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American Minute with Bill Federer LABOR DAY: Railroad Strikes, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Socialist Party of America, Outsourcing

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Labor Day. The history is a little more interesting than just picnics and hot dogs.

To appreciate it, some background is necessary.

At the time the United States was founded, most people were self-employed, working as either farmers or in trades, such as:

  • baker,
  • butcher,
  • carpenter,
  • cabinetmaker,
  • upholsterer,
  • tailor,
  • milliner (clothes merchant),
  • cobbler (shoe maker),
  • chandler (candle maker),
  • cooper (barrel maker),
  • wheelwright (wheel craftsman).
  • blacksmith,
  • gunsmith,
  • printer, and
  • apothecary … continue reading …

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Then, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain in the late 18th century.

Where Ireland burned peat from bogs, Britain burned coal from mines.

The problem was that mines kept filling up with water.

Scottish inventor James Watt came up with an invention to pump water out of mines — a steam pump.
Steam was soon harnessed in the early 19th century to not just power pumps, but railroad steam engines, steam boats, and textile manufacturing machines.

This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively.

Workers moved from farms to factories. The products they manufactured were imported into America.

During the colonial era, Britain prevented factories from being built in America.

After the Revolution, Samuel Slater built the first factory in America in 1790, a cotton spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The first union in America was a shoe makers union in Philadelphia in 1794.

President Washington signed a bill putting a tariff tax on European-manufactured products making them more expensive in order to encourage people to purchase American-manufactured products.

Tariffs were the main source of income for the Federal government, as there was no income tax till Lincoln’s temporary one during the Civil War.

Most of America’s factories were located in Northern states.

Tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was agricultural with few factories.

At one point, nearly 90 percent of the Federal budget came from tariff taxes collected at Southern ports.

This fueled animosity between the North and South prior to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, more tariff taxes were passed allowing Northern factories to grow enormous.

Factories produced items like clothes, glass, dishes, and farm tools for a fraction of the previous costs.

Women were freed up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.

Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.

New ways of making stronger iron and steel helped build bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats, and mining machinery.

Railroads began taking people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation, opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity.

Inventions and advances in manufacturing made more goods available at cheaper prices.

Americans experienced the fastest rise in the standard of living of any people in world history.

Factories and railroads hired workers from the millions of immigrants, who, while working, learned the language and trade skills.

President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886 to welcome immigrants, who were mostly English, Irish, Scandinavian, Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russian, Jews, and Germans.

Immigrants were anxious to the learn English language and assimilate, swearing allegiance to their new country.

Most immigrants were hard workers, as noted by German sociologist Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904-1905.

It was a foundational textbook in economic sociology, listed as the 4th most important sociological book of the 20th century by the International Sociological Association.

Weber documented how modern capitalism evolved out of the Protestant Calvinism in Northern Europe, which emphasized self-discipline, hard work, frugality, thrift, and avoidance of all forms of indulgence for religious reasons.

Weber described Calvinists, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, traditional Lutherans, pietist Lutherans, and Moravians from Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf’s Herrnhut community.

Religious adherents established private secular enterprises, engaged in trade, and accumulated wealth to support charitable missionary activity.

A literary genre that developed at this time were “rags-to-riches” stories, highlighting individuals who were honest, worked hard, and gained strength through adversity to achieve success.

In 1867, Horatio Alger began publishing a best-selling novels, such as:

Ragged Dick;

Strong and Steady, Or, Paddle Your Own Canoe; and

Shifting for Himself: Or Gilbert Greyson’s Fortune.

These were stories were about immigrants, impoverished orphans, or homeless street boys, who sold newspapers, polished shoes or sold apples, demonstrating the Protestant work ethic, and rose from humble beginnings to achieving success.

In 1894, Orison Swett Marden wrote “Pushing to the Front”, and in 1897, he founded SUCCESS magazine, publishing inspirational stories of success in life through common-sense principles and well-rounded virtues.

Immigrants were not a financial burden on the government, as there were no government welfare programs.

Extended family, churches, and generous individuals who gave to charity were the welfare net.

Some German immigrants brought with them Karl Marx’s ideas of “critical theory,” which divided citizens into groups, pit them against each other in a “class-struggle,” to forcibly redistribute wealth.

These ideas only found limited acceptance in America, as wealth could be achieved in one lifetime if one was innovative and worked hard. This era was referred to as The Gilded Age.

The situation was different in Europe, where wealthy elites owned most of the property, passing it from generation to generation for centuries, leaving little for commoners.

Socialist ideas created labor tensions, with some workers even embracing the anarchist goal of tearing down the capitalist system, naively hoping a utopian socialist economy would take its place.

Factory working conditions were often unsafe, as noted in Charles Dicken’s Hard Times, 1854, and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, 1905.

Though immigrants were not forced to work in factories, many joined in organizing unions push for better working conditions, an 8-hour work day, and income taxes on the rich.

Union organizing flyers were printed in English and German languages.

Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical reaper, built a factory in Chicago. A Presbyterian, McCormick felt his reaper would help to fulfill a religious mission to feed the world.

In 1869, McCormick donated $10,000 to Dwight L. Moody to build the Chicago Young Men’s Christian Assoication.

Beginning in 1882, there was an economic downturn in America.

In German immigrants holding socialist ideas organized a protest on May 4, 1886, near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant in Chicago.

The “peaceful” protest turned into the Haymarket Riot. A protestor threw a dynamite bomb at the police.

The blast, and the violence that followed, killed seven police officers, four civilians, and wounded dozens more.

To commemorate the incident, socialist workers made May 1st “International Workers Day.”

Then came a railroad strike.

George Pullman founded the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company.

Pullman saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them houses in a safe little village around the factory, with rent deducted from paychecks.

To save them the trouble of traveling to the markets, he located stores on site.

Workers were paid company “scrip,” similar to food stamps, which were redeemable at the company-owned grocery stores.

It was considered a utopian workers’ paradise community, in the vein of Sir Thomas More’s Island of Utopia, published in 1516; and Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, published in 1626.

The Pullman community worked for over a decade until there was a nationwide economic depression in 1893, resulting in orders for railroad sleeping cars dropping off.

To keep the company afloat, George Pullman had to make cuts in wages and lay off hundreds of employees, though, for the time being, rents and groceries stayed the same price.

Employees were distraught, as they had grown dependent on the company.

Some employees walked off their jobs, demanding higher pay and lower rents, being unaware that the reason for the cuts was that the company needed to stay in business during the economic crash.

A high school drop out named Eugene Debs got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.

He was promoted to locomotive fireman and joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman.

He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.

When the 1893 economic downturn occurred, Debs organized a railroad workers strike in 1894.

Union workers across the nation joined in boycotting trains carrying Pullman cars.

Then rioters pillaged and burned railroad cars, destroying an estimated $80 million worth of property in 27 states.

A New York Times editorial, July 9, 1894, called Debs “a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race.”

“Debs’ Rebellion” became a national issue because it interrupted delivery of mail.

President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 U.S. Army troops to break up the strike.

More violence erupted, and two were killed.

After the riots, Americans blamed the Democrat Administration.

Democrat advisor Francis Lynde Stetson warned Cleveland regarding the upcoming mid-term elections of 1894:

“We are on the eve of very dark night, unless a return of commercial prosperity relieves popular discontent with what they believe is Democratic incompetence to make laws, and consequently with Democratic Administrations anywhere and everywhere.”

Cleveland thought it might improve his Party’s election chances if workers were given a day off, so support grew for a national “LABOR DAY.”

Workers wanted Labor Day to be on May 1st to coincide with the “International Workers Day” and the anniversary of the bloody Chicago’s Haymarket Riot.

