Gohmert: The Founders' American Dream ‘Was Rooted in Religious Freedom’

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) says, the American Dream of our Founding Fathers “was not centered on a paycheck, or a job or a house. It was not anchored in government control or climbing the ladder of political power - it was rooted in religious freedom.”

The Texas Republican recently appeared in a video for America Proud where he discusses the importance of recognizing religious freedom during the month that we celebrate the birth of the nation.

Here is an excerpt of Gohmert’s comments;

VIDEO LINK

“The United States has served as a beacon of light for millions across the globe because it represents a place of freedom, hope and exceptionalism.

However, it’s important to note the reason our Founding Fathers fought for such liberty and justice for all. Their American Dream was not centered on a paycheck, or a job or a house. It was not anchored in government control or climbing the ladder of political power - it was rooted in religious freedom.

They longed for a land that would allow them along with all others to worship without fear of retribution or retaliation. This was their highest aspiration, religious freedom. They knew that if they had religious freedom that all the other freedoms would flow out of that. They also knew that if they were faithful, divine providence would guide them and make the new nation viable.

In fact Alexander Hamilton, George Washington’s closest aide during the revolution, was not only a part of the important, early proceedings - he was there beside Ben Franklin during the Constitutional Convention and made an insightful assessment of the new nation’s founding. He said this - 'for my own part I sincerely esteem it a system that without finger of God never could never have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.'”

Gohmert continues, “Like Alexander Hamilton, most of the founders were all passionate about forming a nation based on democracy and laying a solid framework, which in turn, left behind a beautiful legacy of biblical adherence and providential inspiration.”

“So it’s my prayer that we celebrate this nation’s long-standing birthday with the remembrance of why men loaded their muskets, drew their swords and shed their blood -to build a nation on the solid rock composed of our first freedom, religious liberty.”

Via: CNS News

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TANCREDO: INDEPENDENCE DAY, TIME TO THINK RADICAL THOUGHTS

Independence Day is traditionally a time for celebration, relaxation and gratitude for the liberties declared to be universal rights on July 4, 1776. Maybe it’s time to also remember — and celebrate — that while our liberties and our independence may have been declared in 1776, they were secured for posterity by the blood of patriots, not the pens and inkblots of judges and politicians.

As a poet of the ’60s once said, the times they are a-changing. Indeed.

It is not a happy thought, but when in the course of human events, dependence not independence becomes the defining feature of our national character, maybe our Independence Day celebrations and speeches should take note of this “transformative” turning point—and make plans accordingly.

Shall we celebrate that we are not yet as corrupt as Greece? That we have not yet repudiated our national debts? Or should we put down the bottle and admit how fast we are approaching that day of reckoning?

Can anyone remember a week that has seen so many disappointments, betrayals and storm warnings as the one we have lived through since the Supreme Court’s shameless abandonment of the Constitution on June 26? We got more than revitalized Obamacare on that day, we got a cold shower: it is now impossible to ignore the naked truth that our elites are laughing at the idea of “limited government.”

True, there have been other decisions of the nation’s top court that have disappointed, even shocked conservatives. But has there ever been a ruling that said in giant letters written across the marquee in Times Square, “the Constitution be damned, separation of powers be damned, we will help Congress write laws we like and reject laws we don’t like.”

On Independence Day 2015, conservatives and patriots need to understand what has happened. By edict signed by our new lawgiver– the Chief Justice of the United States, John Roberts, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush– the Founders’ principal legacy, the idea of a written Constitution, is now officially dead. The letter of the law is meaningless – and thus no longer a restraint on government — when replaced by the good intentions of our elite rulers.

Thomas Jefferson’s proposition that rights precede government and to protect these rights, governments are instituted among men—that proposition is now discarded in the dustbin of history. The Bill of Rights? Freedom of religion and free speech will mean what enlightened judges want them to mean.

The Republican Party’s white flag of surrender, deployed so often and so readily on Supreme Court nominees and Cabinet appointments, has become the Constitution’s white burial shroud.

Our Founders were not naïve simpletons. They understood that human freedom is a fragile thing, that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” The Founders understood, with Benjamin Franklin, that “you have a Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Have we?

Via: Breitbart

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[COMMENTARY] Founding Fathers declared all men are created equal

The Founding Fathers declared that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed with inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

During the America’s infancy, our forefathers dedicated themselves to the preservation of these rights. They willingly served their country, and in some cases, gave their lives to ensure that their fellow Americans could continue to live in a land of freedom and opportunity.

The government our Founding Fathers fought to establish is one in which each citizen has a voice, and its continuation depends on the consent of the governed. The adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776— 239 years ago—formed the foundation of the United States of America and the principles that continue to guide our nation today.

Each year we come together to celebrate our independence by watching fireworks, attending parades and spending time with family and friends. It is important, however, to remember we are able to celebrate this day because of our Founding Fathers’ extraordinary contributions to our great democracy and our military bravely answering the call of duty time and time again.

As a member of the Ohio National Guard for more than 29 years, I have seen firsthand the tireless work of the servicemen and women who bravely defend our country and our liberty. Thanks to their sacrifices, we remain fortunate to live in the land of the free and home of the brave.

As always, I am grateful for the opportunity to serve Ohio’s 15th Congressional District and I look forward to hearing from you about any federal issues facing our nation. Please do not hesitate to call my Washington D.C. Office at (202) 225-2015, Hilliard Office at (614) 771-4968, Lancaster Office at (740) 654-2654, or Wilmington Office at (937) 283-7049 to share your thoughts with me.

Via: Perry Tribune (Ohio)

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[EDITORIAL] States Don't Have Rights, People Have Rights

Next week, we’ll be celebrating the 239th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The eloquent cries for freedom and equality voiced in that properly revered document have become what professors Sid Milkis and Marc Landy call the “American Creed.” It’s a belief that all of us have the right to do whatever we want with our lives so long as we don’t interfere with the right of others to do the same. 

At its best, the Declaration has been used to challenge the nation to become better, to live up to its founding ideals.

That was certainly the case on July 4, 1852, when an escaped slave eloquently pointed out the contradiction between America’s founding embrace of freedom and its ongoing practice of slavery. “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?” asked Frederick Douglass. He answered that it was “a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”

As millions of white Americans celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Douglass called the celebration a “sham” filled with “fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy.” How could slavery exist in a land founded on the premise that all of us are created equal? What about the unalienable rights of black Americans to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness?

Douglass, of course, was right. The contradiction between what America preached and what it practiced was inexcusable.

Those seeking to defend slavery did not deny the contradiction; they simply wanted to forget about the Declaration and all talk of equality. John C. Calhoun, perhaps the most powerful and influential defender of slavery, complained mightily that the ideals of the Declaration had “spread far and wide, and fixed itself deeply into the public mind.”

When residents in Calhoun’s home state fired upon Fort Sumter to start the Civil War, they were fighting both to defend slavery and to overturn the Declaration of Independence. President Abraham Lincoln pointedly defended the Declaration and described America as having been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

When the South lost the Civil War, new opposition arose to the nation’s founding ideals. Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were OK with the idea of equality, but they hated the idea of individual rights that limited the power of government. Sounding a lot like Calhoun, President Woodrow Wilson complained that the American people had never gotten over the Declaration.

Both the segregationists and the progressives saw the Declaration of Independence as an impediment to their plans. They wanted governments to have more power. In the case of the slaveholders, they wanted state governments to have the right to impose slavery or Jim Crow laws on black residents of their state. The progressives wanted the federal government to have the right to aggressively lead society and control the economy.

But, states don’t have rights. People have rights.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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America needs a rebirth of freedom

Your freedom is slipping away as Washington’s power grows. Your freedom is undermined by a more intrusive government, which increasingly dictates how you run your life. The principles of America’s Founding have never been more at risk.

Washington is taking over your health care. Encouraging illegal immigration as a political force to suppress your freedom. Raising your taxes. Enslaving your family by national debt. Coddling dictators and gutting our national defenses. While some “conservatives” may have abandoned principle or compromised needlessly, The Heritage Foundation is confronting the crisis with a bold plan to give America a new birth of freedom.

To meet the crisis, Heritage is launching Reclaim America, a revolutionary campaign—unprecedented by any policy organization—to rapidly restore the constitutional rule of “We the People.”

Reclaim America will use four revolutionary strategies to drastically reduce Washington’s power. We will liberate Americans from big government, dethrone the special interests that hold sway over both parties, and end the chokehold the Left has on America.

Reclaim America’s aim is simple: Change America’s trajectory. Beginning right now.

Via: Heritage.com

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Historian: Americans Don’t Understand Meaning Behind Gettysburg Address

150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg 

Address this month

A historian said Friday that Americans often fail to recognize the meaning behind President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address ahead of the speech’s 150th anniversary this month.

Allen Guelzo, director of Civil War era studies at Gettysburg College and a renowned Lincoln scholar, said at the Heritage Foundation that Americans typically remember the address for its brevity orphrases like “four score and seven years ago” and “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Lincoln delivered the remarks—comprising just 272 words in 10 sentences—on Nov. 19, 1863, four-and-a-half months after the pivotal battle of Gettysburg left more than 50,000 soldiers dead or wounded. Only a third of the expected bodies had been buried at the cemetery at the time.

Guelzo said Lincoln was “a man of no verbal wastage,” providing the thousands gathered at the dedication with a past, present, and future vision of America. The Founding Fathers “brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty” in 1776; the present crowd assembled to honor those “who here gave their lives that that nation might live”; and Lincoln urged the attendees to “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

The last part, given the historical context of the speech, is the most important, Guelzo said.

“We do not see Lincoln’s subject, the survival of democracy, as Lincoln saw it,” he said. “For Lincoln, democracy was an isolated and beleaguered island in a world dominated by monarchies and tyrants.”

Lincoln studied the terror of the French Revolution and the military dictatorship of Napoleon, followed by the 19th century revolutions across Europe that were “crushed and subverted by nascent monarchies and romantic philosophers,” Guelzo said. Democratic government “lay discredited and disgraced,” he added.

Via: WFB

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Barack Obama’s sinking leadership: half of Americans believe the Founding Fathers would see the US today as a failure

A new Rasmussen poll shows just how disillusioned Americans have become with the direction of their own country, over four and a half years since President Obama took office. According to Rasmussen, barely a third of US voters think the nation’s Founding Fathers would view the United States as a success today. 49 percent think the opposite:

Abraham Lincoln famously declared at Gettysburg that the Founding Fathers "brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." But half of Americans think the Founding Fathers would view the nation they created as a failure today.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 34% of American Adults think that if the Founding Fathers came back today, they would consider the United States a success. Forty-nine percent (49%), however, say the founders of this nation would view what it's become as a failure. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure.

There is a considerable ideological divide between Republicans and Democrats in how they respond to this question, though even among Democrats just over half deliver a positive answer:

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Democrats think the Founding Fathers would consider the United States a success. Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans and 55% of those not affiliated with either major party believe the Founding Fathers would view America as a failure.

Significantly, the Rasmussen survey shows strong distrust of the federal government, whose powers have risen significantly since the Obama administration took office:

One of the key foundational concepts in the Declaration of Independence which Lincoln referred to "four score and seven years ago" is that “governments derive their only just powers from the consent of the governed.” Just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters now think the federal government has that consent.

Via: The Telegraph
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