America’s constitutional republic ignited the flame of freedom for the entire world! When the U.S. Constitution was signed, tyrants ruled virtually everywhere on the planet. For 5,000 years, on every continent and in every tribe, dictators controlled and impoverished their people by force. The American colonists were the first people since the Ancient Hebrews to break with this worldwide stronghold of tyranny.
The authentic history of their accomplishment is fully documented in the original writings of the colonists and founders. Tragically, this history has not been taught for generations. “Thought police in American schools and rotten history textbooks are as great a threat to American freedoms as Al Qaeda terrorists,” says noted historian David Mc-Cullough. “Young Americans are to a very large degree historically illiterate…. It’s not their fault… They are being cheated and handicapped, and our way of life could very well be in jeopardy because of this. History is a story, cause and effect…. They almost have no sense of cause and effect. They have no sense of what followed what and why, that everything has antecedents, and everything has consequences.” 1
Recovering our history is the vital link to restoring our troubled nation. By the time of the founding of America, the colonists had created successful, self-governing “little republics” in each of the thirteen colonies. The people of each colony had written their own civil governments. Their governments were controlled by the people at the grassroots (bottom up), not by governing elites (top down). This was the key to American liberty as it developed through the generations.
This form of government was modeled after the only other long-lasting republic in history, that of the Ancient Hebrews. The colonists were 98% Protestants. They were sons and daughters of the Reformation. They or their ancestors had ventured across the Atlantic in search of religious liberty, free from persecution and torture. The colonists had become the most literate people in the world. 2 They were orthodox believers in the central teachings of the Bible. These teachings included the sovereignty of God, the sin nature of man and the priesthood of all believers. These teachings inspired Americans to put their trust in Divine Providence and to reject unaccountable power in government.
With this background and biblical understanding of government, the American Founders penned the Declaration of Independence as their founding Charter. “The ideas in the Declaration grew out of Western, Christian political theory and had been developing for seven hundred years.” 3 The Declaration was in the direct line of other famous freedom documents such as Magna Carta, Scottish National Covenant and the English Bill of Rights. “[E]very key term in the Declaration of Independence had its roots in the Bible, Christian theology, the Western Christian intellectual tradition, medieval Christianity, Christian political theory, and the Christian influence on the six-hundred year development of the English common law.” 4
Each critical phrase of the Declaration reveals the covenant between the Americans and God. First, “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them” to form a nation. Second, “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Third, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” Finally, the Founders closed America’s founding charter with a covenant promise: “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
After the signing of the Declaration, each of the former colonies, now states, carried their biblical models of self governing republics into their new state constitutions. “The early state constitutions adopted in 1776… usually summarized and codified what the colonists of each state had built over the previous 150 years.” 5 As the founders considered improving their structure of government after the war, the states were to create the Constitution, not the Constitution to create the states.
In 1780s, the new nation faced fear of invasion from France, England and Spain. These countries all smelled blood in the water, because America was so young, and perceived as weak. By 1785, men like Noah Webster, George Washington and James Madison began meeting and discussing how they could create a stronger union of the states, especially regarding foreign affairs and interstate commerce. The Articles of Confederation, their only national government, was insufficient for this task.
In May of 1787, 56 delegates from the states gathered in Philadelphia for four months to “Form a more perfect union.” The legal union, called the United States, had been formed twelve years before by the Declaration of Independence. The founders had studied all forms of government throughout history. Benjamin Franklin said, “We have gone back to ancient history for models of government and examined the different forms.” 6 After four months of deliberation, the delegates rejected monarchy and the secular, atheist democracy that was about to bring chaos and death to France in 1789. They also rejected socialism, which they knew was the old charade of forced redistribution of wealth. This false promise had been used by rulers throughout history. One Father of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams, exposed the concept as a fantasy. He said, “The Utopian schemes of leveling [re-distribution of the wealth] and a community of goods [central ownership of the means of production and distribution], are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown [king]. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional.” 7
On September 17, 1787, the delegates unanimously agreed on a Constitution to replace the Articles of Incorporation. America’s founding principles and the inalienable rights of the people under God had already been established in the Declaration of independence. The Declaration was America’s founding Charter. The Constitution was a unique governmental structure to carry out the principles of the Declaration. The Constitution reserves most all powers to the states and the people. It delegated a few specific, express powers to the national government. These powers included the coining of money; the establishment of the post office; the regulation of commerce between the states; the establishment of a defensive military force to defend the nation, when needed; and the right to negotiate treaties with other nations.
The Constitution followed the biblical model of the Ancient Hebrew Republic. Like the Hebrews, it established three branches of government to further divide the power of the national government. It then established checks and balances between the branches so the corrupt actions of one branch or individual could be thwarted before tyranny resulted. Then as a final protection, the founders included a Bill of Rights. These were expressed in the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. All of these Amendments were written to limit government power over the peoples’ inalienable, God-given rights. The Tenth Amendment specifically limits the power of the national government over the people. Then the Amendment states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The founders believed that almost all of the personal concerns of individuals should be decided by the people they affect at the local level. These concerns include our families, our careers, our finances, the education of our children, and our religious beliefs. These issues were not to be determined by a national [federal] government hundreds of miles away from home and town.