Instead, Grover Cleveland chose the FIRST MONDAY in SEPTEMBER to celebrate LABOR DAY.

What happened to May 1st?

Patriotic Americans celebrated May 1st as “Loyalty Day,” officially recognized by Congress, April 27, 1955, and proclaimed an annual holiday by President Eisenhower with Public Law 85-529.

What happened in the 1894 elections?

It did not help the Democrat Party as it had the biggest mid-term loss in decades.

What happened to Eugene Debs?

He was arrested, because the railroad strike obstructed delivery of United States mail, and he was put in prison for six months.

In prison, Debs “ravenously” read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

Socialist progressives demanded the redistribution of wealth, resulting in the passage of:

* corporate income tax, 1894;

* personal income tax, 1914; and

* inheritance estate tax, 1916.

Debs and socialist rioters were defended by the attorney Clarence Darrow.

Darrow later defended evolution in the Scope’s Monkey Trial.

After six months in prison, Eugene Debs was released.

He then founded:

* the Social Democracy of America, 1897;

* the Social Democratic Party of America, 1898; and

* the Socialist Party of America, 1901.

Debs ran five time for United States President as a socialist, 1900 till 1920. He won zero electoral votes, so he wanted to get rid of America’s electoral process.

When World War One started, Debs urged resistance to the draft.

One draft-dodger was Roger Baldwin, who later founded the A.C.L.U. – American Civil Liberties Union – to help defend those who were accused of being socialist agitators.

Roger Baldwin wrote:

“I am for socialism … I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

Eugene Deb’s reputation spread around the world to Russia, where he influenced socialist leader Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution overthrowing Tsar Nicholas II and killing an estimated 12 million.

Lenin cited Debs in “An Open Letter to Boris Souvarine,” published January 27, 1918, in La Vente, No. 48:

“Look at America—apart from everything else a neutral country. Haven’t we the beginnings of a split there, too: Eugene Debs, the ‘American Rebel’, declares in the socialist press that he recognizes only one type of war, civil war for the victory of socialism, and that he would sooner be shot than vote a single cent for American war expenditure ”

Eugene Deb’s Appeal to Reason, “When I Shall Fight,” Number 1032, September 11, 1915).

Lenin wrote “On the Appeal of the German Independents,” February 1919, Lenin Miscellany 24, 1933; Lenin Collected Works, 1971, Moscow.

“I quoted the statement of the ‘American Rebel,’ Eugene Debs, to the effect that he would rather be shot than agree to vote for imperialist war loans, and that he would agree to fight only in a war of the workers against the capitalists.”

Debs gave an anti-government speech in Canton, Ohio, June 16, 1918, resulting in his arrest.

He was charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison.

A May Day parade in was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, to support Debs, led by union members, socialists, and anarchists.

Their peaceful parade broke out into Antifa-style violence — the May Day Riots of 1919.

Debs’ attorney asked for a Presidential pardon, but Woodrow Wilson wrote “denied” across the paperwork, stating that during World War One:

“While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them …

This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.”

The next President, Warren Harding, also did not pardon Debs, and the White House released the statement:

“There is no question of his guilt … He is … a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.”

Theodore Roosevelt had criticized Debs for fomenting “bloodshed, anarchy, and riot,” calling him one of the nation’s most “undesirable citizens.”

In 1979, Bernie Sanders produced a documentary praising Eugene Debs. He hung a portrait of Debs in the City Hall of Burlington, Vermont, and dedicated a plaque to him in his Congressional office.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin decided to take his revolution global, forming the Communist International in 1919.

Members of Debs’ Socialist Party of America followed suit and formed the Communist Party USA on September 1, 1919.

The Communist Party USA ran candidates for United States President every year from 1924 till 1940.

That is when they decided to support Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt for his New Deal welfare programs during the Great Depression and for his treaty with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin during World War Two.

Reagan commented on communist infiltration of the Democrat Party:

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.”

Party infiltration was listed as one of the communist goals for America, read into the Congressional Record by Representative Albert S. Herlong, January 10, 1963:

“Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.”

Former Democrat United States Senator Zell Miller stated in an interview for his book Deficit of Decency, 2005:

“Unfortunately, the national Democratic Party has lost its way … and they’ve been taken over by the very liberal, left-wing leaning special interest groups that you have in Washington.”

In Chicago, a statue was erected to honor the police officers killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot.

That statue was blown up on October 6, 1969, by the anarchist “Weatherman Underground” during their Days of Rage.

Chicago rebuilt the Haymarket statue, only see it blown up again by the Weatherman Underground, October 6, 1970.

Weatherman Underground member Bill Ayers later helped launch the political career of a young Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

Bill Ayers stated:

“I am a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist … Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it … The ethics of communism still appeal to me. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx.”

Weatherman Underground member Eric Mann helped train Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters.

Cullors stated in 2015:

“Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers … We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

In America, laborers work hard for wages with which they can buy things, trucks, houses, cars, boats, guns, and other personal possessions.

They also can give away some of their possessions to those in need in charity.

In socialist countries, laborers work hard, but own no possessions.

People with no possessions have nothing with which to be charitable.

Marx and Engles wrote in the Communist Manifesto, 1848:

“The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Lenin stated:

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

Marx described socialism as a transition phase from capitalism to communism, in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part Four:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation.”

Author Ayn Rand wrote:

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force; socialism – by vote.

It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Socialists believe that when governments finally succeed in taking away all the private possessions from everyone in the entire world, then the world will magically become a wonderful utopia called communism.

The term “communism” comes from the Latin word “communis,”meaning everything held in common.

Communist goals are not just to end private property, but to end privacy. People will not even have control over their own children.

The government will control everything, on both the production side and the consumption side.

In 1971, John Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-wrote the song “Imagine,” with socialist-themed lyrics: “Imagine no possessions … And no religion too.”

Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum stated that by 2030: “You will own nothing but be happy.”

The term “socialism” was coined by French political philosopher Henry de Saint-Simon, 1760–1825, to mean the opposite of the “individual.”

Use of the term socialism was popularized by mid-to-late 1800s European theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci.

In contrast to the socialism is Judeo-Christian Western Civilization, which promotes the concept of the individual — that each person has worth and an identity apart from belonging to any group, simply by virtue of being made in the image of God, who is not a respecter of persons.

John F. Kennedy stated in his Inaugural Address, 1961:

“The Rights of man Come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

Harry Truman stated in his Inaugural Address, 1949:

“We believe that all men are created equal, because they are created in the image of God.”

“Capitalism” is where individuals have their own money, or capital, and can invest it in a business to provide goods or services – the production side.

Individuals can also earn money with which they can buy things – the consumption side.

Socialist Antonio Gramsci explained that the Judeo-Christian idea of “individual” must be replaced by group identity, as he wrote in “Audacia e Fede,” printed in the Avanti! newspaper, May 1916:

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity.”

James Wardner summarized Gramsci’s views in Unholy Alliances, 1996:

“In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

The most opportune time to transition from “individual” to “group” is in crises.

Marx and Friedrich Engels explained in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Volume 10, page 318:

“Conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat – working class. Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …

For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”

It should be acknowledged that Unions did help to bring about:

an end of child labor;

an 8-hour work day;

a 40-hour work week;

minimum wages;

safer working conditions; and

more benefits for workers.

These benefits, as good as they are, came with a cost.

Companies began to look for ways to cut expenses and limit the power of unions.

Henry Ford’s Motor Company was one of the first companies required to implement union benefits.

A story circulated that Henry Ford wanted to break union control by recruiting Muslims to work in his factories.

Ford was said to have met a Yemeni sailor at port.

Witnessing his hard work, Ford told him if he showed up at his auto factory he would give him a job that paid five dollars a day.

The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries to Detroit.

