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To: ProgressingAmerica
This is something that progressives turn on it's head. They don't understand the relationship between Liberty and all that has made America great.

Coolidge isn't talking about the relationship between liberty and America's greatness, but about the worship of God and America's greatness. You have to read beyond the excerpt:

(The founders') intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who had comparatively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.

10 posted on 11/12/2012 7:23:44 AM PST by LearsFool ("Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.")
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To: LearsFool

You’re right. The spirituality of the Founders certainly had an important place in the process as well as what was said. But what I was trying to point out is how Coolidge correctly puts things in order. The Declaration and the Liberties that it makes possible is what created our prosperity.

And he warns us to “cling” to that perspective. If we don’t put the Declaration first, our prosperity will disappear. There’s certainly a lot that’s implied throughout,(and even directly stated) such as reverence for the Founding ideals and the Constitution. He specifically says that those proceeding in a specific direction cannot lay claim to progress.

His governing style helps us to keep perspective as well. He wasn’t a centralized planner like Wilson was, or like Theodore Roosevelt tried to be.


16 posted on 11/12/2012 10:36:46 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica (What's the best way to reach a YouTube generation? Put it on YouTube!)
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