Burning the Asherah pole by Charl van Wyk

(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/

 

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

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/

United Nations Day of Shame

Today, October 24, marks the birthday of the United Nations-the House That Hiss Built.  It was sold to a war weary world as “mankind’s last and best hope for peace.”  The true purpose for its creation was to be the vehicle towards a one world government.  Its first acting secretary who wrote the United Nation’s charter was Alger Hiss, a spy for the Soviet Union.  Its “peacekeepers” have engaged in atrocities including bombing hospitals, rape, child prostitution. It has a history of enabling terrorists, and its agents support abortion and homosexuality.

Below are a few educational recourses that are available on Camp Constitution’s on-line bookstore.

 

Freedom on the Altar | campconstitution.net

William Norman Grigg convincingly shows that the fulfillment of UN objectives would mean not only an end to nationhood, but the destruction of traditional morality, culture, and values, and the supplanting of the family with the totalitarian state. Paperback 1995 264 pages

The United Nations has been in existence for more than a half-century but has brought the U.S. nothing but trouble. It has involved us in many wars, sapped our financial and economic resources, worked to change our laws, and gradually undermined our national sovereignty. This book reveals the hard reality of the UN system, its dangerous objectives, and what you can do about the UN’s tight grasp on American policies. 127 pages. Paperback

 

The United Nation’s Conspiracy by Robert W. Lee | campconstitution.net

Published in 1981, this book is an excellent expose of the United Nations.

https://campconstitution.net/product/freedom-from-war/

This document was created during the Kennedy Administration.  The U.S. State Department’s goal is the disarm the American people and turn our military over to the United Nations.

And a short video from the early 1960s by Dan Smoot:

 

 

 

 

 

Resources to Fight the Green Mafia

Recently, I made a posting on a local Facebook page making the claim that climate change is a hoax.  While most in the group agreed with me, one member of the group took serious exception to my post and wrote: “CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX??? Are you KIDDING ME??? If at this point you still think it’s a HOAX, you are an absolute FOOL.”

It is quite understandable why this person believes that climate change is real, and anyone who opposes the idea is an “absolute fool’ or worse.  We are inundated with climate change or global warming chicken littles from Greta “How Dare You” Thunberg to the corporate media to government schools to the Democrat Party, to the big non-profit foundations that fund every United Nations friendly non-government organization.  Some of these chicken littles are genuine ideologues while some are in it for the money.    They make up what I call the Green Mafia. And while they may not have their opponents “sleeping with the fishes,” they love to fire, ban, boycott and demonize their opponents.

Like the vast majority of members of the Green Mafia, I am not a scientist, but I have many friends who are.  In addition to my many scientist friends, I have been around almost sixty-five years and remember past predictions of the chicken littles that have come to naught.  One of the earliest was my eighth-grade teacher who told us that we may be facing an ice age or global cooling.

 

Then in the mid-1980s, the chicken littles told us that acid rain would kill all of the fish in the oceans, lakes, and ponds.  Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis gave a press conference at Turners Pond in Milton, MA.  He said that acid rain killed all of the fish in the pond.  A few weeks later, I visited the pond and to my surprise, I saw people catching fish.  I had been lied too.  Around the same time, The Boston Globe published an article reporting that acid rain is killing the maple trees in Vermont.  A few years later while visiting Vermont, I picked up a local paper and read an article reporting that Vermont has experienced its largest maple sugar crop in the state’s history.  Then, it was the ozone hole.  We were all going to get skin cancer because we were destroying the ozone layer by using aerosol cans.  The ozone hole was huge in the Antarctic during the winter months. The chicken littles failed to report is that the sun is needed to make ozone, and it is dark in the Antarctic during the winter but when the sunlight returns, the ozone is replenished.