ArabAmerica.com reported, September 5, 2020:

“The origin story of how the Yemeni community in Michigan is an interesting one.

Way back in the early 1900s, Henry Ford started recruiting Yemeni workers to work at Ford’s factories.

After a few years, Ford sent for more workers and the Yemeni American community began to grow.

People who gained citizenship during their time working for Ford brought family over and started lives in Michigan while remaining close to their family back in Yemen.”

Henry Ford may have thus initiated the mass immigration of Middle Easterners to Dearborn and Hamtramck in order to counter unions.

Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper immigrant labor undercut union wages.

Another unanticipated consequence of the cost of workers’ benefits was automation and out-sourcing as ways companies could stay competitive in the global marketplace.

After World War Two, America helped rebuild Germany and Japan with new factories.

These overseas factories, with their cheaper labor costs and newer machinery, produced items less expensively and took a larger part of the global market.

They hired lobbyists to push for United States politicians to lower tariffs so they could bring their less expensive products in, gaining a competitive advantage over American factories.

Higher costs of doing business in the United States included:

Higher wages;

Increased taxes;

Expensive lawsuits;

Burdensome regulations;

Environmental restrictions;

Crony capitalism, globalist capitalism, vulture capitalism, and big tech monopolies, where career politicians provide subsidies, contracts, and relax regulations for companies supporting their political agendas and reelection campaigns ;but deny those benefits and even weaponizing government against companies not supporting them.

As American-made products became more expensive in comparison to foreign-made products, consumers bought fewer of them, resulting in American factories needing fewer workers.

“Squeeze the sponge and the water goes out” – as manufacturing costs in America rose, manufacturers moved with their jobs to other countries.

Many companies were sadly put in the position of going out of country or going out of business.

To personalize this, if you needed gas for your car, and the gas station on your side of the street sold it at $4.50 a gallon, but the station on the other side of the street sold it for just $1.99 a gallon, would you cross the street?

Just as water seeks its own level, individuals and businesses are motivated to save money.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are an attempt to bring factories and jobs back to America, making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.

Another by-product of companies moving overseas was their loss of patriotism, creating “globalists.”

Globalists are international big businesses whose patriotism is to their profits.

Globalists are happy to work with socialist and communist governments as a means secure monopolies and guarantee profits.

Capitalism is effectively split in two:

“individual” capitalism being patriotic, supporting the countrythat gives equal opportunities for advancement;

and

“globalist” capitalism which squelches competition by supporting one world government socialist politicians who return the favor with profitable government contracts, exception of regulations, and insider trade deals.

Politicians receiving money from globalists are pressured to enact regulations which put smaller competitors out of business.

As unions grew, another situation developed. Union leadership often held values different than rank-and-file workers.

Many workers supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological male and female definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet union leadership often funneled union dues to support candidates who voted for opposing views.

Ironicaly, socialist strategy includes raising unemployment rates so unemployed workers will sign up for welfare benefits.

Once they become dependent on welfare benefits, they are inclined to vote for politicians who promise to continue them.

More unemployment means more people on welfare, means an increased Democart voter base.

If welfare entitlements are threatened, recipients are primed to be organized into revolutionaries.

Socialist thinker Friedrich Engels wrote in 1844, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844; London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976:

“Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.

This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.

In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushschev reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, in 1959:

“We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Union membership has declined in America from a high of 35 percent of the workforce in 1954 to currently less than 9.9 percent.

Instead of attracting manufacturers back to America, many unions have focused on increasing membership by recruiting from other occupations, such as government, education, medical professionals, sports, service industry, and retail.

Warning American workers of the hidden danger of the “social justice” movement, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had spent 11 years in labor camps in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, stated, June 30, 1975:

“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust …

Prevent those … who are attempting to establish even finer … legal shades of equality — because of their … falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road …

They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat …

I call upon you: ordinary working men of America … do not let yourselves become weak.”

America’s entrepreneurial spirit was articulated by Booker T. Washington, who founded the National Negro Business League in 1900.

He stated:

“Anyone can seek a job, but it requires a person of rare ability to create a job … What we should do in our schools is to turn out fewer job seekers and more job creators.”

Reagan stated in 1988:

“I believe we really can say that God did give mankind virtually unlimited gifts to invent, produce, and create. And for that reason alone, it would be wrong for governments to devise a tax structure or economic system that suppresses and denies those gifts.”

A spiritual insight is found in First Corinthians 15:58:

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

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The Weekly Sam: How to Increase Your Vocabulary By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Evolutionists love to remind us how close our DNA is to that of the chimpanzee or
gorilla. But there is one very sharp distinction between human beings and every other
species, including the various kinds of monkeys. God gave us the faculty of language,
the faculty of speech.

Why did God so endow the human being with this remarkable ability? If you read the
Bible you will find the answer. We read in Genesis 1:27: “And God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
We were created to be like God, to have certain attributes of God, but not be God. The
next passage makes that clear: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and of every living thing that moveth upon
the earth.”

And in order to do all of that God gave man a brain properly endowed with extraordinary
intelligence in order to carry out these huge tasks. The Bible further states in Genesis
2:19: “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every
fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
In other words, God made Adam into a lexicographer–an inventor of names, a creator of
vocabulary. Indeed, God gave man the power of language in order to serve four
different functions: The first, to know God and be able to communicate with Him. We
do that every day through prayer. We’ve done that by writing the Bible, the history of
man’s relations with God. Second, we use language to know one’s mate with the ability
to communicate at the deepest intimate level. Third, we use language to be able to know
other human beings and thereby create society. And Fourth, we use language to know
oneself. We are constantly speaking inwardly to ourselves in order to understand who
and what we are, and in order to transform our dreams and ideas into reality.

So why should we want to expand our vocabularies? Because knowledge is power, and
every new word represents new knowledge. And how does one increase one’s
vocabulary? A good place to start is by reading Shakespeare’s plays, all 36 of them
which were published in the First Folio in 1623. It is said that Shakespeare invented
more new words than any other writer in English literature. New words are needed
when it is necessary to convey the meaning of something for which no word exists.

Another good way to expand one’s vocabulary is to read 19th century literature, including
Dickens, Carlyle, James Fenimore Cooper, Thackerary, Washington Irving, and other
great masters of the written word, who had extensive, rich vocabularies. Also read the
most literate writers you can find who are not afraid to show off their use of vocabulary.
However, whenever reading such works, keep a blank notebook at your side in which you
can jot down all of the new words you’ve encountered. Then read their definitions in your
dictionary and write your own sentences using these new words. Remember, the more
words you know, the more knowledge you have, for each new word represents new
knowledge.

As we said, new words are needed to express new ideas or actions for which no words
exist. This is particularly true in our hi-tech culture where advances in computer and
internet technology require us to invent new words. Words like “geek” and “nerd” were
invented by students to describe those with a passion for computers and technological
inventions. Such new words are being invented every day.
The fact that God commanded Adam to name every living creature meant that an
important part of being a human was the need to make good use of greatest gift God gave
us, the faculty of language.
.
In other words, man was exalted in a way that no other species was by his Creator.
Thus, increasing and expanding one’s vocabulary is not only necessary for the
advancement of man’s purpose on earth, but also needed to carry out God’s
commandments. Besides having been given the faculty of speech we were also endowed
with a voice-box that could express thoughts and ideas by sounds. An extraordinary
physical phenomenon.

Language, in fact, is the link to the spiritual dimension in our lives. Man is a spiritual as
well as a physical being. We are made of matter by God who is not matter. Indeed, if
you become a physicist, you will find that the deeper you explore the nature of matter,
you will reach virtually no matter at all.

