Our Founders were very well educated in classics, being cognizant and careful learners of the Old Testament and of the teaching of Jesus as well as having read books by the great authors such as Polybius, Cicero, Thomas Hooker, Coke, Montesquieu, Blackstone, John Locke, and Adam Smith.
Like us today, they disagreed with each other and even expressed strong criticism against one another. However, unlike us today, they worked together, also admiring each other, and undergoing compromises to overcome their conflicts. For example they brought together conflicting plans, resulting in the Connecticut Compromise, called also the Great Compromise, aimed to protect and please both the smaller and the larger states. Without it, the Philadelphia Convention would have failed and likely the Constitution would have not never been ratified. (A Miracle that Changed the World – The 5000 Year Leap, by W. Clean Skousen p. 32-33)
They created and gave us a Republic, not a Democracy, as our form of government is falsely called today.
As explained by Skousen, a democracy becomes inefficient as the population grows. In Federalist Paper #10, p.81, Madison writes: ” Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the right of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths … A Republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.”
A republic through elected officials, unlike democracy, can be expanded indefinitely while protecting the ever-expanding interest of its people (Skouten, p. 154)
In democracy, people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by representatives and agents. A democracy can become a dictatorship of the people, or of the movement and organizers that incite the people; a republic “is a government which derives all its powers directly and indirectly from the great body of the people. and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is essential to such government that it is derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable portion of a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans and claim their government the honorable title of republic.” ( Federalist Paper 10, p. 241)
In the early 1900s the word democracy started being used interchangeably with Constitutional republic in an ideological revolt by the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (ISS), and has been eroding and transforming the clear distinction of the two ever since, progressively. The poison of Socialism started infecting our government, principles, education, and ideas, changing people’s beliefs and behavior.
Socialism is defined as ” government ownership or control of all the means of production (farms, factories, mines, and natural resources) and all means of distribution (transportation, communications, and the instrument of commerce)”; the very opposite of free-market economy of a republic and the classical and original definition of democracy. (Skouten p. 156)
The Founders also warned us that a nation may prosper only if it offers equal protection of rights, not equal distribution of things, and Samuel Adams tried his best to make socialism and communist unconstitutional. He wrote ” the Utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of wealth] and a community of goods [central ownership of the means of production and distribution], are a visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional (Skousen p. 30 and William V. Wells “The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams, 1865 1:154).
Of course to maintain the Republic they gave us, it is necessary for the people to exercise self restrain, be educated, and be followers of the Heavenly Father, or Providence like George Washington called Him; and for them to elect leaders that as well expressed such qualities. Samuel Adams wrote “neither the wisest Constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of the people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue … (Wells, 122).
By virtue our Founders referred to as character.
George Washington in his Farewell address spoke “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports…. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
Virtue was defined later by Webster as “a conformity to a standard of right,” and “moral goodness; the practice of moral duties and the abstaining from vice, or a conformity of life and conversation to the moral law.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote ” If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be (Ford, Writing of Thomas Jefferson, 10:4). No other sure foundation can be devise for the preservation of freedom and happiness … Preach a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. (Berg, The Writing of Thomas Jefferson, 5:396-97)
The Founders’ conflicts were seldom ever on the principles, but on how to practically implement them in the new constitution.
And most and foremost, our Country was based on Christian beliefs. Our Constitution is a document inspired by the Holy Spirit. The colonists had grown in there resilience and confidence in God. In fact one governor who had be appointed by the king of England wrote to the Board of Trade in the motherland ” if you ask an American, who is his master? He will tell you he has none, nor any governor, but Jesus Christ.” And soon after that the unison cry among the colonies was “No King but King Jesus!” ( Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America,1822, p. 418 and Colonial Motto, 1774, issued through The Committee of Corresponders from Boston Mass. Both quotes reported by America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of quotations by William J Federer, p.59)
Our Founders believed that liberty depended on three great supports:
Natural law and unalienable natural rights granted by the Creator; a written constitution to assure a government of laws, not of rulers, and
VIRTUE among the people – the best defense against tyranny.
And indeed we can see the sad status of our affairs as we abandoned God’s guidance trying to make it on our own human efforts, excluding our Creator. The Bible indeed warns us against it. James, the half brother of Jesus, writes “Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God?” (James 4:4) echoing the prophet Isaiah “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (Isaiah 57:3) about 700 years before Christ was born.
The Bible warns us also in 1 Samuel chapter 8, when the Israelites refused God appointed judges, but wanted a king like the other nations. God told Samuel “… they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being King over them.” (1 Samuel 8:7-8) and then He forewarn them that they would greatly regret of their choice and weep.
Thankfully God also promises “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicle 7:14)
Jesus Himself is King of kings and Lord of Lords (1 Timothy 6:15; Revelation 17:14 and 19:16).
Let’s stop shaking our heads in dismay helplessly watching our Great Country abandoning itself in the arms of socialism and communism, bad manners, and immorality.
Who is our King? Let’s serve Him, repenting, turning around from our ways, and embracing His righteousness, not ours. He is a God of infinite love and mercy, but also infinite justice! He was faithful to us to the point of dying painfully an agonizing death on the cross, so disfigured He did not resemble a man any longer. And He died such death for us still in the state of sin. By accepting Him as Savior we are free from sin, free to choose what’s right, and together with that freedom we receive the gift and privilege to be called the children of the Living God. He was loyal to us to the end and His resurrection, even now at the rig hand of God the Father, are we loyal to Him?
The key to save ourselves and our Nation is in Him and Him in our hearts. Behold He is at the door and knocking. Let’s invite Him in, let’s have a meal with Him (Revelation 3:20), let’s surrender to Him that He may change us and through us the world we live in.( Let’s choose to make King and Lord above all.)
Let all the world in every corner sing
Hymn by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Let all the world, in every corner, sing:
My God and King!
The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly,
The earth is not too low, His praises there may grow,
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and king!
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and king!
The church with psalms must shout, no door can keep them out;
But, above all, the heart must bear the longest part.
Let all the world in every corner sing, my God and king!
In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen!