campconstitution

It’s a must-read for anyone interested in Resistance to Tyranny by Charl van Wyk

Published November 9, 2023 | By campconstitution

“The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates: A Proper Resistance to Tyranny and a Repudiation of Unlimited Obedience to Civil Government” by Pastor Matthew J. Trewhella is a thought-provoking and controversial exploration of the relationship between citizens, governments, and the moral responsibility to resist tyranny.

Pastor Matt’s book, published in 2013, delves into historical and theological arguments to support the idea that lower-ranking government officials, or lesser magistrates, have a moral duty to oppose laws and policies imposed by higher authorities when they violate Biblical Law and principles, or infringe upon the rights of the people.

One of the strengths of this work lies in the author’s meticulous research and analysis of Biblical and historical examples where lesser magistrates stood up against unjust rulers, thereby supplying a compelling context for his argument.

By drawing on events recorded in Scripture, and various other time periods and cultures, the author builds a strong case for the doctrine he advocates. The Biblical and historical perspectives add depth and credibility to his thesis, making the book informative and enlightening for readers interested in theology, political philosophy and history.

Pastor Matt’s writing is passionate, and he presents his ideas in a clear and accessible manner. He skillfully combines historical anecdotes, legal analysis, and theological interpretations to support his central claim. The book is well-structured, making it easy for readers to follow his line of reasoning and understand the complexities of the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

A South African Advocate (lawyer) explained how, after having distributed copies of this landmark book to his pastor friends, the friends attended a government meeting where bureaucrats tried, even with promises of tax aid for churches, to coerce the pastors to register their churches with the state.

I’m told pastors lifted this book as they berated the officials.

They quoted from Chapter 6, some of which includes, “When Jesus said “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” He was making clear that the civil government has limitations. The State is not the “be all and end all.” It cannot declare just anything to be its own. They cannot make up law as they go, nor change the immutable laws of God. The authority they have is delegated to them from God – it is not autonomously held.”

Praise the Lord for pastors who would not be bought, who understood the Biblical obligations of state officials, and were bold enough to proclaim the Truth!

Get your copy by clicking here: “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates“

Charl van Wyk – Missionary In Africa

Burning the Asherah pole by Charl van Wyk

Published October 31, 2023 | By campconstitution

(From our friend Charl van Wyk

Cozmore gazed into the distance and couldn’t believe what he saw.

“Maybe,” he thought, “my eyes are deceiving me!”

What he saw was a group of women taking a shower under “The Tree.” He ran to fetch his camera from his tent. When he emerged, they were nowhere to be seen.

If you’ve just joined us by having downloaded “How to Win a Gunfight… Even if You’re Not a Great Shot”, welcome – please meet Cozmore, our fearless Zimbabwe ministry partner.

Cozmore and Laizah

Earlier that week Cozmore saw one of the local village politicians under “The Tree” at midnight. Then he discovered clay earthen pots and clothing used in witchcraft—and ancestral worship—under “The Tree.”

“The Tree” stood tall right outside our ministry base in Zimbabwe.

Cozmore was warned by neighbors, “There is a vicious snake that lives in that tree. You better not go near it!”

In Africa, snakes are sometimes looked upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives. Serpent worship is, in some areas, closely connected with the worship of the dead.

Cozmore believed the warning of the snake to be a tactic to scare him so that he wouldn’t act against “the evil outside our yard!”

He remembered King Josiah in the Bible and how he dealt with the Asherah pole—a sacred tree or pole that honored the pagan goddess Asherah that was brought into the house of the Lord.

“And he brought out the Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron and beat it to dust and cast the dust of it upon the graves of the common people.” 2 Kings 23:6

Responding in prayer and faith, Cozmore cut down the tree, burnt the clothing, and destroyed the pots.

This move could have brought conflict with the local authorities. No doubt some were unhappy with Cozmore. But for those who love the Lord God, it has brought peace and joy.

Many, including a village tribal leader, came to thank Cozmore for his courage in the face of danger and spiritual warfare. These were not idle words.

That very week, Cozmore was struck by a cobra!

Cobra bites can be deadly. Their venom has potent neurotoxic and cardiotoxic compounds. Bites can cause blistering, tissue damage, and fatalities.

But, Cozmore had gumboots on! Praise the Lord!

He killed and burnt the snake!

Often spiritual warfare plays out in the physical world.

If Cozmore had been injured or killed by the snake, we might as well have closed our mission base. The locals would have been convinced that the God of the Christians was not as powerful as the other gods.

Cozmore and his team are still serving and discipling the local villagers. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God is what motivates us to carry on.

The corn plants are healthy and tall, the nuts are growing well, the community can’t believe that our originally barren land can produce such healthy crops. The antagonists are speechless.

We serve a great God!

Our team has been feeding some 60 families. The widows we serve, previously emaciated, are now healthy and strong.

We are so thankful to our ministry partners who helped us drill a borehole at our ministry base.

The borehole supplies life-giving water to nourish our chickens, rabbits, and vegetables. It also connects to our offsite tap, which ensures many local families—as well as any passersby—enjoy access to a convenient means to quench their thirst. It’s also a great opener to speak to them about He whose Living Water quenches all thirst.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” John 4:13-14.

In Zimbabwe today, 1.7 million people—including some 408,000 women and 935,000 children—lack access to safe, clean water. Why? Within rural areas, only 50 percent of water pumps are working.

The shear demand for clean drinkable water has led to us needing to upgrade our submersible water pump, and system.

This includes two more solar panels, a 10,000-liter water storage tank, a two-horsepower pump, a solar panel stand, and a tank platform, costing USD2,400.00.

Again, we are so thankful to our ministry partners who’ve prayed for and helped serve the suffering through our ministry base.

Yours,

Charl van Wyk

PS. Our greatest goal is to share Jesus Christ who is the “Living Water,” offering eternal life to those who believe in Him (John 7:37-38).

(Please visit Charl’s website https://missionliberty.wordpress.com/2023/10/31/burning-the-asherah-pole/

Charl van Wyk – Missionary In Africa

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The Weekly Sam: What’s Wrong With Government Education? by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Published October 27, 2023 | By campconstitution

The emormous failure of our government school system was nicely
summed up by a Boston high school teacher in a recent issue of Education
Week (12/9/98). He said:

“I have about 30 kids in my U.S. history class. They come from nine
different countries; most of them can’t read. Even if they can read the text,
they don’t know what it means. How am I supposed to teach U.S. history to
kids who can’t read? I could come in here every day for 20 years and still
not figure out how to do it.”

Obviously, this particular teacher had no idea how these kids got into
high school without knowing how to read. He had no idea what goes on in
primary school that prevents these children from learning to read, and he
had no idea what to do with older students who are functionally illiterate.
Clearly, the teacher himself is part of the problem. His ignorance of how the
system functions prevents him from helping his students get through it in
one piece. In other words, the compartmentalization of teachers explains
why so many of them have no idea of how the total system works and why
the system can lurch from crisis to crisis without any effective change taking
place.

The real blame for the system’s dysfunction, however, must lie with the
professors of education, the state departments of education, and the
administrators who have all conspired to create the functional illiteracy that
plagues the public schools of America — once considered the most literate
and advanced nation on earth. Deliberately induced illiteracy among
students is a vital part of the plan to dumb down Americans so that they will
be unable to resist the imposition of social and political control by an
arrogant universitarian elite determined to create a new world order based
on humanist-socialist values.

