Do you believe that you are pretty good at discerning the truth? That you can tell when someone is teaching you a bold face lie? Do you feel that you are open enough to question whether what you’ve been taught is the full truth, and nothing but the truth? Especially, if you see and hear it from the mouth of those who lived it? How would you feel to learn that you’ve been raised believing in a false narrative of American history?
Were you taught that the United States was founded as a “Judeo-Christian” nation? Wouldn’t you want to know whether this is actually the truth or not, historically? If so, would you be willing to hear the written words of our nation’s Founders on what the United States is based upon? If so, again, then read the written words of those who gave their very lives to the founding of this nation, the United States of America, a nation that gave to the world its very first “people’s democracy”:
Thomas Jefferson: “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” – in a letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814, and “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” – in Notes on the State of Virginia, 1784
Thomas Paine: “The Heathens paid divine honours to their deceased kings, and the Christian World hath improved on the plan by doing the same to their living ones.” – in Common Sense, 1776, and “The priests of the present day, profess to believe it. They gain their living by it, and they exclaim against something they call infidelity. I will define what it is. HE THAT BELIEVES IN THE STORY OF CHRIST IS AN INFIDEL TO GOD.” – in Age of Reason, 1794-95, 1807
John Adams: “Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two greatest systems of tyranny that have sprung from this original, are the canon (the Bible) and the feudal law… Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” – in A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765, and “A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” – in a letter to Abigail Adams, July 7, 1775
Benjamin Franklin: “If we look back into history for the character of present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution.” – in a letter to the London Packet, June 3, 1772, and “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” – in The New-England Courant, July 9, 1722
George Washington: “I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” – in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia, May 1789, and “There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” – in his First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, January 8, 1790
Alexander Hamilton: “In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” – in the Federalist, No. 1, October 27, 1787, and “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” – in The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775
James Madison: “And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.” – in a letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822, and “The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.” – in The Federalist, No. 49, February 2, 1788
James Wilson: “In a state of natural liberty, every one is allowed to act according to his own inclination, provided he transgress not those limits, which are assigned to him by the law of nature: in a state of civil liberty, he is allowed to act according to his inclination, provided he transgress not those limits, which are assigned to him by the municipal law.” – in Of the Natural Rights of Individuals, 1790, and “Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.” – in Of the Natural Rights of Individuals, 1790
John Jay: “The moral or natural law was given by the Sovereign of the universe to all mankind; with them it was coeval, and with them it will be coexistent. Being founded by infinite wisdom and goodness on essential right, which never varies, it can require no amendment nor alteration.” – in a letter to John Murray, April 15, 1818, and “Real Christians will abstain from violating the rights of others, and therefore will not provoke war. Almost all nations have peace or war at the will and pleasure of rulers whom they do not elect, and who are not always wise or virtuous.” – in a letter to John Murray, October 12, 1816 – In all fairness, John Jay was the only Founder of the United States that perceived the U.S. as a “Christian nation” that should choose “Christians for their rulers.”, a proposition that all the other prominent Founders of our nation thoroughly disagreed with!
Joel Barlow: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen (Muslims).” – in Treaty of Tripoli, November 4, 1796, which he negotiated and drafted with a Muslim nation
Ethan Allen: “While we are under the tyranny of Priests, it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith.” – in Reason the Only Oracle of Man, 1784
Richard Allen (yes, he was a Founder of the U.S.): “If you love your children, if you love your country, if you love the God of love, clear your hands from slaves, burden not your children or your country with them.” – in An Address To Those Who Keep Slaves and Uphold the Practice, 1794
Abigail Adams (yes, she was a Founder of the U.S.): “Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father … There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.” – in letter to John Quincy Adams, May 5, 1816, and “When will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?” – in letter to Louisa Adams, January 3, 1818
Christians and Americans in general are being taught a lie – that this nation is founded on “Judeo-Christian” values, that this nation is a “Christian nation” from its birth, and that we are drifting away from our “Godly” roots. This is simply not true historically!
The simple historical truth is that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and other documents like it were a formal rejection of Judeo-Christian values and an embracement of 17-18th century European Enlightenment values – that of secular self-rule, spreading mercantile capitalism, and advancing the scientific revolution. Theism was replaced with Deism, fear of the future was replaced with belief in the future, the Ten Commandments was replaced with the civil Constitution, the church-ordained King was replaced with a people-elected President, rule by church-backed monarchy was replaced with three co-equal separate branches of government, and religion was separated from the affairs of civil governance. There can be no democracy in a nation where theocratic beliefs and laws are held supreme in civil legislative discourse – for this stands against the very concept of a people’s democracy!