Resources:

My scientist friends and friendly acquaintances that the Green Mafia calls “climate deniers” and whom I call climate realists:

Willie Soon

 

The first on the list is Professor Willie Soon, an instructor at Camp Constitution’s annual family camp.  His organization is Ceres Science  https://www.ceres-science.com/willie-soon  Our YouTube channel has a playlist of his presentations: https://studio.youtube.com/playlist/PL7jnzBzBiNYDpYp8KORgRjO5tIsDsjyh-/videos

(Professor Willie Soon)

 Joe D’Aleo 

Joe is the co-founder of the Weather Channel, and a New Hampshire resident.  His organization is Weather Bell https://www.weatherbell.com/ 

CFACT-Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow: https://www.cfact.org/

 

  CFACT’s Marc Morano is a regular on Fox and Newsweek, and Camp Constitution’s blog reposts the articles by Paul Driessen, its senior policy advisor.

 

Lord Christopher Monckton

Lord Monckton was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher and an instructor at Camp Constitutions’ annual family camp.  Most of his work can be found at The Heartland Institute. https://heartland.org/

 Tony Heller

My interview of Tony Heller where he gives an historical overview of climate and weather over the last 200 years, and by doing so, refutes today’s climate alarmists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60bSYcOc3ng

A link to his website: https://realclimatescience.com/

Noah Webster:

Yes.  Noah Webster the famous lexicographer wrote and spoke on the subject of climate change.  He even debated Thomas Jefferson who conceded defeat.  In 1810, he published  On the Supposed of Change of Temperature of Winter.  https://www.amazon.com/Supposed-Change-Temperature-Winter/dp/0983521956 For a free download, please E-mail  me at campconstitution1@gmail.com

Finally, the late John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel.  I had the opportunity to interview him at an event sponsored by the Heartland Institute back in 2009. In the interview, Mr. Coleman said that global warming now rebranded as climate change was a hoax:

https://youtu.be/Vk8km7C8-EU?si=viMfDbIbIMoW0Lt4

 

The above list is not exhaustive. There are many more resources, but the ones above are a good start.  Those who are reading this article in hard copy format, may E-mail me for an on-line version making it easier to access the linked videos and websites  campconstitutrion1@gmail.com )

The Weekly Sam: Argentina and Paper Money by Sam Blumenfeld

 

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/

George Floyd Was Not Murdered: Tucker Carlson Interview Vince Ellison, Producer of “Will You Go to Hell For Me” and an instructor at Camp Constitution

 

Tucker Carlson interviews Vince Ellison, producer of the documentary Will You Go to Hell For Me, author of 25 Lies Exposing the Democrats Most Seductive, Damnable and Destructive Lies and How to Refute Them, and instructor at Camp Constitution on the subject of Georg Floyd.   In this short interview, Vince explains how Floyd was a habitual criminal whose death was used to promote the Democrat’s Marxist agenda.

Camp Constitution will be sponsoring speaking engagements in the Spring of 2024 for Vince in the New England region.

General Cornwallis Surrenders at Yorktown October 19, 1781

 

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

 

Pro-Life Flag Flies in Billerica, Massachusetts

 

Fly the Pro-Life Flag is a group based in Billerica, MA, a town 25 miles Northwest of Boston.   Led by Mrs. Dee Dee Clark Dorrington,  the group successfully petitioned the town to fly the Pro-Life flag.

A hearing by the town selectmen was held on Monday September 11.   The group reached out to our friends at the Massachusetts Family Institute   https://www.mafamily.org/  and on the day of the meeting, the selectmen received a letter from the Institute’s attorney Sam Whiting citing   “Shurtleff v Boston  www.lc.org/flag 

Dear Members of the Select Board,

My name is Sam Whiting and I am an attorney with Massachusetts Family Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the family in Massachusetts. I write on behalf of pro-life citizens of Billerica who recently submitted an application to fly the pro-life flag on a town flag pole located at the Billerica Public Library during the month of October. The purpose of this letter is to advise you of the legal implications of Billerica’s policies and practices in the context of this request.