This “education” plan is part of the utopian socialist agenda set down
by the progressives at the turn of the century. The progressives were
members of the Protestant academic elite who no longer believed in the
religion of their fathers. They put their new faith in science, evolution, and
psychology. Science explained the material world (matter in motion),
evolution explained the origin of life (organisms crawling out of the
primordial ooze), and psychology explained human nature and provided
the elite with the scientific means of controlling human behavior.
These men were also socialists. Why? Because they had to deal with
the problem of evil. The Bible tells us that evil is the result of man’s innate
depravity, his innate sinful nature. But since the progressives did not
believe in the Bible, they decided that evil was caused by ignorance,
poverty, and social injustice. And what was the cause of social injustice?
Why, it was this horrible capitalist system with all of its inequities. Socialism,
it was believed, would remove these inequities and thereby solve the
problem of evil. By the way, the progressives did not get their model of
socialism from Karl Marx.

They got it from an American by the name of
Edward Bellamy whose book, Looking Backward, published in 1888,
projected the fantasy of a socialist America in the year 2000.
And so, the progressives, dedicated to their utopian ideal, decided to
do all in their power to change America from an individualistic, capitalist,
and religious society into a socialist, collectivist, humanist or atheist society.
How were they to accomplish that? Through the education system. They
would change the curriculum and teaching methods in the public schools so
that American children would emerge as young socialists willing to change
our way of life into a socialist one.

The socialists realized that the transformation might take as much as a
hundred years to complete. In fact, John Dewey wrote in 1898: “Change
must come gradua.lly. To force it unduly would compromise its final success
by favoring a violent reaction .” Dewey then outlined the long-range strategy
which the progressives were to adopt:

What is needed in the first place is that there should be a full and frank statement
of conviction with regard to the matter from physiologists and psychologists and from
those school administrators who are conscious of the evils of the present regime.
Educators should also frankly face the fact that the New Education, as it exists today, is
a compromise and a transition: it employs new methods but its controlling ideals are
virtually of the Old Education. Wherever movements looking to a solution of the
problem are intelligently undertaken, they should receive encouragement, moral and
financial, from the intellectual leaders of the community. There are already in
existence a considerable number of educational “experiment stations,” which
represent the outposts of educational progress. If these schools can be adequately
supported for a number of years they will perform a great vicarious service. After such
schools have worked out carefully and definitely the subject-matter of the new
curriculum,–finding the right place for language-studies and placing them in their right
perspective,–the problem of the more general educational reform will be immensely
simplified.

One hundred years later we can see how successful the Dewey plan
has been in transforming our educational system into one that serves the
needs of the atheist socialist state. Dewey was aided and abetted by a
cadre of reformers that included such luminaries as Edward L. Thorndike,
James McKeen Cattell, Elwood P. Cubberly, George D. Strayer, Charles
Judd, James R. Angell and a host of others. Thorndike, Cattell, and Strayer
ra~ an educational mafia out of Teachers College (Columbia), Cubberly
reigned at Stanford, and Angell became president at Yale.
Change in the curriculum of public education has happened so
gradually that most parents haven’t the faintest idea what is happening to
their children, four million of whom are being drugged daily with Ritalin so
that they can sit in their classroom seats and be socialized without
resistance.

What is truly amazing is the coherence and continuity of the
progressive agenda which is as much alive today at it was when Dewey and
company were pontificating. For example, The Whole Language Catalog, a
sort of bible of the whole-language movement published in 1991, has 15
entries for John Dewey in its index. After citing his debt to Dewey, Kenneth
Goodman, the leading guru of whole-language philosophy, writes:
Whole language picks up where the progressives left off . … [It] takes the
philosophy and positive, child-centered view of the progressive educators and adds
the knowledge of language, of learning, of child development, and of teaching, and
builds a strong scientific base under them . It is this combination of science and
humanistic educational and social philosophy that forms the foundation for whole
language curriculum . … We use the psychological concepts of Piaget and Vygotsky to
underscore Dewey’s concept of learning as transaction: pupils making sense of their
world and being changed themselves in the transactions. (p. 281)
In the early days, the progressives were mainly supported by the major
philanthropic foundations.

Today the reforms are being underwritten by
federal and state governments. Three recent federal programs are funding
the massive restructuring of American education in accordance with the
progressives’ plans: Goals 2000 (enacted 3/31/94), School-to-Work
Opportunities Act (enacted 5/4/94), and the Improving America’s Schools
Act, a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 (enacted 10/20/94). Thus, the Congress of the United States has
become an accomplice in the progressive plan to restructure American
education in the socialist mold.

Apart from needing the funds to carry out their plan, the progressives
also realized that coherence and continuity of their agenda over a hundred
years was vitally necessary if the plan was to be successful. Thus, in 1901
they created the National Society for the Study of Education, wherein the
progressive leaders would be able to formulate their programs of reform,
debate their effectiveness, and pass on the baton to their loyal disciples. By
studying their yearbooks, the first of which was published in 1902, one can
follow the inexorable progress of the socialist takeover of American
education.

All of this was accomplished by tenured professors of education and
behavioral psychologists, working within a maze of well funded professional
organizations, publishing journals, writing textbooks, holding hundreds of
conferences, seminars, and conventions each year. None of this has been
visible to the average parent who puts a child in a public school. Parents
assume that their schools are run by local school boards, superintendents,
principals, and teachers. What they don’t see is the invisible hand behind
this constant pressure for reform that keeps recreating the curriculum .
The average teacher may feel that there is some kind of invisible hand
at work, but teachers would rather blame failure on cultural trends,
excessive television viewing, dysfunctional parents, and such student
disabilities as attention deficit disorder and dyslexia.

Obviously, this is a system of education that cannot be supported by
any Christian. Local control no longer exists. It was inevitable that a
government education system would become a federal system controlled
by those who have been leading us toward totalitarian socialism. Do I
exaggerate? To be convinced that the end goal is a totalitarian system, all
one has to do is read the Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood,
Elementary, and Secondary Education (NCES 94-303). This is the official
guidebook for the computerized data-gathering system dreamed up by our
totalitarian bureaucrats. The data will include massive information on
health, family, religion, attitudes, psychological assessments, etc. For
example, the attitudinal test is described as: “An assessment to measure
the mental and emotional set or patterns of likes and dislikes or opinions
held by a student or a group of students.

This is often used in relation to
considerations such as controversial issues or personal adjustments.”
All of this sensitive, personal data will be housed in a central computer
in Washington making it easy for “educators” to control just about everyone.
But the question is simply this: does the government of a free people have
the right to collect this kind of information on all of its citizens for its own
political or social purposes? Should the government of a free people record
the attitudes and opinions of its citizens so that it can engineer thei r
personal adjustment?

The time has come for Christians to realize what has become of the
“land of the free and the home of the brave.” If Christians want to restore
the full measure of our freedoms, they will have to do what they are
reluctant to do: remove their children en masse from the public schools.
What is needed now is not accomodation to the plans of the American
Pharoah but a full-fledged exodus of Christian children. That’s the easiest
and most peaceful way to put an end to the socialist agenda and return
America to its basic constitutional principles. Will Christians have the
courage to do what must be done? That test will be upon us sooner than
anyone anticipated.

(The above article was written in 1998. It is part of the Sam Blumenfeld Archives-a free on-line resource: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

The Weekly Sam: Argentina and Paper Money by Sam Blumenfeld

Published October 21, 2023 | By campconstitution

What the people of Argentina are going through is possible in any country that uses paper “money” as the basis of its economic activity. Today’s paper money has no backing and therefore is only worth what the government or central bank says it is worth. We call that kind of paper money “Legal Tender.” In other words, the government invests its faith and credit in the value stated on the paper note. Money is supposed to be a medium of exchange and a storage of wealth and we accept paper money because the government backs its stated value. But such a system can only work if the people have trust and confidence in their government and their government behaves responsibly. If we go back to the early days of economic activity, we find that barter was the earliest form of exchange.

A person could exchange a cow for sausages. In other words, one gave value for value. The medium of exchange was awkward and cumbersome, and the two individuals involved had to make value judgments about what they were getting for their commodity. But then it was found that gold would be accepted by many sellers in lieu of a perishable commodity as a medium of exchange, because of its scarcity and convenience. Gold also became an excellent storage for wealth. You could hold gold without its spoiling for as long as you wanted, and people would gladly exchange commodities for it. But then, as civilization ‘progressed, keeping gold became inconvenient. It could also easily be stolen. So, people began putting their gold for safekeeping in banks, and the banks issued gold certificates or banknotes. The banknotes were worth their weight in gold. But then the banks used the gold deposits as security for high-interest loans, which they made by issuing banknotes. But when the loans were not repaid, and the owners of gold cashed in their banknotes, the bank became insolvent, and their notes were no longer honored.

This was the case in early America, where the Farmer’s Almanack up to 1863 actually listed “Worthless and Uncurrent Bank Notes in New England.” Thirteen banks in Boston alone were listed as having worthless bank notes. None of today’s currencies have any backing at all except the faith and credit of the government behind it. In Argentina, the faith and credit of the government no longer exists. And so, its citizens hold paper money that has already lost half its value by government devaluation. The Argentine peso cannot be said to be a storage of wealth. Only those individuals who were smart enough to buy gold or U.S. dollars will come out ahead of the game, because they did not trust their government to maintain the value of Argentine currency. So, what is money today? The money that becomes figures in a computer must still be earned the old-fashioned way, by working for it, or earning it through prudent investment. That is, for most people. The expansion of government has made it possible to pay the needy in welfare checks and food stamps.

It is still possible to use gold as a storage of wealth. As long as paper money is susceptible to inflation, the dollar will continue to decrease in value. Thus, we have experienced exactly what the Argentines have experienced but over a much longer period of time. Those people in Argentina who owned gold came out ahead of everyone else, because the price of gold is set on the world market in London, and it is now worth as much as holders of the Argentine peso have to pay for it. Also, those who owned valuable real estate did well.

Once you understand the vulnerabilities of paper money, you have to invest your money and store it in ways that will maintain and hopefully increase its value. Putting it in the bank at today’s low interest will not increase its value. The stock market is still the best way to grow wealth. But you must buy stock in companies that you know will grow and prosper. Real estate is one of the best ways to store wealth, particularly in areas of increasing value. It makes sense to take advantage of today’s low mortgage rates to buy a house. Antiques and valuable works of art also make good investments. As for gold, it is a commodity. Its price is subject to periodic fluctuations caused by political and economic crises. There is no way of knowing for sure what the price of gold will be tomorrow. In other words, those who bought gold when it was $800 an ounce lost half its value as it declined to $350. It all depends at what price you buy it and at what price you sell it.

(The above article was written in the 1990s and is found among much of Sam’s work in the Sam Blumenfeld Archives: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

General Cornwallis Surrenders at Yorktown October 19, 1781

Published October 19, 2023 | By campconstitution

On this day in 1781, British General Charles Cornwallis formally surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing the American Revolution to a close.

Previously, Cornwallis had driven General George Washington’s Patriot forces out of New Jersey in 1776, and led his Recoats in victory over General Horatio Gates and the Patriots at Camden, South Carolina, in 1780. His subsequent invasion of North Carolina was less successful, however, and in April 1781, he led his weary and battered troops toward the Virginia coast, where he could maintain seaborne lines of communication with the large British army of General Henry Clinton in New York City. After conducting a series of raids against towns and plantations in Virginia, Cornwallis settled in Yorktown in August. The British immediately began fortifying the town and the adjacent promontory of Gloucester Point across the York RiverWashington instructed the Marquis de Lafayette, who was in Virginia with an American army of around 5,000 men, to block Cornwallis’ escape from Yorktown by land. In the meantime, Washington’s 2,500 troops in New York were joined by a French army of 4,000 men under the Count de Rochambeau. Washington and Rochambeau made plans to attack Cornwallis with the assistance of a large French fleet under the Count de Grasse, and on August 21 they crossed the Hudson River to march south to Yorktown. Covering 200 miles in 15 days, the allied force reached the head of Chesapeake Bay in early September.Meanwhile, a British fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves failed to break French naval superiority at the Battle of Virginia Capes on September 5, denying Cornwallis his expected reinforcements. Beginning September 14, de Grasse transported Washington and de Rochambeau’s men down the Chesapeake to Virginia, where they joined Lafayette and completed the encirclement of Yorktown on September 28. De Grasse landed another 3,000 French troops carried by his fleet. During the first two weeks of October, the 14,000 Franco-American troops gradually overcame the fortified British positions with the aid of de Grasse’s warships. A large British fleet carrying 7,000 men set out to rescue Cornwallis, but it was too late.On October 19, General Cornwallis surrendered 7,087 officers and men, 900 seamen, 144 cannons, 15 galleys, a frigate and 30 transport ships. Pleading illness, he did not attend the surrender ceremony, but his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, carried Cornwallis’ sword to the American and French commanders. As the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the British band played the song “The World Turned Upside Down.”Although the war persisted on the high seas and in other theaters, the Patriot victory at Yorktown effectively ended fighting in the American colonies. Peace negotiations began in 1782, and on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally recognizing the United States as a free and independent nation after eight years of war.

This is from This Day in History: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cornwallis-surrenders-at-yorktown

The Weekly Sam: Should Christians Support Education Without God

Published October 13, 2023 | By campconstitution

Back in 1849, when the organized Protestants of Massachusetts debated whether or not to support the public-school movement, which was then being heavily promoted by the Unitarians, they decided in favor of support, but with well-expressed conditions. They wrote:

The benefits of this system, in offering instruction to all, are so many and so great that its religious deficiencies, –especially since they can be otherwise supplied, do not seem to be a sufficient reason for abandoning it, and adopting in place of it, a system of denominational parochial schools …. It is however a great evil to withdraw from the established system of common schools, the interest and influence of the religious part of the community. On the whole, it seems to be the wisest course, at least for the present, to do all in our power to perfect as far as it can be done, not only its intellectual, but also its moral and religious character. 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. But, until we are forced to this result, it seems to us desirable that the religious community do all in their power to give an opportunity for a full and fair experiment of the existing system, including not only the common schools, but also the Normal Schools and the Board of Education.

I do not believe that any Christian can doubt that there has been a “full and fair experiment” of public education for the last 150 years and that its fidelity to the religious interests of Christian children has been proven to be decidedly negative. In fact, thousands of Christian parents, without knowledge of what was written in 1849, have already taken their children out of the public schools and either decided to homeschool them or place them in Christian schools. Their responsibilities as Christian parents have led them to make the necessary decision for the sake of their children’s spiritual wellbeing. But what is disturbing is that most Christians still patronize a system that is undermining the religious beliefs of their children.

