Link to the Declaration of Independence
The results of the polls are scary when Americans are asked what is the Declaration of Independence and to name three people who signed it. We are forgetting our past, and it is a shame. There was one little boy in the teacher’s class who really struggled to learn. One day the teacher asked him who signed the Declaration of Independence, and of course he didn’t know. The teacher asked him every day for a week but still he couldn’t give the right answer. Finally, in desperation, she called the boy’s father to come and see her. She said to him, “Your boy won’t tell me who signed the Declaration of Independence.” The father said to his son, “Come here, boy, and sit down.” The boy duly did as he was told and then his dad said to him, “Now if you signed that stupid thing, just admit it so we can get out of here.”
At our own peril we forget about the Declaration of Independence and great men who signed it.
“…with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” – The Declaration of Independence
With these words Thomas Jefferson concluded the document we know today as the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six men would sign this document of freedom and truly put their lives, fortunes and honor on the line. Five of the signers were captured by the British, tried as traitors, 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 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the revolutionary war. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. They signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
These men were true radical revolutionaries. They put everything on the line. They counted the cost and proved themselves willing to risk everything for the idea of a new nation founded on the self-evident truth “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
I never thought there would come a day in our nation when these valiant men would be held with such disdain by as growing segment of society, and scorned by the media, politicians and celebrities. But every day a new assault against our founding fathers is launched by some of the weakest, dumbest and foulest people. The flag is desecrated, Christianity is mocked, the idea of family, motherhood and raising children is lampooned, and most recently they’ve come after good ole Betsy Ross, who, by the way, was a Quaker and an early supporter of the abolition of slavery. But, you see, the truth doesn’t matter to those who make such attacks. It’s not about Betsy Ross. It’s about power. It’s about lampooning, mocking, belittling, undervaluing and rejecting the men and women who founded this country, who made it great, so that another ideology can gain power. In the process, this new ideology seeks to destroy the bedrock of the nation, which is life, liberty, property, families and God in order to install a godless, materialistic, globalist, borderless world. But they can only achieve this if those brilliant, brave, Christian men who came from the far shores of England to establish a new nation, under God, are pushed aside, forgotten and belittled.
We must never forget that our inheritance of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness comes from those brilliant, brave, Christian men who came from the far shores of England. Our rights to freedom of press, of religion, of assembly, of bearing arms, of a trial by a jury of our peers, of freedom from having our homes invaded by the government, the freedom to be left alone, these were not universally known ideas to the world in 1776. They are a unique gift from the men of England, who themselves were heirs to a long struggle for freedom and liberty in Europe for hundreds of years. These men were the ones who established this nation. The long history of this country has been a constant struggle to protect our rights given to us by our Creator from power-hungry usurpers of those rights, whether they be greedy corporatists, wild-eyed socialists or foreign aggressors. And always we must go back to these amazing men from New England and be grateful for their sacrifice, for being courageous enough to put everything on the line to uphold and defend their freedom.
Today there is an insidious political movement abroad in our nation to wash away any remembrance of these English colonial revolutionaries who would become the founders of the early United States, men such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. These are men who you and I were raised and educated to admire and venerate because of their brilliance, courage and commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, recognizing that they were flawed men, but great men, nonetheless.
The founding fathers were inheritors of a great tradition of freedom that had been fought for and earned over the course of hundreds of years in Europe. For example, the Magna Carta of 1215 outlawed absolute monarchy while establishing the right to petition one’s government to resolve grievances. The Protestant Reformation encouraged free thinkers to follow one’s God-inspired conscience. European writers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau all contributed to political and philosophical thought that would influence our founding fathers and our Declaration of Independence. Revolutionaries like Jefferson, Franklin and Washington were all inspired by this long line of freedom and liberty that grew out of long, hard struggle for freedom in Europe and England. If we scratch out the names of these great men and others like them, we ignore their heritage and diminish our heritage. All we are left with is our documents such as the Declaration or the Constitution that have no context, no history. If they have no context or history, people can make those documents anything they want. And that is what is happening. Radical Ideologues today are imagining and creating an America that looks nothing like what the Founders envisioned, wrote about and defended. You can go to the historical documents, such as the Federalist Papers, and see what they envisioned, and it looks nothing like the globalist, borderless, corporatist state being advocated by radicals today. If we are not careful, the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence will disappear from public discourse within a generation.
What we need to do today is become modern-day revolutionaries in the vein of Jefferson, Franklin and Washington. We need to become men and women who are willing to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Who would have thought, but the “radical” ideas and behaviors listed below make us modern-day revolutionaries. Our goal is to practice and proclaim these principles and behaviors until they become the norm again in American society.
- Live worthy of a people called Americans. I’ve recently spoken on the mediocrity, immorality and crudeness of the common American today. Reach for greatness in all that you do as an American. From the simplest task, whatever your profession, as a father, mother, student, Church member, pursue excellence.
- Be proud of your heritage. Acknowledge faults, but do not be denied the richness and greatness of your Western Christian heritage.
- Recommit yourself to the same God of Providence to whom our founding fathers dedicated themselves. Pledge yourself to be a committed, devoted, member of your Church, with the goal of see that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are achieved through your worship, your prayers and your ministries.
- Support and strengthen the family. The bedrock of any community and nation is the family. Be good fathers and mothers. Raise your children to pursue excellence, to be proud of their national and religious heritage. Young people, include marriage and children in your future. It is the greatest blessing you will ever know. It is the one greatest act of devotion to your community and nation, to raise up Christian children who love their homeland.
- Join with other citizens in organizations that strengthen the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We used to be a nation of joiners. Now we stay home and watch TV. Get out and make your nation great.
Do not let your history be erased. Instead, be proud and put into practice a life worthy of one called an American.
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