Restoring Freedom in Times of Trial By Dr. Marshall Foster This summer thousands of Americans will gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts to celebrate the 225th anniversary of the largest and most important granite monument in America – The Forefathers Monument. The strategy of freedom engraved on this memorial to the Pilgrims is the same unchanging, biblical plan for restoring any collapsing republic. This plan was employed by our colonial ancestors in their time of trial. The American colonists, in 1774, found themselves fatally estranged from their own countrymen in England. Just 150 years before, the English had spearheaded the birth of liberty in the English Civil War and the English Bill of Rights. However, by this time the English had strayed from their own “rule of law” traced back to Magna Carta. England invaded the colonies and boarded their troops in colonial homes. They were in the process of inflicting complete religious and political tyranny on the colonies. What was the colonial response? They believed that they had a responsibility of highest importance to God, their nation, and their children and grandchildren. The Continental Congress in Philadelphia unanimously declared, “It is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our Country, ourselves, and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future generations.” What was the source of the strength and character expressed in these words? The following roadmap outlines the essentials that the colonists developed over 150 years which enabled them to create and maintain the world’s most free and prosperous nation. First, parents, clergy and schools were united in teaching all students to apply their biblical faith to every area of society. For example, their education included the biblically based political theory of liberty that had been developing for 700 years. They knew the impact of Magna Carta on the development of English common law and its influences on over 80 colonial constitutions and covenants written by the colonists themselves before 1776. According to a study commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, the fathers read the Bible and the newspaper to their families for almost an hour every morning. This study and others revealed nearly 100% literacy in the colonies, while the vast majority of Europeans were illiterate and under the deceptions of tyrants. Second, the colonists were diligent to create a virtuous, local accountable government which stood strong against the oppressive, tax, spend and steal government imposed from England. Professor Marvin Olasky says, “Many colonists, in short, tried to learn from English mistakes by moving consistently toward a small-government approach: they built up an authority that would provide an alternative to royal government, but they did not want that alternative to aggrandize itself. Rotation of offices [term limits] and limitations on legislation – and on the ability of those in office to bribe poor voters – were crucial in the battle to reduce corruption.” What the colonists were attempting to avoid was the pernicious corruption of London. Benjamin Franklin, a former devotee of English society, came to see the problem. He said “When I consider the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state [England] …I cannot but apprehend more mischief than benefit from a closer union.” Franklin saw the leviathan nature of the British Parliament as he criticized London’s “numberless and needless places [government jobs], enormous salaries, pensions, perquisites, bribes.” He concluded that Britain’s governmental class would “devour all revenue, and produce continual necessity [poverty] in the midst of natural plenty.” Third, the colonists developed private charitable welfare societies that flourished throughout the colonies. They were able to avoid the dangerous deceitful web of big government welfare of all kinds. Individuals, churches and voluntary associations provided care for the truly needy, charity schools for the poor and immigrants to prepare them for productive jobs. These were far more effective and loving than any British “Poor Laws” [government welfare]. There was no taxation needed because these activities were funded and staffed primarily through family giving and volunteers (at a minuscule fraction of big government welfare costs). Fourth, the colonists highly refined the biblically derived free enterprise system built on private ownership and stewardship. This engine of prosperity had eluded nations throughout history because they lacked the civil, economic and religious liberty that are essential to keep rulers and bureaucrats from stealing the fruit of the labor and property of the people. Samuel Adams, the father of the American Revolution, speaks not only to British economic tyranny but to the leaders of any national welfare state. He says, “The Utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth], and a community of goods [socialism], are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government unconstitutional. Now what property can the colonists be conceived to have, if their money may be granted away by others, without their consent?” With these foundations of a biblical worldview education, accountable and decentralized government, a welfare net of private charities and free enterprise as the engine of prosperity - our founders bequeathed to us the greatest freedom and prosperity any nation has known. We have inherited the greatest roadmap for liberty. Let us dedicate “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” to rebuilding our nation from the grassroots up – God’s way. us2.campaign-archive2/?u=da3093384d3ef853daf0e892b&id=23c828d104&e=d136c86d7e
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 00:15:17 +0000
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