One wonders what must happen before these parents realize the harm, they are doing to their children by keeping them in public schools. The simple fact is that the present government education system has as its foundation an anti-Christian philosophy known as secular humanism. All one has to do is read the Humanist Manifestos I and II to confirm the truth of this assertion. Humanist Manifesto I was written in 1933 by young Unitarian ministers who believed that the spiritual power of orthodox religion was in decline and should be replaced by a rational, man-centered, nontheistic religion. They wrote:

Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values …. Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. . . Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly, religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world.

Humanism is the only religion in America that has as its purpose and program the reconstitution of the institutions, rituals, and ecclesiastical methods of other religions. This is an overt declaration of war against Biblical religion. Forty years later, Humanist Manifesto II states:

As non-theists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity. [We]e can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species …. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.

In the January/February 1983 issue of The Humanist magazine, a young scholar by the name of John J. Dunphy expressed exactly what the aim of humanists is in education:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public-school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey. So humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of educational level- preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new–the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of “love thy neighbor” will finally be achieved.

The humanist war against Christianity is going on everyday in the classrooms of America. But the real battle is being fought in the courtrooms of the nation. In March 1987, U.S. District Judge W. Brevard Hand ruled in Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County. Alabama that the public-school curriculum was based on the tenets of secular humanism, and he thereby ordered that humanist textbooks to be removed from the schools. Five months later this ruling was overturned by the Eleventh Circuit Court which stated that “none of these books convey a message of government approval of secular humanism.” In other words, humanists are free to teach their dogma in the public schools as long as the government does not convey a message of approval. But that is the argument used to keep Christianity out. It is said that the mere inclusion of anything Christian in a public-school curriculum automatically implies government approval.

The notion that public schools are neutral when it comes to religion is belied by the strong prejudice against Christianity as openly expressed by such humanists as John Dunphy. What we have is not neutrality but warfare. Until Christians recognize that the government schools are establishments of religion, and that education is fundamentally a religious activity, we shall not be able to deal realistically with our educational crisis. The message for Christian parents must be loud and clear: putting a child in a public school violates God’s commandment as given in Deuteronomy 6 to educate a child in the love and admonition of the Lord.

There is no substitute for a godly education. In place of God, the public schools offer evolution, sex education, death education, multiculturalism, transcendental meditation, situational ethics, drug education, and other forms of humanist teachings. These are the programs that are creating the new nihilist, amoral barbarians that are devastating the lives of thousands of parents. There is hardly a Christian family that has not lost a child to the satanic culture that grows in the public-school environment. If Christians wish to restore America as a nation under God, they shall have to educate their children in schools that revere Him. •

American Minute with Bill Federer Four Voyages of Columbus to the New World – and Hurricanes in the Caribbean

Published October 6, 2023 | By campconstitution

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American Minute with Bill Federer

Four Voyages of Columbus to the New World – and Hurricanes in the Caribbean

Mehmet II succeeded his father, Murad II, to rule the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

After killing his brothers, he later formalized this practice into law, stating:

“Whichever of my sons inherits the sultan’s throne, it behooves him to kill his brothers in the interest of the world order” … continue reading American Minute here …

Download as PDF …

The Treacherous World of the 16th Century and How the Pilgrims Escaped It: The Prequel to America’s Freedom

On May 29, 1453, at the age of 21, Mehmet II conquered the Byzantine city of Constantinople, the largest and richest city in Europe.

Located on the Bosporus, where the East and West met, it largely served as the capital of Christendom for over a thousand years.

Mehmet had stated:

“The ghaza (holy war) is our basic duty, as it was in the case of our fathers … The conquest of (Constantinople) is … essential to the future and the safety of the Ottoman state.”

The fall of Constantinople ended the Byzantine Empire and permanently altered trade routes from Europe to Asia, which had been traveled for centuries by merchants, such as Marco Polo.

Detractors of Columbus should turn one chapter back in the history books and lay blame for his voyages on the expansionist policies of Sultan Mehmet II, who blocked Western access to the land trade routes to India and China.

Even socialist historian Howard Zinn admitted in A People’s History of the United States (1980):

“Now that the Turks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routes to Asia, a sea route was needed.

Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tip of Africa.

Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean.”

William Lawson Grant, Professor of Colonial History at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, wrote in the introduction to Voyages and Explorations (Toronto, The Courier Press, Limited, 1911, A.S. Barnes Company):

“The history of Western Civilization begins in a conflict with the Orient, a conflict of which it may be the end is not yet.

… The routes between East and West have been trodden by the caravans of trade more often even than by the feet of armies.

… The treasures of the East were long brought overland to Alexandria, or Constantinople, or the cities of the Levant, and thence distributed to Europe by the galleys of Genoa or of Venice.

… But when the Turk placed himself astride the Bosporus, and made Egypt his feudatory, new routes had to be found.”

Grant continued in Voyages and Explorations:

“In the search for these were made the three greatest voyages in history, those

of Columbus,

of Vasco da Gama, and

greatest of all of Magellan …

… In his search for the riches of Cipangu (Japan), Columbus stumbled upon America.

The great Genoese lived and died under the illusion that he had reached the outmost verge of Asia.”

In 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama successfully sailed around South Africa to India.

But six years earlier, Columbus proposed another westward SEA route.

Beginning in 1492, Christopher Columbus took FOUR VOYAGES to the New World:

1ST VOYAGE (1492-1493), he DISCOVERED land;

2ND VOYAGE (1493-1496), he encountered a hurricane, malaria, and CANNIBALS;

3RD VOYAGE (1498-1500), he faced doldrums, rebellion, and was ARRESTED;

4TH VOYAGE (1502-1504), he survived another hurricane, explored Panama, and was SHIPWRECKED on Jamaica for a year.

America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations

1ST VOYAGE (1492-1493) was truly historic.

Columbus used his knowledge of the “trade winds” to make the longest voyage ever out of the sight of land.

Thinking he had made it to India, he referred to the inhabitants as “Indians,” and the name stuck.

It is interesting to consider that native Americans might never have been called “Indians” had it not been for Islamic jihad cutting off the land trade routes to India.

These first inhabitants were peaceful Taino Arawak natives.

Columbus thought that Cuba was the tip of China and that Hispaniola (Dominican Republican/Haiti) was Japan.

Returning to Europe, Columbus’ ship, Santa Maria, hit a reef off the coast of Hispaniola and wrecked on December 24, 1492. He left 39 sailors in a make-shift fort named La Navidad.

2ND VOYAGE (1493-1496), Columbus was frustratingly saddled with 17 ships and 1,500 mostly get-rich-quick Spanish opportunists.

This was the doings of the jealous Spanish Bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca, who continually undermined Columbus at the royal court.

Fonseca thought it was a mistake that the Spanish Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, gave so much authority to a “non-Spaniard” — Columbus being just a low-class Genoese, from the rival Italian city-state of Genoa.

In this sense, Columbus was the victim of racial discrimination.

Bishop Fonseca is to be blamed for altering Columbus’ goal from finding India and China to managing hundreds of ambitious settlers. Columbus was an amazingly gifted explorer, but unfortunately failed miserably as a governor.

Looking for a location for a settlement, Columbus explored Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

Arriving at La Navidad, Hispaniola, they were shocked to find that the sailors Columbus had left the previous year were all killed by natives.