Remember, language is sounds made by the voice box. It has no substance but what it
signals in our heads. But written language has permitted us to make a permanent record
of what is said. That is why we have science, history, and life stories to tell.
It is the exploration of that microcosmic realm that has made it possible for man to
develop computer science in which a million transistors can be put on a microscopic
silicon chip.

So scientists increase our vocabulary every day by making discoveries that have to be
named. Whenever we invent something new, we have to invent words to describe it.
By the way, God put our language faculty in the left hemisphere of our brains. It is our
most valuable piece of brain matter. Without it we would not be human beings. The
right hemisphere deals with space, dimension, art, and perspective. In American schools
teachers force students to use the right brain to perform the functions of the left brain.
The result is dyslexia.

Learning to read must be taught phonetically through intensive phonics so that it
conforms with the functions of the language faculty and expands its power. In fact our
alphabetic reading and writing system is the most successful reading system ever
invented because it conforms with the left brain’s faculty, thus making it easy for anyone
to learn to read.

And so, increase your vocabulary in order to increase the power of your brain and the
power of your mind. Our brains emit dreams, images, and ideas that are not matter, but
are the basis of human power. The more words you know, the more power you will
have to create, grow, and prosper. Indeed, learning the vocabulary of the stock market
may lead you to become a millionaire.

The Weekly Sam: America Started with Educational Freedom By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

One of the reasons why the United States of America got off to such a great start is
because we had total educational freedom. When the Constitution was written, there was
already by then a great variety of teaching institutions. The Dames Schools were colonial
preschools in which children were taught the three R’s in preparation for going on to an
academy. The academy was a private school run by an educational entrepreneur. It
prepared students for higher learning or a trade or profession. They were considered the
most appropriate educational institution for a free people. Their responsibility was to the
parents who put their children in the academy.

Home tutoring was also very common in those days. There was no such thing as
“compulsory school attendance.” Parents were free to provide their children with any
fonn of education which met their needs. Children were taught to read and write in the
Dames Schools, which were keenly aware that Biblical literacy was an absolute necessity
in a society based on the teachings of the Bible.

In New England, laws had been passed requiring parents to educate their children. This
spurred the creation of Common Schools throughout the region. Towns hired teachers to
run such schools. Their main function was to prepare the students for future studies in
the colleges. They were owned and operated by the local folks who usually paid the
schoolmasters with commodities rather than money.

The beauty of this high degree of freedom was that education was practical, its
foundation based on reality. Whatever was taught was intended to improve the
knowledge, skills, and aptitudes of the students. The community’s basic purpose in
education was to pass on to the future generation the knowledge, wisdom, religion and
morals of the previous generation. There was no such thing as religious neutrality. The
United States was a Christian nation and all agreed that children should be inculcated in
the tenets of Christianity. And anyone who went into the education profession knew its
spiritual purposes.

But then the question arises: why did Americans give up educational freedom so early in
their history when its benefits were so obvious? Believe it or not, it had nothing to do
with economics or poor teaching. Literacy was very high and education was available to
everyone. There were even excellent charity schools that provided education for the
children of the poor. There was no need for the government to get involved in education.
.
But in Boston, the government did get involved in establishing the Boston Latin School,
an elite school to prepare students for Harvard. It was funded by the city even though the
parents of the students could easily have paid its costs. But the liberals in Boston were
already looking to government to establish an elite institution separated from the church.
What happened to create this state of mind? It was the rise of the Unitarian heresy at
Harvard among the descendants of the Puritans. Intellectual pride became the spearhead
of religious Liberalism.

The Unitarians no longer believed in the Trinity or in the divinity of Christ. If Christ was
divine it was in the sense that we are all divine. But while Christ was considered a great
teacher, he was not considered to be the source of salvation. The Unitarians also rejected
Calvin’s view of man as being innately depraved who needed to be saved by Jesus Christ.
The Unitarians believed that man was basically good, and that all he needed was a good
secular education to achieve moral perfectibility.

And so the Boston Unitarians launched a strong campaign to create government primary
schools in which Calvinist teachings would be eliminated. They were successful because
they learned how to influence the press, control the legislature, and get what they wanted.
As the public school movement grew, the orthodox were in a dilenuna as to whether or
not to support it. In 1849, the orthodox General Association of Massachusetts decided in
favor of support with this very important stipulation. They wrote:

“If after a full and faithful experiment, it should at last be seen that fidelity to the
religious interests of our children forbids a further patronage of the system, we
can unite with the Evangelical Christians in the establishment of private schools,
in which more full doctrinal religious instruction may be possible.”

There is no question that the “full and faithful experiment” has been a colossal failure,
and that millions of Christian children have been spiritually harmed. While many parents
have taken their children out of the public schools, and hundreds if not thousands of
church schools have been founded, the vast majority of Christian parents still put their
children in these anti-Christian public schools. In other words, we have still to learn the
lessons of history.

The Blumenfeld Archives is a free on-line educational resource:  http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm

Liberty Counsel and Liberty University Launch Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic

A news release from Liberty Counsel:

Aug 12, 2025

LYNCHBURG, VA – In partnership with Liberty University School of Law, Liberty Counsel is launching a new Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic this Fall for third-year law students to work on real-world cases at the highest court levels. The two-semester clinic will be open to up to four third-year students.

In 2005, Liberty Counsel and Liberty University School of Law launched the Constitutional Litigation Clinic. The clinic has been in operation for 20 years and will continue to be open to up to five students per semester. Previous students in this clinic worked on Shurtleff v. City of Boston, a Liberty Counsel case that begin in 2017 and resulted in a 9-0 win at the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2022.

The Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic will be an advanced clinic focused on specific Supreme Court and Appellate cases. Under supervision and instruction from experienced Liberty Counsel’s Supreme Court practitioners, the students will have weekly class instruction, case rounds, and gain clinical experience with active cases. The clinic is designed to give students valuable practical experience in Supreme Court advocacy through researching and drafting certiorari petitions, merits and opposition briefs, reply briefs, and amicus briefs.

Liberty University School of Law Dean and Professor of Law Dr. Timothy M. Todd said, “We are thankful for the partnership with Liberty Counsel. This clinic will emphasize the development of practical skills while fostering a deep understanding of the substantive law and procedure relevant to practice before the United States Supreme Court and federal appellate courts.”

Liberty University School of Law is also home to a one-of-a-kind replica of the U.S. Supreme Court bench designed by Mat Staver during his tenure as Dean and Professor of Law.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “We are excited to partner with Liberty University School of Law to educate and train students to practice at the highest levels of the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts. Law students in our previous clinics contributed to our 9-0 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in Shurtleff v. City of Boston in 2022. The Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic will offer students the invaluable experience of working on high profile cases that will shape legal precedent for decades. Liberty Counsel is resolved to develop the next generation of constitutional law advocates.”

Liberty Counsel provides broadcast-quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost

John Adams on Government: Christian Virtue Necessary for Liberty – American Minute with Bill Federer

 

  & the Need for Christian Virtue – American Minute with Bill Federer  The Wisdom of John Adams: on Liberty  Tyranny

Download as PDF …

John Adams was born October 30, 1735. A Harvard graduate, he was admitted to the bar and in 1764, married Abigail Smith, the daughter of a Congregational minister.

In 1765, Britain enacted the Stamp Act, which would be equivalent to a modern-day Internet tax, online censorship or government surveillance of emails.
John Adams wrote:
“It seems very manifest from the Stamp Act itself, that a design is formed to strip us in a great measure of the means of knowledge, by loading the press, the colleges, and even an almanac and a newspaper, with restraints and duties.”