As you know, the Supreme Court recently unanimously held in Shurtleff v. City of Boston that when a city allows a flagpole to be used as a public forum for expression by various groups, it cannot discriminate against any group’s flag based on the message it conveys.[1] A critical factor in the Court’s analysis in deciding whether Boston had turned its flagpole into a public forum was the extent to which the government had “actively shaped or controlled the expression” at issue.[2] Because Boston had allowed numerous other private groups to fly their flags on the city flagpole and had never turned away an applicant, it could not discriminate against a Christian applicant because of the religious content of the flag he requested to fly.[3]

It is our understanding that in the past, Billerica has approved the requests of a number of private groups to fly their flags on city flagpoles, including but not limited to:

 

  • The Italian flag, to celebrate Italian Heritage Month;
  • The Armenian Genocide Commemoration flag;
  • The Indian flag, to commemorate Indian Independence Day;
  • The LGBTQ Pride flag, to commemorate LGBTQ Pride month.

 

Some of these flags have been raised multiple times over multiple years at the request of private groups. An ordinary citizen observing private groups raising these flags would understand that the flags represent the groups’ private expression, and not the government speech of Billerica.[4] It should also be noted that some of these flags, such as the Armenian Genocide flag or the LGBTQ Pride flag, touch on sensitive and/or potentially contentious political issues over which Billerica residents may strongly disagree.

By engaging in a practice of allowing any and all private groups to use town flagpoles for private expression, Billerica has opened its flagpoles as a public forum, just as Boston did. This means that this Board may not deny the pro-life group’s request to fly its own flag based on the content of its message. To do so would violate their First Amendment right to free expression. While some may see the flag as controversial, it is no more controversial than other flags the Board has allowed to fly in the past and should be given equal treatment.

It is true that Billerica may close the forum it has opened by passing a policy stating that town flag poles are no longer forums for public expression but are instead forums for government speech. However, until such a policy is passed, the flagpoles remain a public forum. The fact that the Board is now moving to pass such a policy in apparent response to the request to fly the pro-life flag indicates that the Board is acting to discriminate against the pro-life group based on the content and viewpoint of their message. This is unfortunate. Should the Board deliberately and unnecessarily delay acting on the pro-life group’s request to fly their flag until it can pass a new flag policy, this would also violate the group’s First Amendment rights.

For the foregoing reasons, I would strongly advise the Board to approve the pro-life group’s request to fly the pro-life flag at some point during the month of October.

Very truly yours,         Samuel J. Whiting, Esq.

Staff Attorney

Massachusetts Family Institute

401 Edgewater Drive, Suite 580

Wakefield, MA 01880

Tel: 781.589.0400

Michael King of Mass Family Institute reached out to me the day of the hearing, and asked if I would Zoom and testify.  I was happy to do so and during my brief testimony, I reminded the selectmen that it cost the City of Boston more than $2.1 million in legal fees.  The selectmen voted 4-1 to let the group fly the Pro-Life flag for two weeks in October.  And, on Monday October 16, a brief flag raising ceremony took place in the center of Billerica.

 

After the flag raising, DeeDee made these remarks on the group’s Facebook page:

“Christina Marie and I are beyond overwhelmed and still flying high (pun intended) with the amount of support that the prolife community received tonight.
The flag raising ceremony went on without a hitch (well, maybe a brief tangle of the ropes🙃) and we feel truly blessed to have seen this initiative thorough.
We will share videos and pictures as we collect and prepare them, but for now it’s time for tacos and ice cream.
Thank you to everyone who attended tonight and showed your support for life.”
  Camp Constitution salutes the folks at Fly the Pro-Life Flag and hopes that this event inspires others around the nation.