Reality set it.

Instead of finding a paradise, Spaniards were shocked to discover the existence of aggressive Carib natives.

Caribs would land on an island inhabited by the peaceful Taino Arawak natives and proceed to emasculated, sodomized and cannibalized them.

Columbus had them establish the settlement of La Isabella on Hispaniola, but shortly after it was destroyed in a hurricane, a storm of unbelievable intensity which none of them had experienced before.

They abandoned La Isabella and founded a new settlement named Santo Domingo, presumably in honor of Columbus’ father Domenico.

After the hurricane, followed by malaria, together with the fear of cannibals, the Spanish settlers began to feel Columbus misrepresented this new world “paradise.”

They began to grow impatient at having to obey Columbus, who, after all, was not even Spanish, but rather an Italian of low birth from Genoa.

Columbus unfortunately yielded to their greedy demands and allowed them set up European-style feudal plantations, called “mayorazgos.”

This tragically set a precedent for generations of mistreatment of native populations.

Columbus sailed back to Spain, leaving his two younger brothers Bartholomew and Diego (Giacomo) in charge of Santo Domingo.

3RD VOYAGE (1498-1500), Columbus sailed across the Atlantic further south, closer to the equator.

This brought him through a stretch of sea called “the horse latitudes” and “the doldrums,” where there is no wind for weeks at a time.

Parched in the windless heat of the blazing sun, Columbus prayed that if the winds returned, he would name the first land he saw after the Trinity.

When the winds picked up, Columbus named the first land he saw “Trinidad.”

Columbus then set foot and planted the Spanish flag on the Paria Peninsula of present-day Venezuela, August 1, 1498, making him the first European to set foot on South America.

He explored the beautiful Orinoco River, speculating that it could be the outer regions of the Garden of Eden.

When Columbus arrived back at his settlement of Santo Domingo, he found that the greedy Spanish settlers had rebelled against his brothers, Bartholomew and Diego.

In despair, Columbus sent a letter to the King, pleading for help.

The plea was intercepted by the ambitious Bishop Fonseca, who convinced the King that, instead of sending help, he should replace Columbus as governor.

The King sent a replacement governor named Bobadillo in 1500.

Bobadillo arrested Columbus and his brothers, and sent them back to Spain in chains.

Columbus wrote to a friend and confidante of the Queen, Dona Juana de Torres:

“I undertook a new voyage to the New World which hitherto had been hidden …

They judge me there as a governor who had gone to Sicily or to a city or town under a regular government …

I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies.”

The Treacherous World of the 16th Century and How the Pilgrims Escaped It: The Prequel to America’s Freedom

4TH VOYAGE (1502-1504).

After a two year delay, Ferdinand and Isabella finally permitted Columbus to sail on May 12, 1502, from Cadiz, Spain, on his last voyage.

Columbus was forbidden to visit his settlement of Santo Domingo, but upon reaching the Caribbean, he was alarmed to see another hurricane brewing, similar to the one experienced at La Isabella.

Weighing the risk, he entered the harbor of Santo Domingo to warn them of the approaching danger and to seek shelter for his ships.

He anchored and rowed ashore.

A second replacement governor had arrived named Orvando.

He ignored Columbus.

Orvando was preoccupied in preparing to send back to Spain the previous governor, Bobadillo, along with a treasure fleet of 30 ships filled with gold and native slaves.

Unwittingly, the ships would be heading directly into the path of the hurricane. Columbus’ warning was completely spurned, as he was considered an unwelcome persona-non-grata.

Orvando ordered Columbus to immediately leave the harbor.

With the hurricane now fast approaching, Columbus did not even take the time to pull aboard his row boat.

He sailed as fast as he could to seek shelter from the wind on the far side of the island.

The hurricane hit around July 1, 1502, with such fury that it almost completely destroyed Santo Domingo.

Of the treasure fleet, 4 ships returned to Santo Domingo, and 25 sank, with the loss of approximately 500 lives, including Bobadillo.

The one ship that survived and made it to Spain was the Aguja. It was so old and slow that it had not yet cleared the island mangroves when the hurricane hit.

When the ship arrived in Spain, to everyone’s amazement, it was found to be the one carrying Columbus’ portion of the gold, per his initial agreement with Ferdinand and Isabella.

The providential nature of this incident vindicated Columbus’ reputation, though he did not find out about it for over a year, as he was blown around the Caribbean.

Describing the violent weather, Columbus recorded:

“The tempest arose and wearied me so that I knew not where to turn, my old wound opened up, and for 9 days I was lost without hope of life; eyes never beheld the sea so angry and covered with foam …”

He continued:

“The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. The people were so worn out that they longed for death.”

After a day and a half of continuous lightning, Columbus’ 15-year-old son, Ferdinand, recorded that on December 13, 1502, a waterspout passed between the ships:

“… the which had they not dissolved by reciting the Gospel according to St. John, it would have swamped whatever it struck … for it draws water up to the clouds in a column thicker than a waterbutt, twisting it about like a whirlwind.”

Columbus’ biographer, Samuel Eliot Morrison described Admiral Columbus:

“It was the Admiral who exorcised the waterspout. From his Bible he read of that famous tempest off Capernaum, concluding, ‘Fear not, it is I!’

Then clasping the Bible in his left hand, with drawn sword he traced a cross in the sky and a circle around his whole fleet.”

Columbus explored the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.

He briefly landed in Panama, but was too ill and too suspicious of the natives to cross the 50 mile-wide isthmus on foot to the Pacific side, where he could have seen the real route to India and China.

As it was, they were attacked by Indians, and barely made it out of a shallow Belen River at low tide with 3 of his 4 ships. Another ship was lost in a storm off Cuba.

With his last two ships worm-eaten and taking on water, he beached them on the Island of Jamaica at St. Anne’s Bay, on June 25, 1503, marooned for the next year.

Natives at first accommodated them, but the situation deteriorated when some sailors began an unruly mutiny.

Fearing an attack, Columbus had to act fast.

An accomplished explorer, Columbus had been diligent to keep track of the position of the moon and stars in the night sky of the Western Hemisphere, something that had never been observed before.

Using astronomic tables made by Rabbi Abraham Zacuto of Spain, Columbus summoned the chiefs to his marooned ships on the specific night of February 29, 1504.

When he correctly predicted a lunar eclipse, the natives became afraid and convinced Columbus had divine favor.

They abandoned their plans of attack and continued to provide for them.

Finally, Columbus’ captain, Diego Méndez de Segura, purchased a canoe from the natives and set off with several of them from Jamaica toward Hispaniola (Haiti), crossing 450 miles of open sea.

Arriving there, Méndez found Governor Ovando in the jungle, subduing the Taino Arawak natives.

Ovando was not thrilled to hear that Columbus was still alive and waited months to send help.

Being rescued at last, Columbus returned to Santo Domingo for a final visit, then to Spain, arriving on November 7, 1504.

Three weeks later, his chief patron, Queen Isabella, died.

Columbus died a year and a half later at the age of 55.

Though unsuccessful as a governor, Columbus was nevertheless one of the world’s most accomplished sailors and explorers, and though he did not reach India or China, he did change history.

Back during his fourth and final voyage, when he was in Panama, trapped on the Belen River at low tide, he was incapacitated with physical pain.

On July 7, 1503, not knowing if anyone would ever read it, he wrote his Lettera Rarissima:

“The Indians were many and united and attacked … I was outside very much alone, on this rude coast, with a high fever and very fatigued.