In resisting the Stamp Act, Adams wrote instructions to representatives from town of Braintree being sent to the Massachusetts General Court:

“The late acts of Parliament … divest us of our most essential rights and liberties … The Stamp Act … a very burdensome, and… unconstitutional tax, is to be laid upon us …
We are subjected to … penalties, to be prosecuted, sued for, and recovered, at the option of an informer, in a court of admiralty, without a jury …
Business … would be totally impossible … That Act … would drain the country of its cash, strip multitudes of all their property, and reduce them to absolute beggary …
No freeman should be subject to any tax to which he has not given his own consent.”

John Adams explained in A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765, that it was Christian principles, brought to America by the Puritans, that resisted tyranny:

“The desire of dominion … when … restraints are taken off … becomes an encroaching, grasping, restless, and ungovernable power … contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion …
Originally formed … for the necessary defense … against … invasions … yet … tyranny, cruelty, and lust … was soon adopted by almost all the princes of Europe …
The people were held in ignorance … till God in his benign providence raised up the champions who began and conducted the Reformation.
From the time of the Reformation to the first settlement of America, knowledge gradually spread in Europe, but especially in England; and in proportion as that increased and spread among the people … tyranny … lost … strength.”
He continued:
“It was this great struggle that peopled America … by a sensible people … the Puritans …
This people had been so vexed and tortured by the powers of those days, for no other crime than their knowledge and their freedom of inquiry … they at last resolved to fly to the wilderness for refuge …
After their arrival here, they … formed their plan, both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direct opposition to the canon and the feudal systems …
I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth …”

Adams added:

“Tyranny in every form, shape, and appearance was their disdain …
They saw clearly, that popular powers must be placed as … a control, a balance, to the powers of the monarch … or else it would soon become the man of sin, the whore of Babylon, the mystery of iniquity, a great and detestable system of fraud, violence, and usurpation.
Their greatest concern seems to have been to establish a government of the church more consistent with the Scriptures, and a government of the state more agreeable to the dignity of human nature, than any they had seen in Europe …
To render the popular power in their new government as great and wise … as human nature and the Christian religion require it should be, they … had an utter contempt … of hereditary, indefeasible right … of passive obedience and nonresistance …
They thought all such slavish subordinations were … inconsistent with … that religious liberty with which Jesus had made them free …”
Adams explained further:
“Original … government was … despotic … arbitrary, lawless power …
But knowledge diffused generally through the whole body of the people … their civil and religious principles …
For this purpose they laid very early the foundations of colleges, and … seminaries … They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster …
Education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people ancient or modern …
A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare … as a comet or an earthquake …
Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker …”

 Adams continued:

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right … to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know …
Rulers are no more than … trustees for the people; and if the … trust is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority … and to constitute abler and better … trustees …
The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing …
Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom, whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country …
I hope in God the time is near at hand when they will be fully convinced of your understanding, integrity and courage …
Let us not suppose that all are become luxurious, effeminate, and unreasonable, on the other side the water, as many designing persons would insinuate.
Let us presume, what is in fact true, that the spirit of liberty is as ardent as ever among the body of the nation …
Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

 Adams stated in A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law:

“Let us study … the great examples of Greece and Rome … the conduct of our own British ancestors, who have defended for us the inherent rights of mankind against foreign and domestic tyrants and usurpers, against arbitrary kings and cruel priests, in short, against the gates of earth and hell …
Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty …
Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God,
– that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness,
– and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven, liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!”

When the Revolution started, John Adams recommended that George Washington be the Commander-in-Chief and that Thomas Jefferson pen the Declaration.

 In Novanglus: A History of the Dispute with America, from its Origin, in 1754, to the Present Time, published February 6, 1775, John Adams wrote:

“It is the duty of the clergy to accommodate their discourses to the times, to preach against such sins as are most prevalent, and recommend such virtues as are most wanted …
If exorbitant ambition and venality are predominant, ought they not to warn their hearers against those vices?
If public spirit is much wanted, should they not inculcate this great virtue?
If the rights and duties of Christian magistrates and subjects are disputed, should they not explain them, show their nature, ends, limitations, and restrictions, how much soever it may move the gall of Massachusetts.”

John Adams authored the Massachusetts Constitution, 1780, described as the world’s oldest functioning written constitution, a model for the United States Constitution. It stated:

“The happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality;
and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the Public worship of God …
the people of this commonwealth … authorize … the public worship of God, and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality …
And every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law …
The Governor shall be chosen annually; and no person shall be eligible to this office, unless … he shall declare himself to be of the Christian religion …
Any person chosen governor, lieutenant governor, counselor, senator or representative, and accepting the trust, shall … make … the following declaration, viz.-
“I, A. B., do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have a firm persuasion of its truth.”

 John Adams was U.S. Minister to France, where, together with Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and David Hartley, he signed the Treaty of Paris, September 3, 1783, officially ending the Revolutionary War:

“In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity.
It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith …
and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences …
Done at Paris, this third day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three.”

While U.S. Minister to Britain, John Adams met with his former king, George the Third.

 Adams helped ratify the U.S. Constitution by writing Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the United States, 1787-1788.

Initially, Presidential elections designated the President as the one who received the most votes, and the Vice-President was the one who received the second most votes.

John Adams was so popular that he was elected Vice-President twice, serving under George Washington.

 When George Washington insisted on only serving two terms, John Adams was elected the 2nd U.S. President in 1796.

He established the Library of Congress and the Department of Navy.

His son, John Quincy Adams, became 6th President.

 After Abigail Adams died in 1818, Adams wrote to Jefferson:

“I do not know how to prove physically, that we shall meet and know each other in a future state; nor does Revelation, as I can find, give us any positive assurance of such a felicity.
My reasons for believing it, as I do most undoubtedly, are that I cannot conceive such a Being could make such a species as the human, merely to live and die on this earth.
If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God.
This Universe, this all would appear, with all of its swelling pomp, a boyish firework.
And if there be a future state, why should the Almighty dissolve forever all the tender ties which unite us so delightfully in this world, and forbid us to see each other in the next?”

In 1819, John Adams wrote to Jefferson:

“Have you ever found in history, one single example of a nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue? …
And without virtue, there can be no political liberty …
Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly? …
No effort in favor of virtue is lost.”

 In Paris, John Adams wrote in his diary, June 2, 1778:

“In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years …
The vices and examples of the parents cannot be concealed from the children.
How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest infancy … their fathers (are) in as constant infidelity to their mothers?”

On June 21, 1776, John Adams wrote:
“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.
The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue,
and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure, than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.

The Weekly Sam: Colonial Education: Superior to Today’s Public Schools By Samuel Blumenfeld

When the Puritans arrived in the wilderness of New England, they set a high standard of
education for the colonists, and the rest of the English colonies followed suit so that
literacy was virtually universal. The need for biblical literacy was the driving force
behind education since it was religious freedom they sought in coming to the New World.
Their vision was of creating a truly Christian civilization in the wilderness.
With thoughts always of the future, the aim of the Puritan leadership was to establish and
sustain the religious foundations of the Commonwealth, which included the highly
democratic, Calvinistic form of church governance, Congregationalism. Thus, in
Massachusetts education was based more on a religious foundation than a secular one.
Because of the emphasis on education, Massachusetts gained a reputation for having the
best schools in the colonies.

The Puritans founded Harvard College as a Calvinist
institution in 1636. But the other colonies were not far behind. All of the Protestant sects,
most of which were Calvinist in theology, placed high value on learning the languages of
theology: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as the secular subjects that were taught at
Oxford and Cambridge and at the Law schools.
Colleges were also founded in Virginia (1693), Connecticut (1701), New Jersey (1746
and 1766), New York (1754), Pennsylvania (1755), Rhode Island (1764), and New
Hampshire (1770). All were private colleges, and there were usually private academies in
the towns to prepare students for higher education.
We can get a good picture of the various forms of education available during the colonial
period by surveying the education that formed the mindset of the 89 men who signed the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. According to
author Lawrence Cremin:

“Of the 56 signers of the Declaration, 22 were products of the provincial colleges, two
had attended the academy conducted by Francis Alison at New London, Pennsylvania,
and the others represented every conceivable combination of parental, church,
apprenticeship, school, tutorial, and self education, including some who studied abroad.
Of the 33 signers of the Constitution, who had not also signed the Declaration, 14 were
products of the provincial colleges, one was a product of the Newark Academy, and the
remainder spanned the same wide range of alternatives.”