The chief author of the Constitution, James Madison, and the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, agreed on the purpose of the Constitution. Madison said, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The [federal government] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce…. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.”8 Thomas Jefferson agreed, “Our general [national] government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.” 9
Traveling America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed this key to American liberty. He said that in the local towns “we find the germ and gradual development of township independence which is the life and mainspring of American liberty at the present day. He spoke of the profound difference between Europe and America. The political existence of the majority of the nations of Europe [began] in the superior ranks of society [the governing elites] and was gradually and imperfectly communicated to the different members of the social body [everyday people]. In America, on the contrary, it may be said that the township was organized before the county, the county before the state, the state before the union [federal government].” 10
Wise Americans throughout our nation’s history have warned us of the never-ending assaults, often subtle plots, against our constitutional liberties. History has proven that we have faced these moves toward tyranny in every generation. Unfortunately, in the 20th century these warnings have been ignored at our peril.
In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned us of perhaps our greatest danger as a nation. He said, “A small but artful and enterprising minority [would-be tyrants] … are likely, in the course of time … to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government …” Four decades later, President Andrew Jackson, in his Farewell Address, agreed with Washington’s warning. He said, “… There have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the general [national] government … to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution … It is from within, among yourselves … from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power — that factions will be formed and liberty endangered.”
The sage of the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin, warned Americans to never allow money to become a motivation for public office. He said that if we do, our elected representatives will fight to stay in government as a career. He said, “There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice [greed]; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these had great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects.” He said that when government becomes a well-paid career, bad people will move heaven and earth to attain and maintain these power positions in perpetuity…. “These will thrust themselves into your government and be your rulers.” 11
Throughout the 19th century our self-governing republic created untold prosperity and freedom. But there was a gradual decline in faith, spurred on by the importation of pagan philosophies like Marxism and secular humanism. Abraham Lincoln saw the cooling of our God-given spirit as a people. He said in 1858, “What constitutes the [safeguard] of our liberty and independence?… Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us…. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors…. You have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. 12
The cunning tyranny of the Marxist/socialist ideology of Karl Marx swept into America just as Lincoln warned of our loss of the spirit of the “liberty which God has planted in us.” Today socialism is an ideological pandemic spreading throughout America. Its roots are in the writings of Karl Marx in the 19th century. But in the 20th century his abhorrent theories were put into practice, as 150 million people were exterminated by the secular socialists/communists and the fascists.
In 1954, former President Herbert Hoover exposed the spiritual battle behind the socialist onslaught we see today. He said, “I have witnessed on the ground in twenty nations the workings of the philosophy of that anti-Christ, Karl Marx…. Our Founding Fathers did not invent the priceless boon of individual freedom and respect for the dignity of men. That great gift to mankind springs from the Creator and not from governments.… Today the Socialist virus and poison gas generated by Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels have spread into every nation on the earth.… Their dogma is absolute materialism [atheism] which defies truth and religious faith.… God has blessed us with.… heritage. The great documents of that heritage are not from Karl Marx. They are from the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Within them alone can the safeguards of freedom survive.”
The warnings above seem almost Pollyanna to many Americans today. Our nation is so deeply divided. But be encouraged. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed. They always have been, they always will be, beaten.”
History reveals that a devout minority of individuals who align themselves with the purposes of the Almighty, are those who liberate entire nations. “The
testimony of history is that truth and the critical mass sufficient for cultural change resides in the minority — usually a small minority, and often in only one
individual.”
— Marshall Foster
Footnotes
- McCullough, David, The Washington Times, May 16, 2002; Humanities, NEH Chairman Bruce Cole, July/August 2002
- Thomas Jefferson’s study on the literacy of America in 1800, conducted by Dupont de Nemours, recorded in the National Education in the United States of America, Newark, Delaware; University of Delaware Press. 1923
- Amos, Gary T., Defending the Declaration (Providence Foundation, Charlottesville, VA, 1989) p. 128
- Ibid, p.3
- Lutz, Donald S. Ed., Colonial Origins of the American Constitution. (Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1998) p. xxxi
- Ben Franklin speaking at the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787.
- Skousen, W. Cleon, The 5000 Year Leap (National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1981) p. 30
- Madison, James, The Federalist Papers #45
- Bergh, Albert, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 10, p.168
- Eidsmoe, John, Historical and Theological Foundations of Law (American Visions Press, 2012) p. 1309
- Skousen, op. cit. pgs. 65-67
- Federer, William, Rise of the Tyrant, (Amerisearch Inc., 2016) p. 344
The original of this article first appeared as an edition of the World History Institute Journal, November-December 2019 edition, as a circular newsletter, and on the site of the World History Institute.
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