There was no hope of escape. In this state, I climbed painfully to the highest part of the ship and cried out for help with a fearful voice …

… At length, groaning with exhaustion, I fell asleep, and heard a compassionate voice saying,

‘O fool, and slow to believe and serve thy God, the God of every man! … From thy birth He hath ever held thee in special charge …

Of those barriers of the Ocean Sea, which were closed with such mighty chains, He hath given thee the keys …

Turn thou to Him and acknowledge thy faults; His mercy is infinite; thine old age shall not hinder thee from performing mighty deeds … Whatever He promises He fulfills with interest; that is His way.”

(Published with permission from the American Minute.)

—

Has the Sun’s true role in global warming been miscalculated?

Published October 3, 2023 | By campconstitution

This news release was sent to us by Camp Constitution instructor Professor Willie Soon:

A new international study published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, by 20 climate researchers from 12 countries suggests that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) might have substantially underestimated the role of the Sun in global warming.

The article began as a response to a 2022 commentary on an extensive review of the causes of climate change published in 2021. The original review (Connolly and colleagues, 2021) had suggested that the IPCC reports had inadequately accounted for two major scientific concerns when they were evaluating the causes of global warming since the 1850s:

The global temperature estimates used in the IPCC reports are contaminated by urban warming biases.

The estimates of solar activity changes since the 1850s considered by the IPCC substantially downplayed a possible large role for the Sun.

On this basis, the 2021 review had concluded that it was not scientifically valid for the IPCC to rule out the possibility that global warming might be mostly natural.

The findings of that 2021 review were disputed in a 2022 article by two climate researchers (Dr. Mark Richardson and Dr. Rasmus Benestad) for two main reasons:

Richardson and Benestad (2022) argued that the mathematical techniques used by Connolly and colleagues (2021) were inappropriate and that a different set of mathematical techniques should have been used instead.
They also argued that many of the solar activity records considered by Connolly and colleagues (2021) were not up-to-date.

They suggested that these were the reasons why Connolly and colleagues (2021) had come to a different conclusion from the IPCC.

This new 2023 article by the authors of the 2021 review, has addressed both of these concerns and shown even more compelling evidence that the IPCC’s statements on the causes of global warming since 1850 are scientifically premature and may need to be revisited.

The authors showed that the urban component of the IPCC’s global temperature data shows a strong warming bias relative to the 98% of the planet that is unaffected by urbanization. However, they also showed that urbanized data represented most of the weather station records used.

While the IPCC only considered one estimate of solar activity for their most recent (2021) evaluation of the causes of global warming, Connolly and colleagues compiled and updated 27 different estimates that were used by the scientific community.

Several of these different solar activity estimates suggest that most of the warming observed outside urban areas (in rural areas, oceans, and glaciers) could be explained in terms of the Sun. Some estimates suggest that global warming is a mixture of human and natural factors. Other estimates agreed with the IPCC’s findings.

For this reason, the authors concluded that the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the global warming since the 1850s is mostly human-caused, mostly natural or some combination of both.

The lead author of the study, Dr. Ronan Connolly, of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES-Science.com) described the implications of their findings,

“In scientific investigations, it is important to avoid beginning your analysis with your conclusions decided in advance. Otherwise you might end up with a false sense of confidence in your findings. It seems that the IPCC was too quick to jump to their conclusions.”

Another author of the study, Dr. Willie Soon, also of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences, explained:

“If the IPCC had paid more attention to open-minded scientific inquiry than trying to force a premature ‘scientific consensus’, then the scientific community would be a lot closer to having genuinely resolved the causes of climate change. Hopefully, our new analysis and datasets can help other scientists to get back to doing real climate science.”

This study reaches similar conclusions to another study that was recently published in a separate scientific peer-reviewed journal, Climate. This other study involved many of the same co-authors (led by Dr. Soon) and focused on a detailed case study of two solar activity estimates and two temperature estimates. It took a different approach to analyzing the problem but confirmed that varying the choice of solar activity and temperature estimates can lead to very different conclusions on the causes of global warming.

For media inquiries, please contact Dr. Ronan Connolly (Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences) at ronan@ceres-science.com or Dr. Willie Soon (Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences) at willie@ceres-science.com.

Link to the study:

R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C.J. Butler, R.G. Cionco, A.G. Elias, V. Fedorov, H. Harde, G.W. Henry, D.V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D.R. Legates, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, V.M. Velasco Herrera, H. Yan and W.J. Zhang (2023). “Challenges in the detection and attribution of Northern Hemisphere surface temperature trends since 1850”. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 23(10), 105015. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/acf18e. (Open access).
Link to accompanying datasets.

Links to other studies mentioned:

R. Connolly, W. Soon, M. Connolly, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, C. J. Butler, R. G. Cionco, A. G. Elias, V. M. Fedorov, H. Harde, G. W. Henry, D. V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D. R. Legates, S. Lüning, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, L. Szarka, H. van Loon, V. M. Velasco Herrera, R. C. Willson, H. Yan and W. Zhang (2021). How much has the Sun influenced Northern Hemisphere temperature trends? An ongoing debate. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 21, 131. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/21/6/131. Supplementary Materials available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7088728.
M.T. Richardson and R.E. Benestad (2022). “Erroneous use of Statistics behind Claims of a Major Solar Role in Recent Warming”. Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, 22(12), 125008. https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4527/ac981c. (pdf available here).
W. Soon, R. Connolly, M. Connolly, S.-I. Akasofu, S. Baliunas, J. Berglund, A. Bianchini, W.M. Briggs, C.J. Butler, R.G. Cionco, M. Crok, A.G. Elias, V.M. Fedorov, F. Gervais, H. Harde, G.W. Henry, D.V. Hoyt, O. Humlum, D.R. Legates, A.R. Lupo, S. Maruyama, P. Moore, M. Ogurtsov, C. ÓhAiseadha, M.J. Oliveira, S.-S. Park, S. Qiu, G. Quinn, N. Scafetta, J.-E. Solheim, J. Steele, L. Szarka, H.L. Tanaka, M.K. Taylor, F. Vahrenholt, V.M. Velasco Herrera and W. Zhang (2023). “The Detection and Attribution of Northern Hemisphere Land Surface Warming (1850–2018) in Terms of Human and Natural Factors: Challenges of Inadequate Data”, Climate, 11(9), 179. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli11090179. (Open access).
IPCC (2021). “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. https://ipcc.ch

The Weekly Sam: How I Became a Christian by Sam Blumenfeld

Published September 15, 2023 | By campconstitution

First, the question is: what is a Christian? To me the answer is quite simple. A Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, who was sent to this earth to save men from their sinful natures, to offer them salvation and eternal life after death. God’s purpose was to extend the covenant he had made with Abraham and, through Jesus, extend it beyond the Jewish people to the rest of mankind. That is why Christ’s mission was so important: to bring to the rest of pagan mankind a knowledge of God and, for each human soul, a personal attachment to God through Jesus, his son. Many Christian scholars and theologians have written thousands of pages to explain what Christianity is. And so, I don’t know if my definition of a Christian would coincide with theirs.

