The Problems with the 14th Amendment: A Presentation by Pastor David Whitney
President Trump’s recent executive order con concerning birthright citizenship — Executive Order — has been challenged by the Left. Pastor David Whitney gives a presentation on the original intent of the 14th as well as its questionable ratification. This presentation was conducted at our 16th annual family camp that took place in July of 2024 at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH
Pastor Whitney will be an instructor at this year’s camp which runs from July 13-18: https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration/
The Weekly Sam: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PARENTS OF NORTH CAROLINA by Samuel L. Blumenfeld
The North Carolina State Department of Education has mandated, through state law, a program for the first three grades of North Carolina’s public schools calculated to turn your children into reading and learning failures. The instruction methods being used in these grades to teach reading and “communication skills” are based on the theories of behavioral psychology and are known as psycholinguistics. The nation’s leading proponent of psycholinguistics, Prof. Kenneth Goodman of Arizona State University, has called reading “a psycholinguistic guessing game.” This instruction method, originally known as “look-say,” “the sight method,” or the “whole-word method,” is known to cause severe reading and learning disability.
In 1929 Dr. Samuel T. Orton, in an article entitled “The ‘Sight Reading’ Method of Teaching Reading as a Source of Reading Disability,” warned the educators of America that introducing this teaching method in the schools of America would “not only prevent the acquisition of academic education by children of average capacity but may also give rise to far reaching damage to their emotional life.” The educators disregarded Dr. Orton’s warning and proceeded to introduce the “sight reading” method in our schools, with the result that our schools are now turning out millions of functionally illiterate and learning disabled young adults every year. Not only is all of this costing the taxpayer billions of dollars in instructional and remedial costs, but it is causing untold emotional damage to millions of Americans whose ability to pursue careers requiring high or merely competent literacy has been severely limited.
I have read through the reading and communication skills program mandated by the state of North Carolina and can predict that at least one-third of the children now entering kindergarten and first grade in the state’s public schools will be permanently damaged and handicapped by these methods. I am urging the parents of North Carolina to demand the teaching of intensive phonics as the sole method of teaching reading in these early grades. That is the only way to prevent your children from becoming reading and learning disabled. If the state will not respond to your demand, then I urge you to remove your children from the public schools and place them in private or church schools where intensive phonics is taught. If you cannot afford private education, but are at home, then I urge you to home-school your children, using readily available phonics materials for home tutoring. I also urge churches to create scholarship funds to help parents who cannot afford to send their children to a private school.
However, if you keep your children in the public school then I strongly advise you to keep records of your children’s progress, accounts of your conversations with teachers and principals, and records of the materials being used in the classroom to teach your children. If your children become reading and learning disabled you may want to sue the school system, the state department of education, and the legislators who voted for this program. Heretofore, the only people who have sued public schools for educational malpractice have been high school graduates who have come out of twelve years of schooling functionally illiterate.
None of these cases has been won by the plaintiffs because the courts have refused to hold the schools responsible for their own malpractice. However, by serving notice on your legislators, educators, and state bureaucrats that you intend to hold them responsible for the results produced by the instruction methods they have voted for or have used in their classrooms, the courts will be unable to deny their accountability.
If you are a parent who has put a child in a public school, kindergarten or first grade, we urge you to write to us and supply us with the following information: name, age, grade of your child; name of the school, teacher, and principal; titles of the instructional materials used in the classroom. In three years, we shall know which children have been damaged by the school’s teaching methods, and we shall institute a class-action malpractice suit against the North Carolina State Department of Education, the legislators who voted for the program, the teachers and principals who used these methods, and the publishers who produced them. Only with your cooperation will we be able to stop the abuse of your children in the public schools of North Carolina by means of faulty instructional materials developed by behavioral psychologists. Send the information requested to The Blumenfeld Education Letter, P.O. Box 39850, Phoenix, Arizona 85069.
