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Technology may have outstripped government-controlled media and government-school propaganda, allowing America's ordinary citizens--"We, the People"--using common sense and technology, to figure out that their freedom and liberty are threatened. That's what the so-called Tea Parties are demonstrating. Even Seniors (AARP members) use the Internet) and are becoming knowledgeable and vocal about violations of their freedom.

By doing so, those who wish to enslave us through accumulating all power in Washington are meeting strong and unexpected resistance to their massive power grab. This is what the Founders intended when they structured a government (Constitution) for a free people. It required a vigilant and informed electorate.

The following essay, reprinted with permission, is from a 1987 book entitled, "Our Ageless Constitution."

An Enlightened, Committed People Who Understand The Principles Of Our Constitution

- The Most Effective Means Of Preserving Liberty

"Although all men are born free, slavery has been the general lot of the human race. Ignorant - they have been cheated; asleep - they have been surprised; divided - the yoke has been forced upon them. But what is the lesson? ...the people ought to be enlightened, to be awakened, to be united, that after establishing a government they should watch over it.... It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently free." James Madison

"America's Constitution is the means by which knowledgeable and free people, capable of self-government, can bind and control their elected representatives in government. In order to remain free, the Founders said, the people themselves must clearly understand the ideas and principles upon which their Constitutional government is based. Through such understanding, they will be able to prevent those in power from eroding their Constitutional protections.

"The Founders established schools and seminaries for the distinct purpose of instilling in youth the lessons of history and the ideas of liberty. And, in their day, they were successful. Tocqueville, eminent French jurist, traveled America and in his 1830's work, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, wrote:

".every citizen ... is taught . the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution ... it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon."

"On the frontier, he noted that "...no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling that shelters him.... He wears the dress and speaks the language of the cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present.... I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France' " He continued, "It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case...where the instruction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education.."

"Possessing a clear understanding of the failure of previous civilizations to achieve and sustain freedom for individuals, our forefathers discovered some timeless truths about human nature, the struggle for individual liberty, the human tendency toward abuse of power, and the means for curbing that tendency through Constitutional self-government. Jefferson's Bill For The More General Diffusion Of Knowledge For Virginia declared:

"...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government), those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate...the minds of the people...to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future...it will qualify them judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.."

"Education was not perceived by the Founders to be a mere process for teaching basic skills. It was much, much more. Education included the very process by which the people of America would understand and be able to preserve their liberty and secure their Creator-endowed rights. Understanding the nature and origin of their rights and the means of preserving them, the people would be capable of self government, for they would recognize any threats to liberty and "nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud." (Adams)

Bravo!!! Excellent!!!

I recommend an organization called The Foundation for American Christian Education for much needed instruction on how we can begin again to educate our children in liberty, self government, and the morals and ideas of the founding fathers:

http://www.face.net/203287.ihtml

I have just rediscovered this organization (my father-in-law taught at a Principle Approach school in the early 1980s) and am committed to first educating myself, and then applying what I learn to enrich my children's education. We MUST get back to educating our children properly in morals and Biblical logic and reasoning, or each generation will continue to be at risk of losing its liberty.

This organization provides many books and materials for both adult and children's education in these topics. I personally believe every Christian church in America should use some of its funds to provide a library of such books and offer free classes to train parents in how to train their children in these principles and precepts. Another wonderful organization is the National Center for Constitutional Studies http://www.nccs.net/, which publishes The 5000 Year Leap and other great materials.

The History of the Foundation for American Christian Education

When the United States was founded, she stood on the shoulders of centuries of devoted, brave yet ordinary men and women who loved the God of the Bible and understood how to nurture one of His greatest conditional blessings to mankind, liberty. The peace, security, prosperity, integrity, and freedom that has longtime been the hallmark of the United States are all results of her distinctively Christian roots.

This simple yet profound truth was rediscovered by Verna Marie Hall. During the 1930’s, Miss Hall had been working in Roosevelt’s WPA (Works Progress Administration) distributing benefits in San Francisco: initially a great believer in government entitlements, she witnessed the effect that these programs had on those who received them. The longer an individual received government assistance, the more he adopted a subservient, helpless mindset. Once the transformation was complete, he was unlikely to return to productive independence—Miss Hall realized that the very programs developed to aid the poor were, in fact, enslaving them.

Miss Hall began to research America’s history, and she saw a great chasm between the encroaching socialism of her day and the staunch independence and self-government of America’s early Christian settlers. She found America’s Christian history documented in hundreds of founding charters and state papers, in the personal writings of the early settlers and our founding fathers; she understood that the distinctive American Christian character, the foundation of our liberty and identity as a people, was being threatened. Miss Hall undertook the great charge to remind America of her Christian history in order to motivate Americans to shore up the foundations of liberty, to restore Christian character in the individual. By the 1950’s, Miss Hall was sharing her research in Christian History Study Groups in San Francisco attended by hundreds of ordinary, liberty-loving citizens. She compiled a book of primary sources, entitled The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States, Vol. I: Christian Self-Government, that documented the history of self-government, its relationship to liberty, and its essential role in the crafting of the United States Constitution. She dedicated her book in the following manner:

This volume and those to follow are dedicated to
the Christian principle upon which this nation is founded,
and to each American of this and succeeding generations,
that he may remember his Christian heritage and live so as to
raise the standard of his Pilgrim and Puritan fathers into its
larger and fuller expression of individual liberty.

This book, first published in 1960, opened the eyes of many Americans.

One such American was Rosalie June Slater, a teacher who had come to her own understanding of the value of Christian self-government studying the contrasting educational system of the USSR. Miss Slater, passionately convicted that the key to preserving America’s future liberty lay in education, wrote a curriculum for teaching Miss Hall’s book. In her own words, “A nation which is humble enough to begin with its children in the constructing of its foundations for liberty may once again have the opportunity to lead nations to Christ.” Together, Miss Hall and Miss Slater established the Foundation for American Christian Education in 1965 to form Christian character in children and published Teaching and Learning: The Principle Approach®.

(excerpt)