This Monday marks Labor Day, a time when we transition from summer to fall, schools begin and football moves from preseason to regular season. For me, a southerner, it also is the time to store my white shoes and handbags and to pull out my fall clothes -- as soon as the temperatures drop.

The first Labor Day was celebrated on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. It had nothing to do with sales, shoes or football. Instead, it involved more than10,000 people who had taken an unpaid day from work and marched from City Hall to Union Square in a visual display of the might of the American worker.

They were marching for better working conditions. Today, we might be thinking free Keurig, beer, casual dress, telecommuting and pingpong. But the working conditions of the late 19th century were very different. Our nation was transitioning from an agrarian to an industrialized country. Industrial workers often labored 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week just to get by (72 to 84 hours per week). Young children often worked in physically dangerous industrial jobs.

Today, 125 years after Congress passed a bill declaring the first Monday of September to be Labor Day, our nation has a very different focus. We have moved from celebrating work and labor to focusing on consumption. Democratic presidential primary candidates are focusing on income inequality and promising to wipe out college debt; they are wrapping a federal jobs and health care guarantee into what is billed as an environmental program, a "Green New Deal."

It's no longer what you can do for your country, but what can your country give to you. The focus is no longer on creating through capitalism and entrepreneurship but taking through socialism and government programs. The attack on the free enterprise system is no longer closed and closeted but open and obvious. I can't imagine the reception Theodore Roosevelt's challenge to embrace "The Strenuous Life" would receive today.

Sometimes, this attack is wrapped up in disguise. As an example, last month David Montgomery wrote a piece for The Washington Post Magazine titled, "AOC's Chief of Change: Saikat Chakrabarti isn't just running her office, he's guiding a movement."

Montgomery's article covered a conversation between Chakrabarti and Sam Ricketts, the lead staffer on climate for Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., The two discussed how to move the Green New Deal forward. "The interesting thing about the Green New Deal," said Chakrabarti, "is it wasn't originally a climate thing at all ... because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."

It would be wise for us to remember the sage advice that James Carville, Bill Clinton's campaign manager, gave then-candidate Clinton in 1992: "It's the economy, stupid." Even the environment is about the economy.

America was built on hard work and the belief that hard work brings progress and grows our economy. What has that meant to us as a country? While our country includes people at various levels of income, the average consumption of the lowest 20% of Americans is higher than the average consumption of "all people in most nations of the OECD and Europe," wrote James D. Agresti in an article posted last week on justfacts.com.

We could drive our system towards more equality, but if that means a lower level for all, would we really be better off? Historically, through hard work, innovation and entrepreneurship, we have driven our country's economy higher and higher. We've been so successful as a nation that the poorest 20% of Americans are better off than the average person in other nations. "Socialism itself -- in all its incarnations, wherever and however it was applied -- was morally corrupting," argued former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "Socialism turned good citizens into bad ones; it turned strong nations into weak ones; it promoted vice and discouraged virtue ... transformed formerly hardworking and self-reliant men and women into whining, weak and flabby loafers." Can you image the marchers from 125 years ago listening to today's political arguments? Possibly they would be proud of how far hard work has gotten our country, or possibly they would be sad at the attempt to undermine what has gotten us to where we are today. America works best when Americans are working. It's not only the income that work brings, but also the accomplishment of a job well done, and knowing that your work, your effort, makes our nation better as well.

The Progressive push to "change" America from its foundations in Constitutional protection of individual liberty to authoritarian control by elitists whose ideology is not compatible with the Constitution has been going on for several decades now, under the guidance of "progressives" (regressives).

The following "Lesson" from a Co-Editor of the 1987 Bicentennial Year volume entitled, "Our Ageless Constitution" contrasts the Founders' Ideas of Liberty, which the Founders intended should be taught to rising generations, with the Counterfeit Ideas being promoted in the so-called "public schools" of America for decades.

IDEAS OF LIBERTY:

(from America’s Founders and Presidents)

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” (Jefferson - 1774)

“Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” (John Adams - 1775)

“The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Alexander Hamilton)

“Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and the most basic expression of Americanism. Thus the founding fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be.” (Dwight Eisenhower)

“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)

“…it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor….”(George Washington)

“Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution…and was to give it…the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than…those abstract principles…proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—namely, the self-evident truths of the…unalienable rights of man…the…sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign…power.” (John Quincy Adams, on the occasion of The Jubilee of the Constitution - 1839)

"Today, across our nation, we see consequences of decades of gross neglect and outright censorship of the Founders’ ideas from textbooks and from our public discourse. We have allowed counterfeit ideas to dominate the public square, and the Founders’ principles have been crowded out. Unwittingly, many teachers and other unknowing officials have participated in the agenda of an unelected mind-controlling elite whose tyrannical actions have robbed generations of Americans from reading or studying the ideas that made America free. Like termites, they have eroded our foundations as effectively as if they had burned the books. Yet, not once have they been willing to call it by its rightful name—censorship. Once, in America, stifling ideas about the Creator and Creator-endowed liberty was considered unthinkable. . . .

"The ideas of liberty must be passed on from generation to generation if liberty is to survive. These ideas, when they are allowed to be examined freely, will prevail, because their appeal is to reason and to the love for liberty that is deep in the human heart. John Adams warned: “The people of America now have the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number…if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven.”

COUNTERFEIT IDEAS:

(from some of those whose views have dominated national educational policy)

“The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted society. The true root of liberty, equality and culture is atheism.” (Karl Marx)

Our thinking is enlightened “in the degree in which we cease to depend upon belief in the supernatural.” (John Dewey, father of ‘progressive education’ and 1st President of American Humanist Society)

“…democracy is a human faith and movement, unencumbered by supernatural preconceptions.” (John Childs, a protégé of John Dewey at Columbia)

“…the majority of our youth still hold the values of their parents, and if we do not alter this pattern, if we do not resocialize ourselves to accept change, our society may decay.” (John Goodlad, 1971 Report to President, Schooling for the Future)

“As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially a faith in the prayer-hearing God, who is assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.” (Humanist Manifesto II, 1973)

“…the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends to lead toward elimination of religious superstition.” (Paul Blanshard, The Humanist, March-April, 1976)

“It [the Nat’l. Education Association’s publication list] includes the delegitimizing of all authority save that of the state, the degradation of traditional morality and the encouragement of citizens in general and children in particular to despise the rules and customs that make their society a functional democracy. The NEA is drifting into exceedingly dangerous waters, and probably carrying more than a few teachers and pupils with it.” (Chester E. Finn, Jr., Ass’t. Sec. Of Education & Prof. Of Education & Public Policy, Vanderbilt Univ., 1982)

--------------

“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines which conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence…let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountains whose waters spring close to the blood of the Revolution.” (Abraham Lincoln)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.