(The above letter was written back in the early 1980s. We don’t know how many parents responded to Sam’s letter. But today the homeschool movement is flourishing. This letter is in the Sam Blumenfeld Archives. It is free to join: http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/main.htm
The Blumenfeld Archives
Devout Catholic teacher ordered to purge workspace of crucifix or get fired
First Liberty Institute has dispatched a letter to a Connecticut school district suggesting that it reconsider its demands that a devout Catholic teacher purge her workspace of a crucifix – or get fired.
“Requiring a teacher to purge their workspace of anything religious is blatant discrimination that violates the First Amendment,” explained Keisha Russell, a senior counsel at the legal organization.
“The Supreme Court said in the recent Kennedy decision that teachers have the right to engage in personal religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause, including when students are present.”
The institute said it sent a letter to officials at the New Britain School District on behalf of Marisol Orroyo-Castro, who has been a teacher for three decades.
The letter calls on the district to reinstate her, after she was placed on administrative leave for refusing to “remove a small crucifix from her workspace.”
The legal team explained:
Marisol has taught in the Connecticut public schools for 32 years. For the last 10 years, she has placed a crucifix by her desk along with other personal items such as student artwork and a church calendar. As a devout Catholic, the crucifix reminds her to pray and helps her remain calm throughout the day as she faithfully teaches her students.
On Friday, December 6, 2024, she was brought into a meeting with the vice principal and abruptly told that unless she removed the crucifix by her desk by Monday morning she would be disciplined for insubordination. She was later told she could put the crucifix in a drawer or under her desk, so students wouldn’t see it.
After she did so, Marisol started to sob, feeling as though she “hid it under a bushel,” rather than let her light shine. After many tears and prayer, she returned the crucifix to its original location. She was then suspended without pay for two days during the holiday season as the school waited for her to comply and hang the crucifix under her desk in a place the school administration called her “private space.” Now, she is on administrative leave during the grievance process. The school district said it is considering whether to terminate Marisol.
The lawyers noted that other teachers are allowed to display photographs of family and friends, images of Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda, a miniature of the Mona Lisa, promotions for the New England Patriots football team, inspirational quotes and much more, including a mug referencing a Bible verse.
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But the district won’t tolerate a crucifix.
In the letter, the attorneys explain, “Under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and under the Connecticut Constitution, the District may not abridge its employees’ free speech rights, nor their rights to freely exercise their religion.”
Then the letter cited the Kennedy precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court.
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“Fewer than three years ago, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court held that a public school football coach could not be fired for engaging in personal prayer, even when he did so visibly at the 50-yard line of the stadium after home games.”
First Liberty Institute also represented Kennedy in that case.
Fox reported First Liberty Institute is working with WilmerHale law firm on the case.
Castro had been teaching at DeLoreto Elementary & Middle School.
First Liberty Institute said while on leave, Castro has been “pressured to resign or retire early and sign an agreement not to sue the district.”
The threats also have included her termination.
Tony Gasper, the superintendent, claimed, “We will not allow any teacher to use their position of authority to impose their personal religious beliefs or infringe on the civil rights of students. Our commitment is to ensure a learning environment where all students feel respected.”
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.
(Reposted with permission from WND.)
Time to Re-Evaluate the Legacy of Martin Luther King by Vincent Ellison
Originally published at American Thinker
After finding evidence that the “man of God” and “moral conscience of our nation,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the rape of a parishioner, engaged in numerous sex orgies, received cash payments from known communists, and admitted that he was a Marxist, King biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow wrote of King, “There is no question that a profoundly painful reckoning and reconsideration inescapably awaits.”
Black Democrats and White liberals rail about the gains derived from the Civil Rights Movement. I ask, “What gains?” If murder, poverty, and mass incarceration are gains, you may have a point. In an attempt to make him untouchable, liberals have protected King’s counterfeit legacy by sealing his FBI files until 2027. Nevertheless, his reckoning is here.
