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by Tom Rose

"My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray...." (Jer. 50:6).

Some 225 years have passed since that spring day, April 19, 1775, when the "shot that was heard around the world" rang out, in what is now Lexington, Massachusetts. British forces from Boston made an armed raid to commandeer the supply of powder and musket balls stored in Lexington. Eight Minutemen were killed by the British. On the next day, the British were turned back at Concord, where arms and ammunition were also stored, by colonial patriots who swarmed in from all directions. The British fled back to Boston with casualties of 273, with 95 casualties for the patriots. So, in reality, the Revolutionary War began, not over taxation, as modern history books erroneously purport, but over the burning issue of Americans' right to own and bear arms.

It would be good for patriotic Americans today to remember that people are helpless to resist tyranny imposed by civil rulers when citizens don't have ready access to the ammunition necessary to make their firearms effective. Our Revolutionary forefathers were able to successfully resist the power of well-armed British military brigades because they knew the importance of a well-armed populace in preserving liberty.

Today, Americans are faced with lawless, and sometimes brutal, raids by the BATF, FBI, Federal Marshals, and other armed federal agents while the government in Washington, D.C., is working both domestically and internationally with the U.N. to disarm our once-free and well-armed citizenry. Within the last couple of years the British and Australian people have been disarmed, with the result that violent crime and robbery of disarmed households have skyrocketed. Let this be a warning to Americans who still love liberty and want to pass the blessings of liberty on to their posterity.

As I write these words it is late Monday night, July 3, 2000. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, our annual celebration of "freedom," commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. What wonderful past glory! Yet, in one respect, what a sour remembrance! For if our forefathers could see how the people of our once-free American Republic have ignorantly, yet willingly, surrendered liberty in exchange for a mess of socialist pottage administered by numerous dictatorial federal agencies, they would turn over in their graves wondering if their efforts had been in vain!

You might ask, "Why are such federal agencies so domineering?" The answer is that such agencies combine the once-carefully-divided governmental branches of the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial branches of civil government into one centralized, unconstitutional power that lawlessly legislates so-called "laws"; then dictatorially administers such "law"; and then deceptively judges such "law," leaving wronged citizens with no effective legal recourse to redress their grievances. In short, our great nation--once the home of the free and the brave--has unknowingly succumbed to the false siren of national socialism (fascism) which Franklin D. Roosevelt left us as his notorious legacy.

A Prayer Request

Yesterday, Sunday morning, when the elder who led worship services at my church asked for prayer requests, I rose to my feet and voiced this not-too-well-received prayer request:

I'm sad of heart today as I think about the Fourth of July. Why? Because we Americans are well on the way to losing the freedom that our forefathers fought so hard to win!

Today, Americans are experiencing a loss of freedom similar to the loss suffered by the German people in the early 1930s when Hitler arrogated unconstitutional powers to establish his dictatorial Nazi regime. We are rapidly losing our freedom! We are attacked by government SWAT teams (BATF, FBI, FDA, and other gun-toting agents who are nothing more than killers for hire)! And our government lies to us!

Let us pray for our country! Let us pray that church elders and pastors of every denomination will stir up and awaken Americans today about what is happening! Let them preach freedom to the people like the pre-Revolutionary preachers taught our forefathers in their sermons about God-given liberty, and how to resist tyrannical civil rulers!

The pastor in his sermon touched on the "fact" that America has never been a Christian nation. He cited the "old saw" that some of our founders were influenced by the Enlightenment movement in Europe, and he mentioned the pamphleteer Thomas Paine, who was an atheist. Some of what he said was true, but a partial truth can be misleading to those who are ignorant of American history. He failed to mention the Colonial Charters which mentioned Christ. Nor did he mention:

• the many references to the God of the Bible in the early State Constitutions;

• the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Trinity Church case of 1892, which gives a detailed history of the Christian influence in our American Republic;

• Alex deToqueville's Democracy in America, published in the 1830s, which details the influence of biblical Christianity in the American Republic;

• James Bryce, British Ambassador to America for many years, who also detailed the Christian nature of America in his The American Commonwealth, published in 1899;

• M.E. Bradford's A Worthy Company, published in 1982, tells about the Christian influence brought to bear by the founders of our American Republic.

My warning and prayer request was not, of course, well received. Why? Because a sedated populace never realizes that freedom has been lost until it is too late. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spoke truly when he warned, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free!" Our tax-supported schools, America's most ubiquitous and tragic experiment in socialism, eagerly condition each new generation to willingly and even to enthusiastically embrace the false idea that America is a "democracy." Our forefathers hated democracy! They loved republican civil government with its careful division of Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments established in a long tried-and-proven system of law known as the Common Law. But, today, we have in its place a massive, contradictory and hard-to-understand Uniform Commercial Code that was foisted on Americans during the Roosevelt Administration (1938), which has effectively replaced the Constitution of 1787 and Common Law upon which the Constitution is based.

Miss Liberty is sick and ailing, almost dead, in our country today. But all is not lost! Not by a long shot! That wonderful patriot of the Revolutionary era, Samuel Adams, left us with these encouraging words: "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority to set brush fires in peoples' minds." How true! My reading of American history tells me that only three-percent of the American colonists led the fight against tyrannical government during the Revolutionary period. And our political rulers today are much more tyrannical than King George III and Parliament were in the late 1700s. I'm thrilled to be in touch with many liberty-minded patriots throughout these United States of America as well as in other countries too. So, it should be easier today than it was back in 1775-1776 to stir up Sam Adams' "irate tireless minority" into meaningful action.

Steps to Renewal

What should we do? First, we need to consider this fundamental question: "What is the proper role of civil government in society?" The answer, as I have for so many years taught my students, is simple and straight forward:

The proper role of civil government in society is simply to maintain law and order so as to maximize man's individual self-responsibility before God! To do this the civil authority must be carefully limited to a defensive role in society in order to protect each individual's God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! In short, the biblical goal of civil government is to maximize each person's freedom!

The U.S. Supreme Court (American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 442) came close to voicing the above concept in its ruling:

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error, it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

In short, those wise justices said, in effect, that the people should be free, but the power of political rulers should be very limited! With the above truths in mind, what can and should we do?

1. In general, we should proceed to dismantle all of the unconstitutional socialist/fascist legislation and government agencies, from the Roosevelt Administration beginning in 1933 to the Clinton Administration in 2000, that invade our right to life, our right to live our lives as we choose, and to pursue our happiness and personal welfare as we desire, as long as we do not invade the similar right of other individuals. There is no grosser denial of our right to life than the abortion (murder) of unborn infants, especially the viciously brutal practice of "partial birth abortion," which recently has been approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in Stenberg v. Carhart. God cannot fail to judge a nation that legally condones and encourages such a barbaric practice.

2. The IRS should be abolished immediately! The Sixteenth Amendment was properly ratified by only 4 States. It needed to be ratified by 36 States, but was falsely declared to be properly ratified. This fact has been called to the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court, which, as I understand, declared it a matter to be handled by the Congress, which, in turn, holds that it is a Court matter! We should not replace the cruelly invasive income tax with either a flat tax or a national sales tax (value-added tax); doing so would only prolong the ability of our central government to extort tax monies from citizens to continue the massive "tax and spend" policies followed by every presidential administration from FDR onward. We must return to the much better taxing policy of the Articles of Confederation which required the central government to come "hat in hand" to ask for operating funds from the States. Had this policy been in effect during the last 100 years, we could have avoided, as we should have avoided, getting entangled in expensive, freedom-robbing foreign wars (WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Mideast War, Kosovo, etc.). The result of each war has been to enrich certain special interest groups, to run up our national debt, to enslave American citizens and to sacrifice their lives for imaginary propaganda "gains." Our goal should be to emasculate our central government of its taxing power which has been used to establish a massive unitary state at the domestic level and to foster the establishment of a socialist/fascist one-world government through the United Nations, most of whose members have not the slightest concept of biblical freedom and man's personal responsibility before God.

3. The civil authority at no level of government has the right to license professions and trades, for it is God who bestows on individuals the gifts and ability to pursue certain trades (see Ex. 35:30-35 and 36:1-2). Every person has a God-given right to hang out his or her shingle without being required to ask for the "privilege" of doing so from a bureaucratic civil authority. Contrary to popular propaganda, this would tend to eliminate licensed quackery which is now fostered by licensing laws.

4. Tax-supported education is one of America's most destructive tyrannies. The education of children is a parental responsibility which cannot safely be entrusted to any level of civil government. It, more than any other social institution, has served to dumb down our populace and to condition young hearts and minds to accept government socialism/fascism. Freedom cannot be restored in America if this noxious system is continued.

   With each passing year of college teaching I marveled, in a negative way, how each new influx of freshmen had less and less knowledge of basic English grammar and less understanding of and appreciation for historic American freedom. The grand exceptions were the relatively few students who were home schooled or schooled in the few Christian institutions that held true to their calling! Parents once again must be put in economic control of the funds they need to educate their own children. Private, biblically based education can yet be the salvation of America as a nation!

5. The Federal Reserve System must be quickly eliminated before it can do more harm, like the crashes of 1929, 1973-74, 1987, and the current credit bubble which it has fostered both domestically and worldwide, and which is ready to burst at any time. Its unlimited money-creating power, coupled with the rapacious ability of the IRS to extort money from citizens, is what has funded the mushrooming growth of the centralized government bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.

6. We should restore a gold and silver based currency to the people. It is their only protection against inflationary-prone civil rulers who stand ready to seduce them into credit-based slavery. Political and economic power is always wielded by those who own the gold and silver in a country. Thus, it is safer to have the ownership of gold and silver widely dispersed among the populace than to have it concentrated in a nation's central bank or treasury. Some 6,000 years of history clearly teach that civil rulers cannot be trusted when it comes to money or credit, both of which allow rulers to become involved in foreign intrigues and foreign wars. America grew and expanded wonderfully during the period that private mints operated widely in our country.

7. Instead of systematically arming the UN and disarming American citizens (as is the published plan of the federal government according to the 1961 U.S. State Department Document 7277), we should withdraw from the UN and assist in its quick burial. Likewise, we should disarm the BATF, the FBI, the DEA, the IRS (imagine gun-toting tax collectors!), and other federal agencies that have armed agents (the FDA, for instance, which has made armed raids on "alternative doctors" offices and health food stores). Civil rulers can always hire thugs, the way Hitler and Stalin did, to do their bidding under the guise of "promoting peace" or "protecting the children!" Our government is not protecting children, it encourages abortionist doctors to murder millions of unborn children every year! God's choice for protecting children has always been the love of dedicated mothers and fathers, not civil rulers.

   We need to encourage responsible citizens to properly arm themselves, as they do in Switzerland, with weapons suitable for both self-defense and national defense. If we do this, peace and the right to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" will reign in our country, and Americans will no longer have to fear being attacked by thugs disguised as government agents.

8. Last, and most important of all, let every American pray to our Father in heaven to unseat the many ungodly who now occupy positions of influence and power in our governmental structure, especially at the federal level, but at the state and local levels also, and to replace them with godly leaders of His choice. Thus, peace, prosperity, and our beloved American Republic will be restored! Join with me in this prayer!

Tom Rose is retired professor of economics, Grove City College, Pennsylvania. He is author of seven books and hundreds of articles dealing with economic and political issues. His articles have regularly appeared in The Christian Statesman, published by the National Reform Association, Pittsburgh, PA; the Chalcedon Report, published by the Chalcedon Foundation, Vallecito, CA; and in many other publications. For ten years he wrote a weekly syndicated column published by newspapers such as: The Santa Ana Register (CA), The Indianapolis Morning News (IN), The Manchester Union Leader (NH), The Gazette Telegraph (CO), The Odessa American (TX), and others. He and his wife, Ruth, raise registered Barzona cattle on a farm near Mercer, PA, where they also write and publish economic textbooks for use by Christian colleges, high schools and home educators. Rose's latest book is Reclaiming the American Dream by Reconstructing the American Republic, published by American Enterprise Publications, 177 N. Spring Road, Mercer, PA, 16137. Phone: 724-748-3726; Fax: 724-748-5373; Orders: 1-888-474-7534.

© Tom Rose, 2000

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