Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: February 22, 2007 – 908 – Presidential Birthdays (812)

Last Monday was Presidents Day – a day little remembered any more other than as a national holiday, especially for federal workers. Initially, when there were two holidays, one for Abraham Lincoln and one for George Washington there would occasionally be interesting tidbits about their lives and their involvement in making America the “land of the free.” This past week we saw few references to any presidents except in ads promoting automobiles.

            One of the innovative things surrounding the new Martin Luther King holiday was the creation of Black History Month (February) to promote the achievements of Black Americans. Black History Month has helped all Americans better appreciate the role the men and women of their race played in helping America come closer to attaining its mission statement goals outlined in the Preamble of the Constitution – “to form a more perfect Union, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity …”

            As I pondered the success of this unique program the thought came to me that a similar program could be used effectively in reminding Americans of how the Founders literally laid their lives on the line when they signed the Declaration of Independence – a “Founding Father’s/Constitution History Month” – if you will. September would be the ideal month to promote the source of our liberties, and those individuals who literally brought forth a new nation, a nation where “the perfect laws of liberty” was implemented, those laws the Founders found in the Old Testament, first established by Moses, laws upon which much of our liberties were and are based.

            About the only issue Americans still agree on are the freedoms and liberties they cherish. But we are living in a world where few remember what the cost of those freedoms and liberties was, and is. Far too many simply believe they live in a nation where freedom and liberty is guaranteed – without obligation, responsibility or cost. Wrong. There is a heavy cost.

One of the major issues in today’s political debates is illegal immigration. Why? Because, in my opinion, those who come to America find few of the freedoms Americans enjoy in their native countries and few of the economic or religious freedoms we cherish in America.

For the first hundred years the history of our nation and government was effectively taught in schools, and generally taught in conjunction with the Bible. Beginning in the early 1900s strong and successful efforts were made to scale back these history/bible lessons, and today the courts have ruled the Bible can no longer be used in schools, even when it was the source of one-third of the notes that came from the Constitutional Convention.

Gone too are the words of council left us by George Washington who reminded us, “A primary object [of government] … should be the education of our youth to the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing … than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of this country?”

Or the words John Adams, our second president, who said, ”Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people…. They have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

Or the words of our third president, Thomas Jefferson, who said, “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”

            Sound advice then, sound advice today. But where do we turn today to learn about the principles the Founders used to create a nation of freedom. The people of 1776 turned to Tom Paine’s Common Sense and to Arthur Stansbury’s Catechism on the Constitution that taught a whole generation of young people to know and preserve the Constitution. 

            Common Sense’s comparable book today would be W. Cleon Skousen’s “The Five Thousand Year Leap.” This book outlines the 28 primary principles the Founders embedded in their two foundational documents. But to reach the same penetration that Common Cause did, one in five Americans, it would take 60 million copies of Skousen’s book to “educate the masses” as Common Cause did.

            Remember those liberties we all cherish are not free. So let’s ask our elected leaders to establish a “Founding Fathers/Constitution History Month” while we become better educated individually on the principles of liberty and government Skousen outlines in his easy to understand book.  It is inexpensive and available on line at www.nccs.net .