But that reckoning shouldn’t occur exclusively because of King’s immoral behavior. It shouldn’t happen because the “Good Reverend’s” best friend, Ralph Abernathy, in his book And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, described King beating a woman and sleeping with two others at the Lorrain Motel the night before his death. Or because Arthur Schlesinger recorded Jackie Kennedy saying he was “terrible, phony, and tricky.” Or that Black Major League Baseball player Don Newcombe reported to the FBI that King was a “drunk” and had an illegitimate child by a woman married to a sterile Los Angeles dentist. Or because King allowed the dirty world of politics to turn the Black church into a puppet of the atheist and racist Democrat party.
No. This reckoning should happen because Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement have failed Black people. They managed only to elect many Black Americans into office, with most of them belonging to the same evil Democrat party that had necessitated the Civil Rights Movement by enslaving, raping, castrating, and oppressing Black Americans for over one hundred and fifty years.
After fifty years of following King’s failed ideology, consider these results. On June 4, 2020, the Washington Post reported “no decrease in Black and White citizens’ wealth gap since 1968.” The Brookings Institution reported that in 1965, only 24% of Black children were born out of wedlock. In 2020, it was 69.4 (approximately a 300% increase). Between 2019 and 2020, Blacks made up 11% of the population but 50% of all murders. In May 2019, Penn State and UCLA reported that school segregation is getting worse.
This is King’s legacy. Why are we celebrating it?
In explaining how to recognize a false prophet, Jesus said, “A tree is known by the fruit it bears.” He said you cannot get bad fruit from a good tree. The fruits of the Black community, almost unanimously, are rotten to the core.
What good has come from Martin Luther King’s movement for Black America? The American Black community is at the bottom of nearly every socio-economic statistic. The Black family is weaker. The Black church is more apostate. The Black economy is nonexistent. Black government is corrupt. Black education is terrible. Are we celebrating failure, or was this their intention?
To have been a Christian minister, it is illuminating that King’s ideology is anathema to Christianity, manliness, and American freedom. Consider this: after attempting to integrate an all-White hotel in 1965, when asked what he wanted, King reported replied, “My dignity.” I hate this story. God gave all of us our dignity, but King and his minions taught America that White people held the dignity of Black America in their hands, and we had to beg them to release it.
His low opinion of Black people was on full display when he said Black people could not pull themselves up by their bootstraps because “they did not have boots.” He told us non-violence is a Christian virtue. That is not true. There is no virtue in strong Christian men allowing their wives and children to be beaten, raped, and murdered as King demanded. Non-aggression is a Christian virtue, not non-violence.
Forced integration or forcing others to allow you to be where you are not wanted or not invited is not a Christian or manly virtue. It is offensive to force your presence upon another, and Jesus taught that we should never offend unless it is for his sake and never our own. To do otherwise defines you as a stalker. A stalker can never be loved — only pitied, as most Black Americans are today.
In his epic “I Have A Dream” speech, reportedly written by his White communist handler, Stanley Levinson, King planted a sense of perpetual slavery in the minds of every Black person when he said, “One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Negro is still not free.” That is not true. I was born free. God gave me my freedom.
In that speech, he placed in the Black mind the blasphemous idea that government is above God when he said we have come here to cash a check from America guaranteeing our unalienable rights. That isn’t true. Our unalienable rights are given to us by God. According to John Locke, these rights are irreversible, unsellable, and nontransferable.
Cementing in the minds of Black Americans and America the belief in Black inferiority, he delivered his most quoted line: “I have a dream that one day my four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin.” You wish not to be judged only by something that shames you. One should never be ashamed of something that God gave him. Furthermore, Christianity teaches that we cannot and should not try to control the actions of others. The stupid, ignorant racist should not be concerned about me. I am never concerned about his judgment or bigotry. We can only control ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with the color of my Black skin. You are welcome to judge me by it. Underestimate me at your peril.
He ended this epic speech by doubling down on the fact that Blacks were not free, and we needed the permission of White people to be free by saying “knowing that we will be free one day” and on a certain day we can say, “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last.”
Let me reiterate: I was born free. No man can set me free. I just am.
