from being secular. This is a ridiculous argument, one worthy of only a footnote. By this logic, Hilary Clinton is a card carrying Christian because she heads or closes her correspondence with the Christian date.  Or, conversely, the Portuguese who live before 1700 are not Christians because they did not begin using the AD style until the 18th century. Using the in conventional date is nothing but standard practice; it is not evidence from which to draw conclusions about such deep seated beliefs as faith in Jesus Christ, and all that He taught. New Agers even claim that Jesus is Lord along with a host of other gods and lords. Thomas Jefferson called himself a “Christian” because he believed in the morals taught by Jesus.  But he denied His divinity, incarnation, and resurrection; most especially, he denied the Trinity, which disqualifies him from being a Christian no matter how much he might protest: “Who is a liar, but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist, who denieth the Father, and the Son.” (1 John 2:22). AD, moreover, is one of several dating mechanisms used throughout Masonry and Masons are not Christians because they deny the divinity of Christ as Jefferson did. (http://grandlodgeofiowa.org/docs/Masonic_History/AnnoLucis.pdf)

[10] http://kolbefoundation.org/gbookswebsite/studentlibrary/greatestbooks/aaabooks/alfredgreat/prefacetalfred.html

[11] From Winston S Churchill: A history of the English speaking peoples, 1956: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2010/10/greatest-   englishman-ever-king-alfred.html

[12] http://kolbefoundation.org/gbookswebsite/studentlibrary/greatestbooks/aaaprefacepages/charlamagne/charlamagnepreface.html

[13] In a letter to Charlemagne (800 AD) http://www.britannica.com/biography/Alcuin/article-supplemental-information

[14]  Witt, Cornelius Henri De. (2013). pp. 16-7. Jefferson and the American Democracy, an Historical Study. London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1862): http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/Jefferson_and_the_American_Democracy_an_Historical_Study_1000261173/45

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_amendment
http://candst.tripod.com/nra.htm

[16] http://candst.tripod.com/nra.htm

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