The fact is that the men who founded the United States were educated under the freest
conditions possible, with colonial governments offering little more than moral
encouragement. George Washington was educated at home by his father and half-brother.
Benjamin Franklin was taught to read by his father and attended a private school for
writing and arithmetic. Thomas Jefferson studied Latin and Greek under a tutor. Of the
117 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and
the Constitution, one out of three had had only a few months of formal schooling, and
only one in four had gone to college.

And that is probably why the Constitution made no mention of education. It was
considered a parental, religious, and private matter beyond the jurisdiction of
government. There were some statesmen, like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams who
advocated free, state-supported education on a modest scale to insure universal literacy.
But they were clearly in the minority. Thus, at the beginning of the American nation,
except for some town-supported common schools in New England, education was on a
completely laissez-faire, free-market basis.
Contrast the highly effective educational freedom and high literacy that existed then to
what we have in America today: completely centralized and regulated education by the
government-supported education establishment, plus compulsory school attendance laws,
plus highly unionized teachers with enormous political clout that keeps taxes as high as
possible.

And what are the American people getting for their money? The drugging of over four
million children by their educators to cure Attention Deficit Disorder, a steep decline in
literacy, and an anti-Christian philosophy of education. Indeed, what we have are
government schools that do not truly educate. If it were not for the growth of the
home-school movement and the restoration of educational freedom by this dedicated
remnant, this country would in time become a totalitarian society, controlled by
behavioral psychologists and corrupt politicians. In fact, with the election of socialist
Barack Obama, the nation has reached that brink where ending our Constitutional
Republic of limited powers and replacing it with atheistic Social Democracy with
unlimited powers is about to take place unless stopped by an alarmed and activated
American people.

That is why it is so important for Americans to know the history of education in this
country so that they can see our current trends in their proper foreboding context. Our
nation was founded by Christian men and women who believed in educational freedom
because it produced the young men and women capable of maintaining a free society.
Our freedom depends on our nation’s willingness to adhere to biblical morality and high
literacy. Because without them, we shall continue to founder in a sea of ignorance,
barbarism, and moral depravity.

 

Christian Camp Freed From Colorado’s Dangerous Gender Policy

Good news from our friends at Liberty Counsel:

DENVER, CO – After filing a federal lawsuit last month, a Colorado Christian summer camp represented by Alliance Defending Freedom reached a favorable settlement with the state that allows it to keep campers separated in single-sex designated facilities according to its religious and common sense beliefs on human sexuality.

Camp IdRaHaJe, which derives its name from the song “I’d Rather Have Jesus,” challenged a policy from Colorado’s Department of Early Childhood that requires licensed camps to allow campers to use the bathrooms, bathing areas, and sleeping quarters of the opposite sex. The camp had requested a religious exemption, but state regulators denied it leaving the camp facing a potential shut it down as it stated it would not comply with the policy.

Rather than have the policy scrutinized in court, state officials agreed, as part of the settlement, not to enforce the policy against Camp IdRaHaJe. The state also clarified that “churches, synagogues, mosques, or any other place that is principally used for religious purposes” are also exempt from the requirements.

As a result of the settlement, approximately 2,400 to 3,000 kids will be able to attend the camp this summer in a safe, Christian environment.

Camp IdRaHaJe has hosted children since 1948 and has had a resident camp license since 1995. The camp’s doctrinal statement declares that “God has immutably created each person as either male or female in His image” and “the differentiation of the sexes, male and female, is part of the divine image in the human race.”

Camp IdRaHaJe hosts and serves children from ages six to 17 and offers off-site backpacking, camping trips and many other on-site activities. The camp hosts thousands of students each summer with the mission to “win souls to Jesus Christ through the spreading of the Gospel.” The camp is open to children of all backgrounds and beliefs.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver stated, “Colorado’s gender policy is a violation of the camp’s Christian mission as well as a threat to child safety. Camp IdRaHaJe’s settlement is a victory for religious liberty in the state where religious organizations no longer have to choose between their sincerely held religious beliefs on human sexuality and their state licenses. The government also has no place forcing the false, corrosive gender ideology upon its citizens. Colorado needs to remove this policy altogether and protect children.”

Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.

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The Weekly Sam: How to Dumb Down a Nation By Samuel L. Blumenfeld

It’s easy. Destroy its literacy, and you’ve dumbed it down. And once dumbed down, it
becomes the potential victim of any power that wants to dominate it.
If you look at the most illiterate nations on the planet, you find that they are ruled by
despots, their people live in abject poverty and have no hope for a better future. That
doesn’t mean that literate nations, like Germany, can’t produce monsters. But when they
do, we know that satanic influences are behind it.

America, from its beginning, was the most literate nation on earth, and the result was
positive in every respect. Why was it so literate? Because the people and their leaders
were governed by the precepts of the Bible, and biblical literacy was paramount in the
education of the country’s children.

But once we got a government schooling system, which was taken over by atheist
progressive educators, the God of the Bible was removed from the schools. It then
became possible to introduce a new socialist curriculum with teaching methods
calculated to reduce American literacy. The Bible was now relegated to an hour of study
in church on Sundays. And because it was no longer part of the curriculum, children no
longer considered it important to life.

A blatant, anti-biblical morality was introduced in the schools through such programs as
values clarification, sensitivity training, transcendental meditation, sex education, death
education, drug education, multiculturalism, psychotherapy, evolution, secular
humanism, and other such programs. Moral degeneration has been the inevitable result.
The result is that America has been greatly dumbed-down.

“Don’t Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes!” -June 1775, The Battle of Bunker Hill – American Minute with Bill Federer

 

 

“Don’t Shoot Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes!” commanded Colonel William Prescott, repeating the order of General Israel Putnam, JUNE 17, 1775.
Colonel William Prescott’s men were in the center redoubt located on Breed’s Hill, adjacent Bunker Hill, guarding the north entrance to Boston Harbor.

Samuel Swett wrote in his History of Bunker Hill, that as the 2,300 British soldiers advanced:
“The American marksmen are with difficulty restrained from firing. Putnam rode through the line, and ordered that no one should fire till they arrived within eight rods …
Powder was scarce and must not be wasted. They should ‘not fire at the enemy till they saw the whites of their eyes …’
The same orders were reiterated by Prescott at the redoubt.”
Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed March 20, 1942:
“Our Army is a mighty arm of the tree of liberty.
It is a living part of the American tradition, a tradition that goes back to Israel Putnam, who left his plow in a New England furrow to take up a gun and fight at Bunker Hill.”
At the beginning of the battle, a stray musket ball from a British gun killed an American soldier, resulting in other soldiers running away.
To stop the confusion, Colonel William Prescott climbed on top of the the wall of the fortification, stood upright and walked back and forth, rallying his men.
When British General Thomas Gage saw Prescott through his telescope, he asked a local loyalist, Abijah Willard, who happened to be Prescott’s brother-in-law, if Prescott had enough courage to fight.
Willard replied:
“Prescott is an old soldier, he will fight as long as a drop of blood is in his veins.”
Another recorded Willard’s statement as:
“As to his men, I cannot answer for them, but Colonel Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell.”