I am not a theologian and therefore cannot give any explanation beyond my own personal understanding. That is my humble conviction, and it has provided me with an intellectually and spiritually satisfying way to explain my beliefs. I believe that all important philosophies can be explained simply or summed up in a simple paragraph. If they can’t, they are not true. The truth does not hide behind an impenetrable curtain of verbiage, but falsehood always does. All of my life I have had a tremendous respect for truth, for reality, for fact. I have never avoided reality. I love it too much, even when it is cruel. But I can understand those who would love to escape it. How I, a Jew, came to accept Jesus Christ was part of an intellectual journey that started in high school, continued in the Army during World War II, and continued in college. In the Army, my closest buddies were Catholics. At the City College of New York my friends were Christians and Jews.

After college, I studied in France for two years. Most of the friends I made in Paris were Christians, or I should say, non-Jews. They were American expatriates of a secular persuasion. The Europeans I got to know were typically non-religious. In Europe I visited the Cathedrals and was awed by their grandeur and beauty. During my stay in the army in Italy I had visited the Vatican and climbed the stairs in St. Peter’s Basilica right into the ball at the very top of the dome under the cross. Christianity was, of course, full of Old Testament references. Michelangelo had carved that great marble statue of Moses in St. Peter’s and the breathtaking statue of David in Florence. With my Christian friends I attended Christmas mass at both Notre Dame de Paris and at Santa Maria Maggiori in Rome. Catholic priests officiating at the Mass in their splendid dress never looked particularly holy to me. The men who looked holy to me were the old men in the synagogue, covered by their prayer shawls, swaying quietly in prayer. In other words, despite my visits to cathedrals and attendance at Masses, I was not attracted to Jesus. I simply ignored Him.

As an American Jew, I had become quite secularized and hardly practiced my own religion let alone the religion of my Christian friends who for the most part were as secular as I was. For me, Christianity provided the esthetic enjoyments for a lover of the arts. I had no interest in Christian theology or any other theology for that matter. There was a brief period, shortly after my father’s death in 1958, when I was an atheist. I wasn’t proud or happy to be an atheist, I simply believed, much to my sadness, that God did not exist. I had undergone psychoanalysis during that period, trying to understand myself, and I probably adopted Freud’s atheism. Most New York intellectual Jews were atheists or agnostics, practitioners of modernity and the secular lifestyle. Jews took a liberal view of the dietary laws, ate bacon and lobsters, and the synagogues were sparsely attended on the Sabbath. It was only on the Jewish holidays that secular Jews celebrated their heritage. And it was more cultural than theological.

After Freud, I got to know Ayn Rand. At the time, I was an editor at Grosset & Dunlap, and a literary agent had brought a manuscript by Isabel Paterson to me for possible publication. Paterson, a great believer in individual freedom, had inspired Ayn Rand in her early days as a writer, and the agent suggested that perhaps Rand might be willing to write an introduction to the book. Paterson had died, and an introduction might be a tribute to a friend. I called Rand and invited her to lunch. It was a delightful occasion. We discussed our mutual love of laissez-faire capitalism. I was a libertarian, and she was an Objectivist. She suggested that I attend a series of lectures on Objectivism given by her protege Nathaniel Branden at a midtown hotel. Objectivism was a new pro-individualistic philosophy which Rand had formulated, with the assistance of Branden. I attended the lectures and was delighted with Branden’s well-reasoned and rational opposition to Socialism and collectivism.

The only problem with Objectivism was Rand’s strident atheism. While my atheism was of the sad variety, Rand’s was unrelenting. I truly wished that God existed, while Rand rejected anything resembling “mysticism.” But it wasn’t until the 1970s that reality posed so many problems in my life, that I finally had to call on God for help. Both Freud and Rand had failed to provide the spiritual certainty I needed. But how do we find God? By simply crying out to Him whenever life’s burdens seem unbearable. We cry out to our Father in Heaven when no one on earth can help us. And God, in some way, answers the prayers of the wretched and bewildered and suffering.

It is said that Charles Darwin rejected God because he could not believe in a deity that would permit his favorite child to die. But what would life be like if God suspended all-natural phenomenon, including illness and disease? We would be living in an unnatural, supernatural state which Darwin’s theory of evolution says does not exist. Darwin preached natural selection. His daughter died because of the process of natural selection. In other words, Darwin simply used the death of his daughter to justify his rejection of God, when in reality it was his intellectual pride that was behind it.

I never had that kind of intellectual pride. So, when I turned to God, it was in the way that men seek a lifesaver when shipwrecked. You float in a hostile sea hoping to survive. It is not a very rational nor dignified way to seek God. It is more like a child’s way. But atheists are more like petulant children than mature seekers of the truth. And slowly but surely, I found my way onto dry land with a new belief in the mysterious power of the Creator of the universe. But I was still not a Christian and knew very little about Christianity. I could not really tell the difference between a Methodist and a Presbyterian. To Jews, all Christians are alike, and all Christian denominations are essentially alike. They all profess to believe in Jesus Christ. In the early 1980s I began to write a book about the origins of public education. As a libertarian I wanted to know why and how the American people gave up educational freedom so early in our history and opted for a government owned and controlled system of education. And it was through that process of research that I became a Christian.

(The above is from the Sam Blumenfeld Archives- a free on-line resource containing the works of the late Sam Blumenfeld https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/

Labor Day, Railroad Strikes, Grover Cleveland, Eugene Debs, Socialist Party of America, Outsourcing – American Minute with Bill Federer

Published September 4, 2023 | By campconstitution

September 03, 2023 • Eugene Debs • Grover Cleveland • Labor Day • Outsourcing • Railroad Strikes • Socialist Party of America

LISTEN (text to speech)

Download as PDF …

To appreciate Labor Day, one needs to know the history preceding it.

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.

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

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

A 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.

European manufactured products were imported into America.

Soon, Americans built their own factories.

Originally, there was no Federal Income tax.

The Federal government was financed primarily from:

EXCISE TAXES on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;

and

TARIFF TAXES on imports from European factories.

Tariff taxes made European products more expensive, motivating consumers to buy products manufactured in America.

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

The tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was predominately agricultural and had few factories to protect.

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

This fueled animosity between the states leading up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the North passed even more tariff taxes which successfully allowed Northern factories to grow enormous.

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

Machines freed women 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 led to the building of 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.

This resulted in Americans experiencing the fastest increase in the standard of living of any people in world history.

Factories had a continual source of workers from the millions of immigrants, who not only got a job, but learned the language and trade skills.

President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886 to welcome immigrants.

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

Immigrants were known for their hard work.

This is described in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, written by German sociologist Max Weber, 1904-1905.

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

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

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

Religious adherents established private secular enterprises, engaged in trade, and accumulated wealth for both investment and for the support of charitable missionary activity.

A popular literary genre developed of “rags-to-riches” stories, where individuals exhibiting hard work, honesty, and strength through adversity, achieved success.

In 1867, Horatio Alger began publishing a best-selling series of 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 demonstrated the Protestant work ethic and rose from humble beginnings to have great purpose and achieve outstanding accomplishments.

In 1894, Orison Swett Marden wrote Pushing to the Front, and in 1897, 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 members, churches, and individuals giving charity, provided the welfare net.

Some immigrants brought with them from Europe socialist and anarchists ideas and exacerbated labor tensions to further their larger goal of tearing down the capitalist system in order to set up a socialist economy.

Though no one was forced to work in factories, some laborers began to organize for better working conditions.

Organizing flyers were written in the English and German languages.

In May of 1886, a protest in Chicago near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. turned into the Haymarket Riot.

