We hear of the threat of the "far right"
as if they represent a new and extreme group that threatens liberty or
is the "far right" really the last glimmer of the "right
stuff" that Great Leaders who secured our liberty freely spoke?
President George
Washington
President John
Adams
President Abraham
Lincoln
Patrick Henry
Benjamin Franklin
Joseph
Story
James
Wilson
Note
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United
States -- On March 30, 1863 President Lincoln, in his Proclamation for a Day of Prayer and
Fasting
Whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!
It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness... All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessing no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.
Patrick Henry
"I have now disposed of all my property to my family: there is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is, the Christian religion. If they had that and I had not given them one shilling, they would, be rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor."
George Washington
Excerpt from Circular Letter Addressed to the Governors of all the States on the Disbanding of the Army
after the Revolutionary War - June 14, 1783
I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection; that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for brethren who have served in the field; and finally that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy
nation.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph
Story
author of one of the nation’s first constitutional law treatises
It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape.
Supreme Court Justice James
Wilson
Signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution
Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine. … Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed these two sciences run into each other.
President John Adams
2nd President - 1798
We have no government armed in power capable of contending in human passions unbridled by morality and religion … Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.
Benjamin Franklin
I have lived a long time and the longer I live the more
convincing the proof I see of this truth, that God governs the affairs
of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall tot he ground without his
notice, is it possible that an entire empire can rise without his aid?
Note: It would be hard to
conclude that each were "Christian" resting in the work of
Jesus Christ for their salvation, most acknowledged (with Thomas Payne
being a notable exception) that law and liberty were rooted in an
acknowledgement that God was the author of both, otherwise might makes
right which offends the conscience of most.
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