The Weekly Sam: Should Christians Support Education Without God

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. •

Camp Constitution’s Third Quarter Report for 2023

 

 Camp Constitution in the News:

We continue to be mentioned in the media as local Christians petition to have the Chrisitan or Pro-Life flags fly on town or city halls. 1819 News in Alabama as Christian activists interviewed us are in the process of having Montgomery declare Christian Heritage Month and have the Christian fly in front of City Hall for a month:

https://1819news.com/news/item/montgomery-city-council-delays-american-christian-heritage-month-resolution-again

Christians in Torrington, CT raised the Christian flag on their city hall with over two hundred people including the mayor on hand:

And in Billerica, MA,  Deedee Clark Dorrington and members of her group Fly the Pro-Life Flag with the help from our friends at the Massachusetts Family Institute were able to get the town selectmen vote 4-1 in favor of flying the Pro-Life flag for two weeks in October:  MFI’s Advocacy Leads Billerica to Raise Pro-Life Flag on Town Property – MFI | Massachusetts Family Institute (mafamily.org)

The Claremont, NH Eagle Tribute did a story on our annual family camp:  https://www.eagletimes.com/news/camp-takes-on-swimming-and-the-bill-of-rights/article_e3f74b08-0d14-545d-b9a0-876343786082.html  The reporter asked us how we teach the Constitution to five year olds, we sent him a link to this video of our Junior Campers led by Mrs. Edith Craft singing a song about the Constitution

https://youtu.be/_Tw6Lz2QoOk?si=wVvNeZ2EayAtzSiX

We received some national media attention from NBC and Fox News with the appearance of presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswami at our annual family camp.

Special Projects: 

We had a float in the annual Old Home Week Parade in Alton, NH, and we presented their salute to America event held at Alton Bay. We had info tables at numerous events including the Crown of Maine Balloon Festival, the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society’s Future of Christendom forum, the National Heritage, and the Mass HOPE homeschool convention where we also conducted a workshop on the Sam Blumenfeld Archive. We co-sponsored a Patriot Day Camp in Maine led by Mrs. Jessica Whitworth.

In April, Camp Constitution donated 1,500 pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution to the Alton-Barnstead, NH School District, and in January, we donated 1,100 copies to the Laconia Junior and High School, Laconia, NH Junior High, and High Schools. This has opened up the doors to other donations to schools in the region.

We hosted a group of homeschoolers at the Lane House for a field trip overnight to take in the Midnight Night Ride and Battle of Lexington Reenactments.

We hosted the Hillside College’s Constitutional Study Course in Alton, NH and Lebanon, ME.

Camp Constitution Media:

We videotaped all of the classes and some of the activity at our annual family camp and at our second weekend retreat the Lexington Reenactment, Alton, NH’s Memorial Day Parade, speeches as our 3rd Annual Memorial Day Weekend Barbecue in Lexington, the classes and activities at our annual family camp, and speeches of our speakers Julie Wilkinson, Pastor William Levi, and Charl van Wyk.

YouTube, Rumble Channels and Bitchute Channels

We have received 90,000 thousand views on our YouTube Channel this year with new subscribers giving us close to 8,000 subscribers overall. Our Rumble channel has received 6,388 views this year with seven likes, and our Bitchute channel has 2,3126 views this year.

The Sam Blumenfeld Archive:

552,168 hits

3,592 Marlow-Shakespeare Book

3,288 Alpha Phonics Workbooks

2,543 Alpha Phonics Manuals

Our friend Godknows Matizirofa principal of Nottingham School in Harare, Zimbabwe, is building a new school and will name it in honor of Sam Blumenfeld. We have been donating copies of Sam’s Alpha Phonics to the school.

We reached out to Mrs. Joyce Burges of National Black Home Educators and donated a case of Sam’s Alpha-Phonics, and plan to interview her on our radio show.

If you haven’t already, please visit and subscribe to the archives: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/ 

Camp Constitution Radio on Podomatic:

We remain in the top ten for the conservative category with 7,614 downloads, and 862 plays   https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal 

 Facebook Page:

We continue to average fifty likes per month. We also admin about eight groups including Friend of the Constitution in ME, NH, MA, CT, RI. PA, VT, and Stop the Constitutional Convention.