Historian George Bancroft wrote that at the redoubt in the center of battle:
“No one appeared to have any command but Colonel Prescott … His bravery could never be enough acknowledged and applauded.”
British General Gage had no respect for the rag-tag Americans, resulting in him pridefully committing the serious mistake of ordering a direct assault.
British General William Howe had intended to unleash an artillery bombardment from field pieces on the Americans prior to the British advance, but providentially for the Americans, the British brought the wrong caliber ammunition.
They had six pounder cannons but nine pound shot.
As a result, British artillery was not able to soften the resistance.
General Howe ordered some 2,300 British soldiers to fix bayonets, and in their wool uniforms, charge in the hot sun up the hill covered with fences and uneven rows of uncut grass.

Twice the Americans repelled them, but the third time they ran out of gunpowder.

Over 1,000 British were killed or wounded in this first major action of the Revolutionary War.
There were nearly 500 American casualties, including the notable Dr. Joseph Warren.
Amos Farnsworth, a corporal in the Massachusetts Militia, made this entry in his diary immediately after the Battle of Bunker Hill, JUNE 17, 1775:
“We within the entrenchment … having fired away all ammunition and having no reinforcements…were overpowered by numbers and obliged to leave …
… I did not leave the entrenchment until the enemy got in. I then retreated ten or fifteen rods.
Then I received a wound in my right arm, the ball going through a little below my elbow, breaking the little shellbone.
Another ball struck my back, taking a piece of skin about as big as a penny.
But I got to Cambridge that night …
… Oh the goodness of God in preserving my life, although they fell on my right and on my left!
O may this act of deliverance of thine, O God, lead me never to distrust thee; but may I ever trust in thee and put confidence in no arm of flesh!”

The British then burned the nearby town of Charlestown.
Daniel Webster declared at the Bicentennial Celebration at Plymouth Rock, December 22, 1820:
“In New England the war of the Revolution commenced.
I address those who … saw the burning spires of Charlestown; who beheld the deeds of Prescott, and heard the voice of Putnam amidst the storm of war, and saw the generous Warren fall, the first distinguished victim in the cause of liberty.
It would be superfluous to say, that no portion of the country did more than the States of New England to bring the Revolutionary struggle to a successful issue.”
This same day as the Battle of Bunker Hill, 300 miles away in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress drafted George Washington’s commission as commander-in-chief, for which he refused a salary.
Washington wrote to his wife, Martha:
“Dearest … It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the defense of the American Cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take … command …
I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preserved, and been bountiful to me.”
Washington ended:
“I … got Colonel Pendleton to Draft a Will … the Provision made for you, in case of my death, will, I hope, be agreeable.”
Yale President Ezra Stiles wrote May 8, 1783:
“Every patriot trembled till we had proved our armor, till it could be seen, whether … (we) could face the enemy with firmness.
They early gave us the decided proof of this, in the memorable Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775) …
This instantly convinced us, and for the first time convinced Britons themselves, that Americans both would and could fight with great effect.
Whereupon Congress put at the head of this spirited army, the only man, on whom the eyes of all Israel were placed (George Washington) …
This American JOSHUA was raised up by God, and divinely formed by a peculiar influence of the Sovereign of the Universe, for the great work of leading the armies … to liberty and independence.”

Less than a month after the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Continental Congress proclaimed a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, as John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, July 12, 1775:
“We have appointed a Continental fast.
Millions will be upon their knees at once before their great Creator, imploring His forgiveness and blessing; His smiles on American Council and arms.”
Georgia’s Provincial Congress also passed a motion, July 5, 1775:
“That this Congress apply to his Excellency the Governor … requesting him to appoint a Day of Fasting and Prayer throughout this Province, on account of the disputes subsisting between America and the Parent State.”

Georgia’s Royal Governor James Wright replied July 7, 1775:
“Gentlemen: I have taken the…request made by … a Provincial Congress, and must premise, that I cannot consider that meeting as constitutional;
but as the request is expressed in such loyal and dutiful terms, and the ends proposed being such as every good man must most ardently wish for, I will certainly appoint a Day of Fasting and Prayer to be observed throughout this Province.”
Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull wrote to General Washington, July 13, 1775:
“The Honorable Congress have proclaimed a Fast to be observed by the inhabitants of all the English Colonies on this continent, to stand before the Lord in one day, with public humiliation, fasting, and prayer,
to deplore our many sins, to offer up our joint supplications to God, for forgiveness, and for his merciful interposition for us in this day of unnatural darkness and distress.
They have, with one united voice, appointed you to the high station you possess. The Supreme Director of all events hath caused a wonderful union of hearts and counsels to subsist among us …
… Now therefore, be strong and very courageous.
May the God of the armies of Israel shower down the blessings of his Divine Providence on you, give you wisdom and fortitude, cover your head in the day of battle and danger, add success, convince our enemies of their mistaken measures,
and that all their attempts to deprive these Colonies of their inestimable constitutional rights and liberties are injurious and vain.”
On July 19, 1775, the Journals of the Continental Congress recorded:
“Agreed,
That the Congress meet here tomorrow morning, at half after 9 o’clock, in order to attend divine service at Mr. Duche’s Church; and that in the afternoon they meet here to go from this place and attend divine service at Doctor Allison’s church.”
On July 20, 1775, General Washington issued the order:
“The General orders this day to be religiously observed by the Forces under his Command, exactly in manner directed by the Continental Congress.
It is therefore strictly enjoined on all Officers and Soldiers to attend Divine Service;
And it is expected that all those who go to worship do take their Arms, Ammunition and Accoutrements, and are prepared for immediate action, if called upon.”

American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.

 

Happy Father’s Day! “America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life”-U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall – American Minute with Bill Federer

 

U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Center for Disease Control, and other agencies report that children from fatherless homes are:
  • Five times more likely to live in poverty;
  • Nine times more likely to drop out of school;
  • Twenty times more likely to go to in prison;
  • Higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse;
  • Increased incidents of internalized and externalized aggressive behavioral problems;
  • Greater chance of runaways and homelessness;
  • Twice as likely to commit suicide.