His speech set in motion decades of Black victimization and White guilt. It is recited from every classroom in America, indoctrinating future generations to believe the lie of Black inferiority and the goodness of government dependency. Instead of being recited, it should be re-evaluated, condemned, and placed in the trash bin of history beside the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson rulings.
These King statements that have long been a part of America and are canon in Black American thought must be pulled up, root and stem. White Americans are not responsible for and cannot solve the problems of Black people. No other racial group in America carries this badge of inferiority, depending for all their future success on the actions of another racial group. Most comprehend the insanity of this ideology, and the present condition of Black society testifies to its epic failure. Therefore, King’s reckoning is at hand, and as with the old Confederacy, it’s time for a reconsideration.
Regarding King, Jim Tott wrote, “Toward the end of his life, a major poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans held an unfavorable opinion of the civil rights icon.” On March 4, 2015, CBS News ran a story titled “Have the goals of the civil rights movement been achieved” Fifty-four percent of all Americans and 72% of Black Americans say no.
With all the speeches, marches, and pieces of legislation, with no success, it is time to understand that King was wrong. Black Americans cannot garner love and respect through legislative coercion. History has proven that it is a waste of time even to seek it. We should spend our time trying to control and improve ourselves, praying for and protecting ourselves from people who mean us harm, while cherishing the people we love.
There is evidence that King’s new society that teaches pity, not esteem, begging instead of earning, and stalking instead of standing has bred an insidious self-hate among Black people. Sadly, wherever Black people live in close proximity with one another, they hurt, disrespect, and kill each other on an industrial level while aborting their children at three times the level of white women.
When stalking, begging, and pity didn’t work, King resorted to violence. He contracted out his violence to a third party. He used the gun of the federal government to force the racist Democrats to allow Black Americans into their presence. Intentionally or unintentionally, King placed Black America into the sad position where they are now not respected, but pitied; where they are not wanted, but tolerated; where they do not earn, but are “given” — thus leaving too many of these Black people filled with hate, pride, envy, and grievance, devoid of gratitude, never satisfied, always complaining, and never saying “thank you” or thanking God.
This line of thinking has produced a generation of Black people where there exist mostly victims and their victimhood-supporters and allies: Black Lives Matter, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP — all marvelous beggars, cowards, and thieves.
Taylor Branch, in his book Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, called Martin Luther King, Jr. “a pawn of history.” He is that and much worse. He is a weapon the left wields in the Democrat party, designed to keep America in condemnation and Black people in their place.
King’s aforementioned amoral actions are germane only in the sense that they match the amoral outcomes of the Civil Rights Movement. Blacks must take their place as free men and women, complete with all of its dangers and glories. Black men of honor must reject all condescending overtures of affirmative action, the pity of Critical Race Theory, and the weakness of “anti-racist theory” from our former oppressors. We must compete, earn, and defend as all free men do.
Because of King’s abusive behavior toward women, David Garrow concluded his piece on King by saying these actions “pose[] so fundamentally a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible.” This may be true. But the wretched condition of Black America is the primary black mark on King’s legacy and the ultimate reason for his re-evaluation.
Until Black Americans reject King’s ideology and accept that we should be esteemed by instead of ashamed of the color of our skin; that we, not White America, hold our dignity in our hands; that our rights come from God, not government; that we are and always have been free, and that we should never stalk, beg, and compare ourselves to White America or anyone ever again other than our former selves, Black America will remain at the bottom of every socio-economic statistic in the Western world.
Dangerous freedom over safe slavery; justice over equality; strength and honor over pity, envy, and stalking. This is the true face of America and what God intends for all people.