Don’t trust me on this, like I wouldn’t ask you to trust your preachers. Learn for yourself, by studying – honestly and objectively – the history of the United States for yourself! Interestingly, it is a rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and methods of self-regulation to make claim that our modern democratic methods of governance are Judeo-Christian based. But, humans are well known for contradicting and distorting beliefs, when it makes them feel good and important and serves their specific interests.
Discover What Our U.S. Founders Actually Believed
http://www.aniyostsef.com/index/like-a-droplet-of-energy-water-we-each-individually-are/learn-what-u-s-founders-actually-believed/
What would the Founders of our nation think about a Post-Truth America? Would their view of what America is expected to be prove similar to how we view the United States today?
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“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war…”
Today’s battlefield is an asymmetrical field, a polarized populace divided by racial, religious, nationalist, and political lines. On one side are the radicalized Right and on the other side are defiant Left, the white evangelical conservative supremacists that are mostly Christian and mostly Republican at war with the secular liberal constitutionally progressive globalists that are mostly Agnostic and mostly Democrat. The question posed before history is whether the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” will survive intact, or will this nation “perish from the earth”?
Until we, as a nation, address our unfinished Civil War between the Confederacy and the Union, between white Christian supremacist racism and a multi-ethnic/religious citizenry demanding equal treatment under United States law, history cannot make its final determination. — Quotes in this paragraph set are from President Abraham Lincoln’s November 19, 1863, Gettysburg Address.
Quotes of the Founders, their thoughts on religion and governance, the reason for the #AmericanRevolution and the #DeclarationofIndependence for #maga #inhisimage #inhislikeness to actually read!
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#alllivesmatter when we realize that we are a nation of civil laws, not theocratic laws, a nation founded in the religious beliefs of Deism and European Enlightenment.
#GettysburgAddress #USConstitution #BillofRights #USFounders
4 Comments
Joseph T Farkasdi · October 20, 2017 at 1:27 pm
You have to give it a name. You have to call a spade a spade. It’s just lofty words with no meaningful personal connection, until you do. You have to give racism a name (Thomas “Jim Crow” Rice, Donald Trump). Don’t be like them! You have to give misogyny and sexual predation a name (Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump). You enable them when you don’t! You have to give pathological lying and narcissism a name (Adolph Hitler, Donald Trump). Failure to recognize self-worship and utter lack of empathy in leaders drives nations to destruction! You have to give mental disorder a name (Howard Hughes, Donald Trump). Calling them eccentric just because they are socially privileged, rich, and powerful does not help them to get the help they really need! Former presidents, GOP, Pence and gang, and others will not say it – will not call him out by name – and, in doing so, we are enabling the worst of us, not raising social consciousness.
#Trump #POTUS #GOP #JimCrow #HarveyWeinstein #AdolphHitler #HowardHughes #FredericaWilson #MyeshiaJohnson
#alllivesmatter only when actual American history is taught and #truthandreconciliation has been established in the United States of America. It’s the only way to #maga, as if it wasn’t already greater than it’s ever been!
Let’s get the #NationalPopularVote in place before #Trump #TrumpPence 2020!
When all humans are found be #inhisimage #inhislikeness and deserving of equal rights and treatment under the law, only then will the United States be a nation worthy of emulation by the rest of the world.
Edited this post to reflect the actual name of the actor who portrayed the racist fictional caricature ‘Jim Crow’, a stereotype of blacks that inspired the name of the racist repressive laws and customs that white Americans enforced upon black Americans during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Joseph T Farkasdi · October 22, 2017 at 1:28 pm
Is the USA really a world leader? Really?
If the United States is so great, then why do more people around the world know British English than American English? If the U.S. is so great, then why is European football (Soccer) the national sport of near all countries instead of American football (padded Rugby)? If the U.S. is so great, then why does most of the world have a 24 hour clock, rather than America’s a.m./p.m. 12 hour clock? If the U.S. is so great, then why are most countries not using the U.S. Standard measurement system (inches, miles, ounces, etc.)? Or, the Fahrenheit system? Or, the 120 Volt electric system? Instead, preferring Metric, Celsius, and 230 Volt in its place? If the U.S. is so great, then why do near all European countries invest heavily in free education, universal healthcare, livable retirement pensions, and eco-friendly lifestyles for all its citizens?