A “peaceful protester” threw a dynamite bomb at the police.

The blast and subsequent violence resulted in seven police officers and four civilians killed, along with dozens wounded.

To commemorate the incident, they chose May 1st to be an annual International Workers Day.

Another incident was a railroad strike in 1894.

An ideal factory setting was created by George Pullman, who founded the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company just outside of Chicago, Illinois.

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 to be a type of utopian workers’ paradise community, in the same 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 something happened.

There was a nationwide economic depression in 1893 and orders for railroad sleeping cars suddenly dropped 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, rent and groceries stayed the same price.

Some immigrants from Europe spread Karl Marx’s idea of critical theory, dividing the nation up into groups and pitting them against each other in a class-struggle.

Employees were distraught, as they had grown completely 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 national economic crash.

A leader of the strikes was Eugene V. Debs. A high school drop out, Debs got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.

He was promoted to locomotive fireman and rose in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman. He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.

When the nation experienced the financial crisis, Debs agitated and organized a strike of railroad workers in 1894.

Soon, railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars.

There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of 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 when it interrupted the trains delivering 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 men were killed.

After the devastating riots and shut-downs, Americans were discontented with 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 chances if workers were given a day off, so support grew for a national “LABOR DAY.”

Cleveland intentionally did not chose May 1st as it was the anniversary of the bloody Chicago’s Haymarket Riot and the “International Workers Day.”

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

As far as the 1894 elections went, it did not help. Cleveland’s Democrat Party had the biggest mid-term loss in decades.

Patriotic Americans, in opposition to socialists, began celebrating May 1st as “Loyalty Day,” which was officially recognized by the U.S. Congress in April 27, 1955, and proclaimed by President Eisenhower, being made an annual holiday with Public Law 85-529.

Strike-organizer Eugene Debs was arrested for mail obstruction and put in prison for six months.

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

Demands by socialist progressives to redistribute wealth led to the passage of:

the corporate income tax, 1894;
the personal income tax, 1914; and
the inheritance estate tax, 1916.

Eugene Debs and the 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 and 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 U.S. President on Socialist Party of America ticket. As he won zero electoral votes, he opposed to the electoral process.

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

Russia’s Socialist leader Vladimir Lenin referenced Eugene 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 ” (see Deb’s Appeal to Reason, “When I Shall Fight,” No. 1032, September 11, 1915)

One of those who followed Debs’ call to be a draft-dodger was Roger Baldwin, who later founded the A.C.L.U. to help defend those who were accused of being a communist 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.”

In 1918, Debs was charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison.

In protest of his sentence, unionists, anarchists, socialists, and communists marched in support of Debs in a May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio.

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

When Debs’ attorney asked for a Presidential pardon, Woodrow Wilson wrote “denied” across the paperwork, and stated:

“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 G. 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.”

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 Vladimir Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution overthrowing Russia’s government, he formed the Communist International in 1919.

This persuaded some members of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party of America to break off and form the Communist Party USA.

The Communist Party USA ran candidates for U.S. President every year from 1920 till they decided to support Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War Two, as Roosevelt had allied himself with the U.S.S.R.’s Josef Stalin.

Chicago’s statue dedicated to the police officers who were killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot was blown up on October 6, 1969, by Bill Ayers and Eric Mann’s militant group “Weatherman Underground” during their Days of Rage.

The Haymarket statue was rebuilt, only to be blown up again by the Weatherman Underground on October 6, 1970.

Weatherman 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 tome. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx.”

Weatherman 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 worked hard for wages with which they could buy trucks, houses, cars, boats, guns, and other personal possessions.

They could also be moved upon to give of their possessions to those in need, which is called charity.

Reagan stated in 1988:

“I believe God did give mankind unlimited gifts to invent, produce and create.”

Booker T. Washington founded the National Negro Business League.

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.”

In socialist countries, laborers were forced to work hard, but could own no possessions. The government took them all away.

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

Socialists believe that when the government finally finishes taking away everyone’s possessions, then the world will arrive at a imagined ideal utopia called communism.

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

There will be no private ownership of anything. There will be no privacy. People will not even have control over their own children.

The government will control everything, on both production side and 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, as the opposite of the “individual.”

Use of the term socialism was popularized by mid-to-late 1800s by European theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci, where power is taken away from individuals and concentrated into the hands of the state.

One of the significant contributions of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization is the concept of you having a worth and an identity as an individual, apart from any group.

Gramsci, who founded the Italian Communist Party, wrote in his Prison Notebooks, 1929-1935:

“Any country grounded in Judaeo-Christian values can’t be overthrown until those roots are cut …

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity …

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.”

During Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, “socialism” became identified as a distinct transition phase between capitalism and communism.

The most opportune time to transition is in crises.

Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 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.”

The term “capitalism” is the where individuals, with their own money, or capital, could invest and have a business providing goods or services – the production side.

Individuals could then earn a profit which they could decide how to spend – the consumption side.

Karl Marx wrote in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV:

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

Lenin considered socialism as the transition phase from capitalism to communism, stating:

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

Karl Marx explained:

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

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.”

Unions did help to bring about:

the 8-hour work day,
a 40-hour work week,
minimum wages,
safer working conditions, and
more benefits for workers.

Henry Ford’s Motor Company was one of the first to implement these benefits.

An account circulated that Henry Ford met a Yemeni sailor at port and told him about auto factory jobs that paid five dollars a day.

The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other parts of the Middle East.

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.”

It is speculated that Ford’s motive in initiating immigration of Middle Eastern Muslims to Dearborn and Hamtramck, Michigan, was to counter growing union strength.

Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper labor of immigrants undercut their wages.

As unions grew in size, another situation developed, where top leadership tended to hold values different than rank-and-file union workers.

Many members supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet some in union leadership funneled union dues to support candidates who advocated opposing views.

One of the unanticipated consequences of workers’ benefits improving was the increase cost of doing business.

Companies, in order to stay competitive in the increasingly global marketplace, had to find ways to lower costs, which meant replacing jobs with “automation” and “out-sourcing.”

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 for less and took a larger part of the global market.

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

Issues that increased the cost of doing business in America 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 relaxed regulations for companies supporting their political agendas and reelection campaigns; but companies not supporting them are put at a disadvantage, some being faced with the choice of either going out of business or going out of the country.

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.

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.

Bringing jobs back to America is as simple as making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.

But coalescing the political will in Congress is an uphill battle.

Another by-product of companies leaving the country was their loss of patriotism, creating what became termed “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 effectively split in two, with “individual” capitalism being patriotic, supporting the country that 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 discretionary regulations and burdensome COVID responses which put smaller competitors out of business.

Additionally, socialist political strategies include intentionally raising unemployment rates so more unemployed workers will sign up for welfare benefits.

Once unemployed workers become dependent on government benefits and entitlements, they are inclined to vote for the candidates who promise to continue them.

Tragically, for some political strategists, increased unemployment means an increased voter base.

If entitlements are threatened, some are even inclined to be organized into revolutionaries.

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

“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.”

Among American workers, union membership since 1950 has declined from 50 percent to currently less than 12 percent.

Instead of addressing the need to attract manufacturers, with their jobs, back to America, many unions have focused their efforts to increase 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 “social justice” movements, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had spent 11 years in Union of Soviet Socialist Republics labor camps, 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 distorted outlook … short-sightedness and … self-interest – from 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.”

A spiritual encouragement 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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