Vince Ellison is the author of several books including Crime Inc and the producer of the documentary “Will You Go to Hell For Me. Please visit his website https://vinceeellison.com/
Scapegoating climate to hide callous government malfeasance Abject failures from Biden, Newsom, LAFD and others can no longer be ignored
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The Weekly Sam: WHY NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA ABANDONED CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS IN FAVOR OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
Sam Blumenfeld wrote this 18-page double spaced essay back in the 1970s:
Sam ended the essay with this:
“The choice for Christians today is quite clear. They cannot continue to put
their children in Satanic schools if they wish to preserve the values,
the unalienable rights derived from God, on which this nation’s
origin is based and on which its future survival depends. America
abandoned its early Christian schools for the wrong reasons. It
must now get back to them for the right reasons. The purpose of
life is still and will always be the glorification of God, and the
function of education, in the words of R. J. Rushdoony, is the
“preparation of man to glorify God, to enjoy Him, and to serve Him
in and through a chosen calling.” This is the knowledge we should
be imparting to our children, at home or in school, and that is the
only way we shall be able to preserve the priceless heritage of
freedom our founding fathers bequeathed us.”
The Blumenfeld Archives
The Truth About The California Wildfires
Practically every time a disaster strikes in the United States, the Corporate Media blames it on climate change. This short video from our friends at Gorilla Science https://watchgorillascience.com/ refute the claim that climate change is behind the on-going California wildfires using data from the U.S. Government:
5th Annual Camp Constitution Ladies Spring Fling
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“So Help Me God”: Purpose of an Oath, and Nietzsche’s shocking admission – American Minute with Bill Federer
On February 28, 2019, Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen (TN) was swearing in witnesses before a House Judiciary Subcommittee.
Then Congressman Mike Johnson (LA) made a point of parliamentary inquiry: “I think we left out ‘so help me God.’”
Cohen replied: “We did.”
Johnson asked “Can we have the witnesses do it again for the record?”
Cohen responded: “No,” then added: “If they want to do it, but some of them don’t want to do it, and I don’t think it’s necessary, and I don’t like to assert my will over other people.”
Johnson responded:
“Well it goes back to our founding history, it’s been part of our tradition for more than two centuries and I don’t know that we should abandon it now.”
Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler (NY) interrupted:
“If any witness objects he should not be asked to … and we should let it go with that.”
That was it. Gone. Over two hundred years of precedent of witnesses ending their oath with the phrase “so help me God” abruptly discarded.
Why did the founders include “So Help Me God” in the oath?
Human nature!
Greek philosopher Plato explained that human nature was such, that if a person could escape accountability, they would act unjustly, with selfish immorality.
Plato wrote in The Republic, 380 BC:
“According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock.
Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels … looking in saw a dead body of stature … having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended …”
Plato continued:
“Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king;
into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present …
… He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result–when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared.
… Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court;
whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.”
Plato added:
“No man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice.
No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men.
Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point.
… And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust.
For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right …”
Plato concluded that it would be illogical for a person with Gyges’ ring not to yield to the temptation:
“If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot.”
Only the belief in God–an eternal, invisible, just God–and that one is personally accountable to Him in the next life, could a person resist the temptation of the ring of Gyges.
William Linn, unanimously elected the first U.S. House Chaplain, stated May 1, 1789:
“Let my neighbor once persuade himself that there is no God, and he will soon pick my pocket, and break not only my leg but my neck.
If there be no God, there is no law, no future account; government then is the ordinance of man only, and we cannot be subject for conscience sake.”
The tradition in America has been for oaths to end with “So Help Me God.”
The military’s oath of enlistment ended with “So Help Me God.”
The commissioned officers’ oath ended with “So Help Me God.”
President’s oath of office ended with “So Help Me God.”
Congressmen and Senators’ oath ended with “So Help Me God.”
Witnesses in Court swore to tell the truth, “So Help Me God.”
Even an oath proposed by Lincoln for individuals wanting to be U.S. citizens ended with “So Help Me God.”
Lincoln announced his plan, December 8, 1863, to let back into the Union those who had been in the Confederacy:
“Whereas it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States …
… Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States … make known to all persons who have … participated in the existing rebellion …
that a full pardon is hereby granted … with restoration of all rights of property … upon the condition that every such person shall take and subscribe an oath … to wit:
“I, ______, do solemnly swear, in the presence of ALMIGHTY GOD, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder,
and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves …
and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves …
so help me God.”
A situation was faced by Justice Samuel Chase, who was Chief Justice of Maryland’s Supreme Court in 1791, and then appointed by George Washington to be a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1796-1811.
In 1799, a dispute arose over whether an Irish immigrant named Thomas M’Creery had in fact become a naturalized U.S. citizen and thereby able to leave an estate to a relative in Ireland.
The court decided in M’Creery’s favor based on a certificate executed before Justice Samuel Chase, which stated:
“I, Samuel Chase, Chief Judge of the State of Maryland, do hereby certify all whom it may concern,
that … personally appeared before me Thomas M’Creery, and did repeat and subscribe a declaration of his belief in the Christian Religion, and take the oath required … entitled, An Act for Naturalization.”
The purpose of an oath is to call a Higher Power to hold you accountable to perform what you promised.
It is a fearful understanding that you are inviting divine judgement upon yourself if you lie or break your promise.
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary gave the definition:
“OATH: A solemn affirmation or declaration, made with an appeal to God for the truth of what is affirmed.
The appeal to God in an oath implies that the person imprecates (invokes) His vengeance and renounces His favor if the declaration is false,
or if the declaration is a promise, the person invokes the vengeance of God if he should fail to fulfill it.”
An example of an oath is in Genesis 31:49-53, taken between Jacob and his father-in-law, Laban:
“… for he said, The LORD watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another. If thou shalt afflict my daughters, or if thou shalt take other wives beside my daughters, no man is with us; see, God is witness betwixt me and thee …
Behold this heap … this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee …
I will not pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us. “
An unorthodox view of taking an oath was mentioned by Bill Clinton at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 4, 1993:
“Just two weeks and a day ago, I took the oath of office as President.
You know the last four words, for those who choose to say it in this way, are ‘so help me God’ … Deep down inside I wanted to say it the way I was thinking it, which was, ‘So, – help me, God.'”
Judicial courts thought oaths would lose their effectiveness if the public at large lost the fear of the God, as He gave the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”
New York Supreme Court Chief Justice Chancellor Kent noted in People v. Ruggles, 1811, that irreverence weakened the effectiveness of oaths:
“Christianity was parcel of the law, and to cast contumelious (insulting) reproaches upon it, tended to weaken the foundation of moral obligation, and the efficacy (effectiveness) of oaths.”
George Washington warned of this in his Farewell Address, 1796:
“Let it simply be asked where is the security for prosperity, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice?”
In August of 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville observed a court case:
“While I was in America, a witness, who happened to be called at the assizes of the county of Chester (state of New York), declared that he did not believe in the existence of God or in the immortality of the soul.
The judge refused to admit his evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed beforehand all confidence of the court in what he was about to say. The newspapers related the fact without any further comment …”
DeTocqueville continued:
“The New York Spectator of August 23d, 1831, relates the fact in the following terms:
‘The court of common pleas of Chester county (New York), a few days since rejected a witness who declared his disbelief in the existence of God.
… The presiding judge remarked, that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God;
that this belief constituted the sanction (validity) of all testimony in a court of justice:
and that he knew of no case in a Christian country, where a witness had been permitted to testify without such belief.'”
President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the American Legion Back-to-God Program, February 20, 1955:
“Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first — the most basic — expression of Americanism.”
Oaths to hold office had similar acknowledgments.
The Constitution of Pennsylvania, 1776, signed by Ben Franklin, stated in chapter 2, section 10:
“Each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:
‘I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the Rewarder of the good and Punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.'”
The Constitution of South Carolina, 1778, article 12, stated:
“Every … person, who acknowledges the being of a God, and believes in the future state of rewards and punishments … (is eligible to vote).”
The Constitution of South Carolina, 1790, article 38, stated:
“That all persons and religious societies, who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshiped, shall be freely tolerated.”
The Constitution of Mississippi, 1817, stated:
“No person who denies the being of God or a future state of rewards and punishments shall hold any office in the civil department of the State.”