Speaker’s Bureau:

For the first nine months, we had over thirty speaking engagements. We recently held six engagements for Charl van Wyk author of Shooting Back in MA, NH, and ME. In September, we spoke to the Mid Atlantic Reformation Society, and we were one of the featured speakers at the Norfolk County (MA) Second Amendment Rally and Constitutional Day Celebration. We spoke at the Michigan Republican Party’s Mackinac Island event where we shared a podium with the likes of Alan Keyes and Jim Caviezel. We had speaking engagements in Maine including being the featured speaker at the Homeschoolers of Maine Annual State House Day, and presentations in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Loudon, NH. We hosted four engagements for Juli Wilkinson who played the abortion nurse in the movie Unplanned. And we hosted Mrs. Bau Chau Kelly at the Lane House. Mrs. Kelly described life in Communist Vietnam:

 

(Rev. Craft ans Charl van Wyk at the Lane House)

Camp Constitution’s Website:

We had 27.000 views for this period, and posted 147 blogs:  https://www.campconstitution.net

Camp Constitution Book Sales:                           

We have raised close to $3.500 from donated books from our Amazon, Facebook page, and on-line bookstore. https://campconstitution.net/shop/

  Article V Convention: 

We worked with legislatures to have an Article V rescission resolution introduced in the New Hampshire House in 2024. Despite the onslaught of Article V resolutions all over the U.S. not a single one passed. We helped defeat two Article V resolutions in New Hampshire, several in Maine, and authored articles on the subject in on-line and print media and participated in a national conference call hosted by Tamara Scott who hosts a show on Frank Speech. One article we published was an expose on the leadership of the Convention of States. https://granitegrok.com/mg_lakesregion/2023/04/poisoning-the-well-is-not-working-in-new-hampshire-but-we-cant-help-ourselves  We worked with legislatures to have an Article V rescission resolution introduced in the New Hampshire House in 2024.

 Radio and Cable TV: 

We were a first time guest on several radio shows including the Chris Arn Show based in Carliyle,  and returned to the  the Duke Pesta Show:  https://www.freedomproject.com/2023/05/30/dds53023/ and earlier  in the year, we were guests on “Chattin with Janine: a popular Cable TV Show hosted by NH State Rep and long-tine friend Janine Notter. And  appeared as a guest on Tamara Scott’s show on Frank Speech, https://frankspeech.com/video/tamara-scott-show-joined-hal-shurtleff-camp-constitution and an appearance on the Ed Martin Radio Show which is nationally syndicated:  https://www.phyllisschlafly.com/constitution/wynk-back-to-basics-with-hal-shurtleff/

      Camp Constitution Ladies Group:

The Third Annual Spring Fling took place May 5-7 at the Singing Hills Christian Camp. Speakers include Valerie McDonnell, the youngest elected official in the United States and former abortion nurse turned Pro-Life activist Julie Wilkinson. Julie played a role in the movie “Unplanned.”  

                                           

Julie Wilkinson                                                       Valerie McDonnell

 

Our friend and Camp Constitution camp parent Steve Wanager has relocated to Maine and donated one of his replica cannons to Camp Constitution. We are now the proud owners of a replica Revolutionary War howitzer. Contrary to the view of Mr. Biden, the 2nd Amendment does not prevent us from owning a cannon.

Camp Constitution’s 15th Annual Family Camp

We had another successful family camp with new guest speakers’ author and documentary producer Vince Ellison. And, for the first time in our history, a presidential candidate visited us. Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy spoke to the campers and took their questions.

   

Second Annual Family Retreat:

We just completed o our 2nd Annual Weekend Family Retreat which ran from Friday September 29 to Sunday October 1. Guest instructors were Jim Perloff and former Gubernatorial candidate Karen Testerman. Returning instructors included Catherine White, and Rev. Steve Craft. Jessica Whitworth conducted the program for the junior campers.

 

How you can help Camp Constitution grow:

* Keep Camp Constitution and our nation in your prayers.

* Become a donor. Monthly and/or one-time donations can be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website https://www.campconstitution.net

* Host one of our speakers

Host a Constitutional Study Course

*  Introduce Camp Constitution to family and friends.

*Author an article for our camp blog.

Thank you for all you did in the freedom movement, and for helping to make Camp Constitution possible.

 

Hal Shurtleff, Director
Camp Constitution