Last week at the Cole Town Meeting in Duncan, the greatest clapping came when speakers demanded a return to the Constitution and the principles that the Founders used to establish the United States. Most Americans know that we are losing our liberty with these new laws and bills. And we don’t like it. Unfortunately, most Americans don’t know what the Constitution details, nor do most Americans comprehend those founding principles.
For about 20 years, I have studied the society of the American Colonists leading up to and including the creation of the US Constitution. These people – all of them from farmer to merchant to lawyer – were highly educated.
Living in the New World, far away from the mother country, they knew firsthand the requirements for liberty: hard work, personal effort, extensive knowledge of government, history, and economics, and a reliance on God and family.
Living under a monarchy, they experienced firsthand the loss of liberty, or political bondage, through increased taxes and more and more government control.
As I have thought about their situation and ours, it seems to me that we are going backwards from liberty back to bondage, this time into the political bondage of socialism. Therefore, the only way to return to liberty and our country’s founding principles is through hard work, personal effort, extensive knowledge of government, history, and economics, and a reliance on God and family. Today, we have the advantage of reading not only what the Founders read but also what the Founders wrote and spoke.
A good start to a personal and family study would certainly begin with our country’s “Political Scriptures” – US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Washington’s Farewell Address, Federalist Papers (especially number 10), and liberty and law verses of the Bible, the most oft quoted source of the Founders.
Thomas Jefferson with his tremendous comprehension of liberty wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
We need liberty because “liberty is what allows human excellence to thrive, and is the critical element that enables us to fulfill our personal missions,” explains Dr. Andrew Groft, president of George Wythe University. History attests to this phenomenon: no liberty, no progress or growth or freedom; know liberty, know progress and growth and freedom.
The next time there is a town meeting, may the applause be for liberty.