The Constitution of Maryland, 1851, required office holders make:
“A declaration of belief in the Christian religion; and if the party shall profess to be a Jew the declaration shall be of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments.”
In 1864, the Constitution of Maryland, required office holders to make:
“A declaration of belief in the Christian religion, or of the existence of God, and in a future state of rewards and punishments.”
The Constitution of Tennessee, 1870, article IX, Section 2, stated:
“No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.”
Justice James Iredell, nominated by George Washington to the Supreme Court, defined an oath as a:
“solemn appeal to the Supreme Being for the truth of what is said by a person who believes in the existence of a Supreme Being and in a future state of rewards and punishments.”
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court stated in Commonwealth v. Wolf (3 Serg. & R. 48, 50, 1817:
“Laws cannot be administered in any civilized government unless the people are taught to revere the sanctity of an oath, and look to a future state of rewards and punishments for the deeds of this life.”
It was understood that persons in positions of power would have opportunities to do corrupt deep-state backroom deals for their own benefit.
But what if that person believed that:
- God was watching;
- that He wanted them to be just and honest; and
- that He would hold them accountable in the future.
These beliefs would motivate a person to hesitate doing wrong, thinking “even if I get away with this my whole life, I will still be accountable to God in the next.”
This is what is called “having a conscience.”
But if that person did not believe in God and in a future state of rewards and punishments, when presented with the same temptation — with no ultimate accountability — they would yield to it.
In fact, if there is no God and this life is all there is, a person, according to Plato, would be an idiot not to.
John Adams wrote again to Judge F.A. Van de Kemp, December 27, 1816:
“Let it once be revealed or demonstrated that there is no future state, and my advice to every man, woman, and child, would be, as our existence would be in our own power, to take opium.
For, I am certain there is nothing in this world worth living for but hope, and every hope will fail us, if the last hope, that of a future state, is extinguished.”
Democrat Presidential Candidate William Jennings Bryan reasoned, September 17, 1913:
“There is a powerful restraining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the individual …
A religion which teaches PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD gives strength to morality”
President Reagan stated in 1984:
“Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience.”
Sir William Blackstone, one of the most quoted authors by America’s founders, wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765-1770:
“The belief of a future state of rewards and punishments, the entertaining just ideas of the main attributes of the Supreme Being,
and a firm persuasion that He superintends and will finally compensate every action in human life (all which are revealed in the doctrines of our Savior, Christ),
these are the grand foundations of all judicial oaths, which call God to witness the truth of those facts which perhaps may be only known to Him and the party attesting.”
Signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon wrote:
“An oath … implies a belief in God … and indeed is an act of worship …
In vows, there is no party but God and the person himself who makes the vow.”
The Gospel is:
God is just, and therefore must judge every sin;
but
God is love, and He, Himself, provided the Lamb to take the judgment for our sins.
Nevertheless, the Apostle Paul admonished in his letter to the Philippines, 2:12:
“Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.” (NLT)
This was the view of Secretary of State Daniel Webster, who, when asked what was the greatest thought that ever passed through his mind, replied:
“My accountability to God.”
Benjamin Franklin wrote to Yale President Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790:
“The soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its conduct in this.”
Franklin also wrote:
“That there is one God, Father of the Universe … That He loves such of His creatures as love and do good to others:
and will reward them either in this world or hereafter,
That men’s minds do not die with their bodies, but are made more happy or miserable after this life according to their actions.”
John Adams wrote to Judge F.A. Van der Kemp, January 13, 1815:
“My religion is founded on the love of God and my neighbor; in the hope of pardon for my offenses; upon contrition …
In the duty of doing no wrong, but all the good I can, to the creation, of which I am but an infinitesimal part.
I believe, too, in a future state of rewards and punishments.”
Some tried to extinguish “a future state.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is remembered for his line “God is dead.”
He exposed how hypocritical it was for atheists to claim to be “moral” (“Twilight of the Idols,” The Portable Nietzsche, ed., trans. Walter Kaufman, NY: Penguin Books, 1976, p. 515-6):
“When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet.