The first “Father’s Day” was conceived by Grace Golden Clayton. She was inspired by the first Mother’s Day observance in 1908.
She reminisced of her father, Methodist Reverend Fletcher Golden, who raised her and her siblings after their mother died.
Grace was also moved by the West Virginia Monongah Coal Mine explosion, December 6, 1907 – the worst mine disaster in the nation’s history.
In the town of 1,000 people, 360 men died in the mine, leaving families fatherless.
Grace arranged for a single special service at Central United Methodist Church on July 5, 1908,  saying:
“It was partly the explosion that set me to think how important and loved most fathers are. All those lonely children and those heart-broken wives and mothers, made orphans and widows in a matter of a few minutes. Oh, how sad and frightening to have no father, no husband, to turn to at such an awful time.”
The person responsible for making Father’s Day an annual observance was Sonora Louise Smart Dodd.
Hearing a church sermon on the newly established Mother’s Day, Sonora wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife died in childbirth.
The 28-year-old Sonora Louise Smart Dodd drew up a petition supported by the Young Men’s Christian Association and the ministers of Spokane, Washington, to celebrate Fathers’ Day on June 19, 1910.
Sonora , with the help of the Y.M.C.A, spread the celebration of Father’s Day on the third Sunday in June, to Oregon, then Chicago and then around the nation.
In 1916, Woodrow Wilson telegraphed a message to the Spokane Fathers’ Day service.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed a Father’s Day resolution:
“to establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.”
Coolidge stated:
“My father had qualities that were greater than any I possess. He was a man of untiring industry and great tenacity of purpose …
He always stuck to the truth. It always seemed possible for him to form an unerring judgment of men and things. He would be classed as decidedly a man of character.
I have no doubt he is representative of a great mass of Americans who are known only to their neighbors; nevertheless, they are really great.”
Coolidge wrote to his father:
“I am sure I came to it (the presidency) largely by your bringing up and your example.”
In 1966, Lyndon Johnson issued the first Presidential Father’s Day Proclamation.
In 1972, President Nixon established Father’s Day as a permanent national observance, Proclamation 4127, stating:
“To have a father — to be a father — is to come very near the heart of life itself.
In fatherhood we know the elemental magic and joy of humanity.
In fatherhood we even sense the divine, as the Scriptural writers did who told of all good gifts corning “down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17)—symbolism so challenging to each man who would give his own son or daughter a life of light without shadow … “
Nixon added:
“Our identity in name and nature, our roots in home and family, our very standard of manhood—all this and more is the heritage our fathers share with us …
It has long been our national custom to observe each year one special Sunday in honor of America’s fathers; and from this year forward, by a joint resolution of the Congress approved April 24, 1972, that custom carries the weight of law …
Let each American make this Father’s Day an occasion for renewal of the love and gratitude we bear to our fathers, increasing and enduring through all the years.
Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby request that June 18, 1972, be observed as Father’s Day.”
On May 20, 1981, in a Proclamation of Father’s Day, President Ronald Reagan stated:
“‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ Solomon tells us. (Proverbs 22:6)
Clearly, the future is in the care of our parents. Such is the responsibility, promise, and hope of fatherhood. Such is the gift that our fathers give us.”
Dr. Ben Carson explained:
“The more solid the family … the more likely you are to be able to resist peer pressure …
Human beings are social creatures. We all want to belong, we all have that desire, and we will belong, one way or another …
If the family doesn’t provide that, the peers will, or a gang will, or you will find something to belong to.”
On Father’s Day, 1988, Ronald Reagan said:
“Children, vulnerable and dependent, desperately need security, and it has ever been a duty and a joy of fatherhood to offer it.
Being a father requires strength … and more than a little courage … to persevere, to fight discouragement, and to keep working for the family …”
Reagan ended:
“Let us … express our thanks and affection to our fathers, whether we can do so in person or in prayer.”
On December 6, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt addressed Congress:
“No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day;
for, if so, the community will have to pay a terrible penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to-morrow …”
Roosevelt continued:
“The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife.
All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances.”
Genesis 18:19 records one of the reasons God chose Abraham:
“For I know him (Abraham), that he will teach his children … (to) keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment.”
Deuteronomy 4:9:
“Teach them to your children and grandchildren.”
Deuteronomy 6:7:
“And you shall teach them diligently to your children.
Williams Jennings Bryan gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential campaigns, with his most famous being “The Prince of Peace,” which was printed in The New York Times, September 7, 1913:
“Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that a line of communication can be established between the Father above and the child below.”

A warning from Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic, 380 BC, was that democracy is in the process of collapsing when the younger generation disrespect their fathers:
“Can liberty have any limit? Certainly not … By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses …
The son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom …
Citizens … chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority … they will have no one over them … Liberty overmasters democracy …
The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery …
And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty …”
Plato added:
“By heaven … the parent will discover what a monster he has been fostering in his bosom; and, when he wants to drive him out, he will find that he is weak and his son strong.
Why, you do not mean to say that the tyrant will use violence? What! beat his father if he opposes him?
Yes, he will, having first disarmed him … Then he is a parricide, and a cruel guardian of an aged parent; and this is real tyranny.”
George Orwell wrote in the book 1984 of what socialists do when they take over a country:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.
And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
U.S. Senate Peter Marshall commented on Marxist social deconstruction (20 Centuries of Great Preaching Vol. 12 Waco: Word, 1971 p. 11-19):
“The history of the world has always been the biography of her great men …
There was a time in these United States when youth was inspired by heroes … when a picture of Washington or Lincoln adorned every school room wall …
Along with the ponderous Family Bible on the Victorian table and the hymn books on the old-fashioned square piano, there looked down from the walls the likenesses of our national heroes …
Those were the days of great beliefs – belief in the authority of the Scriptures, belief that prayer was really answered, belief in marriage and the family as permanent institutions, belief in the integrity and worth of America’s great men.
These beliefs laid the groundwork for producing more great men, for many a boy figured, “If that man could do it, get an education, make his life count for something, then I can too …'”
Marshall continued:
“Then there dawned the day when the pictures of Washington and Lincoln did not fit in with our concept of modern décor … The old Family Bible looked embarrassingly out of place …
 So the pictures and the Bible were often relegated to the Attic of Forgotten Things.
There went with them some of the most stabilizing influences of American life.
We had become a more sophisticated people, somewhat cynical of the cherished beliefs of our ancestors, rather blasé, frankly skeptical of old-fashioned sentimentalism.
Along with our higher education came a debunking contest. This debunking became a sort of national sport … It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate.
In our classrooms at all levels of education, no longer did we laud great men – those who had struggled and achieved. Instead, we merely took their dimensions and ferreted out their faults.
We decided that it was silly to say God sent them for a special task … They were merely … products of their environments …
The Constitution, that hitherto cherished charter of American liberties, was drawn up by men who never spoke on a telephone or flew in a plan, therefore, we should change the Constitution to suit modern ways.”
Marshall’s concerns were echoed by others.
Thomas Sowell, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, stated:
“Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.”

In writing for The Federalist, June 12, 2020, Katy Faust and Stacy Manning reported:

“NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, when asked if white racism or the absence of fathers posed a greater threat to black Americans, replied without hesitation, ‘The absence of black fathers.'”
Senate Chaplain Marshall added that sons and daughters need courageous fathers to defend them against predatory agendas:
“We failed to realize that when we were denying the existence of great men, we were also denying the desirability of great men.
So now, many of our children have grown up without the guiding star … holding in their hands only a bunch of … question marks, with no keys with which to open the doors of knowledge and life.
The young no longer had any particular ambition to become heroes.
Their ambition now was to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, in whatever way was most convenient …
Thus, our debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations of character to the individual and in the national life …
We who are Christians, believe that God gives the world a few great men to lead the rest of us closer to Him, that to depreciate or to deny their greatness is to deny one of God’s revelations of Himself to mankind.
The heroes the Christian cherishes … were (or are) human .. They have their weakness … Their faults are well-known to their friends, better known to themselves. But the point is that with God and His guidance, they can provide the moral leadership that our nation so sorely needs.
America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life … in our homes, in our schools, on college campuses, in offices and factories, who can lead us towards a return to idealism. For time is running out for us …”
U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall concluded:
“The call today is for Christian heroes and heroines … who are willing to speak a good word for Jesus Christ … who are willing to live by the undiluted values of Christian morality in the pagan atmosphere of our society surrounded by lewdness, pornography, and profanity.
This may be a higher bravery than that of any battlefield: to face ridicule, sarcasm, sneering disdain for what one believes to be right.
To fight for goodness and right … fighting the battle first in our own hearts and souls … seeking God’s help to overcome our particular temptations for the sake of peace .. for the sake of America … for our own sake … for God’s sake.”
In 1942, General MacArthur was named Father of the Year. He stated:
“By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder — infinitely prouder — to be a father.
A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life.
And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still.
It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ‘Our Father Who Art in Heaven.'”
MacArthur composed “A Father’s Prayer”:
“Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds; a son who will know Thee — and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail …
Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.
And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously.
Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength.
Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, ‘I have not lived in vain.'”
President Reagan ended his Father’s Day message:
“With God’s grace, fathers find the patience to teach, the fortitude to provide, the compassion to comfort, and the mercy to forgive.
All of this is to say that they find the strength to love their wives and children selflessly.”
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.