This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads.
Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.
Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it.
Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God has truth — it stands or falls with faith in God.”
Nietzsche criticized English atheist Mary Ann Evans, whose pen name was “George Elliot,” by pointing out that it was hypocritical for an atheist to claim to be good:
“G. Elliot: They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality.
This is an English inconsistency: we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot.
In England one must rehabilitate oneself after ever little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there …
When the English actually believe that they know ‘intuitively’ what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion:
such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.”
Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his book The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, had the character Ivan Karamazov contend that if there is no God, “everything is permitted.”
Kenneth Lantz described in The Dostoevsky Encyclopedia, 2004 (Greenwood Publishing) how Dostoevsky criticized Europe:
“In Dostoevsky’s incomplete article ‘Socialism and Christianity,’ he claimed civilization had become degraded, and it was moving towards liberalism and losing its faith in God.
He asserted that the traditional concept of Christianity should be recovered.
He thought that contemporary Western Europe had ‘rejected the single formula for their salvation that came from God and was proclaimed through revelation,’ and replaced it with practical conclusions such as, ‘every man for himself and God for all,’ or ‘scientific’ slogans like ‘survival of the fittest.’
Dostoevsky considered this crisis to be the consequence of the collision between communal and individual interests, brought about by a decline in religious and moral principles.”
Rufus King, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, wrote in “Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1821, Assembled for the Purpose of Amending The Constitution of the State of New York,” October 30, 1821:
“In our laws … by the oath which they prescribe, we appeal to the Supreme Being so to deal with us hereafter as we observe the obligation of our oaths.
The Pagan world were and are without the mighty influence of this principle which is proclaimed in the Christian system – their morals were destitute of its powerful sanction while their oaths neither awakened the hopes nor fears which a belief in Christianity inspires.”
John Adams warned October 11, 1798, in his address to the 1st Brigade, 3rd Division of Massachusetts’ Militia:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net …
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Noah Webster wrote in A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary and Moral Subjects (New York, 1843):
“The virtue which is necessary to … render a government stable, is Christian virtue, which consists in the uniform practice of moral and religious duties, in conformity with the laws of both of God and man.”
Harvard Professor Clay Christensen, the Robert & Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, observed February 8, 2011:
“If you take away religion, you cannot hire enough police.”
John Adams wrote in a Proclamation of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer, March 6, 1799:
“No truth is more clearly taught in the Volume of Inspiration … than … acknowledgment of … a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments.”
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Image Credits: Public Domain; Description: George Washington in 1797; Date: January 1, 1797; Author: Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828); https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Washington_1797_cropped.jpg
Artwork details: Title: The Inauguration of Washington as First President of the United States, April 30th 1789 – At the Old City Hall, New York – The oath of office was administered by Chancellor Livingston of the States of New York – Mr. Otis the Secretary of the Senate holding up the Bible on a crimson cushion.; Publisher: Currier & Ives (American, active New York, 1857–1907); Sitter: George Washington (American, 1732–1799); Date: 1876; Medium: Hand-colored lithograph; Dimensions: Image: 8 7/8 × 12 1/2 in. (22.6 × 31.7 cm); Sheet: 13 1/2 × 17 11/16 in. (34.3 × 44.9 cm); Classification: Prints; Credit Line: Bequest of Adele S. Colgate, 1962; Object Number: 63.550.455
The Weekly Sam: Eugenics and the Making of A Black Underclass by
From 1986 to 1999, Sam wrote a monthly newsletter called “The Blumenfeld Education Letter.” They are all available in the Sam Blumenfeld Archive. Many of them are timeless especially this one from June 1987-“Eugenics and the Making of a Black Underclass.” Sam traces the racist history of Eugenics and how it was created and embraced by the so-called progressives in the United States. A link to the newsletter is below. Please help share this vital information far and wide
http://blumenfeld.campconstitution.net/1987/BEL%2002-06%20198706.pdf