Have you ever wondered these things as an American? Why so tangibly real little influence around the world, besides music and pop culture? Why so few other humans care to emulate? The United States at its core is a separatist nation. From its idealistic founding and subsequent history this has always been and is historically so. The United States seeks to lead and is not really a partner in the global community. The United States is also very full itself, how great and important its ways are. And, by its own doings and attitudes, is coming due for its self-inflicted humbling in the world.
If the USA is so great, then why does almost everyone around the world emulate the British, the Germans, and the Dutch? What influence does the United States really have on this earth?
#alllivesmatter only when actual American history is taught and #truthandreconciliation has been established in the United States of America. It’s the only way to #maga, as if it wasn’t already greater than it’s ever been!
Let’s get the #NationalPopularVote in place before #Trump #TrumpPence 2020!
When all humans are found be #inhisimage #inhislikeness and deserving of equal rights and treatment under the law, only then will the United States be a nation worthy of emulation by the rest of the world.
Joseph T Farkasdi · December 6, 2017 at 12:56 am
The party of “family values” and “fiscal responsibility” is about to send a pedophile to the Senate and give a debt-increasing tax break to the very rich, all because their base’s “God” wants them to. Why? What’s happened?
This is the Christian Right (article below), the base that the GOP capitulates to. Perhaps you’ve heard of them, the radicalized evangelical party in the United States? They’ve never been so close to being drunk with political power. And they will say, do, and defend anything to get theocratic hold of our government, as they are clearly demonstrating. All the warnings for years on end and, even now, many Americans are still oblivious to their social danger. Now would be a very good time to wake up!
The GOP Has Become A Dangerous Cult
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisladd/2017/12/02/the-gop-has-become-a-dangerous-cult/
“The party of “family values” is about to send a known sexual predator to the Senate because God wants them to. This would be startling, except they already used the same reasoning to put a known sexual predator in the White House. The same magical reasoning infects Republicans tax reform plans. Republican Jesus wants a tax cut. The faithful will comply. How did the Republican Party become a dangerous cult?
Desperate to halt a terrifying tide of social transformation, the political heirs of Jim Crow flooded into the weak and nearly empty infrastructure of the Southern GOP. Men like Alabama’s Roy Moore and Texas’ Rick Perry were the last generation of white Southern men to begin their careers as Democrats. The flight of millions of Dixiecrats into the GOP shifted the balance of power inside the party nationwide. Their fear-soaked, delusional fervor converted that institution from a conventional political party into a white nationalist cult. The Party of Lincoln now exists to help Neo-Confederates win the Civil War politically, long after losing it on the battlefield.
By all accounts, the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult were nice people who avoided harming others. They kept their sickness inside their ranks. By contrast, Republicans are forcing an entire country, and to a certain extent the world, to choke down their poisoned applesauce. It is possible to see in Marshall Applewhite a suffering soul, tormented by mental illness, who drew a small number of similarly troubled individuals into his fatal orbit (pardon the pun). It is increasingly difficult to extend the same sympathy to nice people like Paul Ryan. Those who survive the poison will one day look back on Republicans of this era with a similar disgust.” … Read more!
The U.S. founders wanted to #MAGA, because they believed in principle that #alllivesmatter, and this is why they rejected rule by church and established a people’s constitution. Isn’t it about time that Americans started learning their national bible?
According to the Founders of the United States of America, if we are #inhisimage #inhislikeness, then it is the image of the Deist ‘God’ of European 16-17th century Enlightenment – this is what the archive writings of the U.S. Founders reveal ever so clearly.
Joseph T Farkasdi · December 6, 2017 at 1:07 pm
Will the vice president and the religious right be rewarded for their embrace of Donald Trump? In this age, is “the priest” (Mike Pence) about to be POTUS for embracing “the despot” (Donald Trump) prior to his fall, as Thomas Jefferson warned us ever so bluntly over 203 years ago? It’s what the evangelicals have been dreaming of, since forming the Christian Right political movement and infiltrating the Republican party – theocratic influence and control of United States government, because their movement tells them that “God” demands this for America, and that the mythical history of America they preach and teach is the real history regardless what the archives show to be true. Beware, Pence has his eye on the presidency for religious reasons, and personal political ones – and no embracing wrong is too great a price to pay for this!
The U.S. founders wanted to #MAGA, because they believed in principle that #alllivesmatter, and this is why they rejected rule by church and established a people’s constitution. Isn’t it about time that Americans started learning their national bible?
According to the Founders of the United States of America, if we are #inhisimage #inhislikeness, then it is the image of the Deist ‘God’ of European 16-18th century Enlightenment – this is what the archive writings of the U.S. Founders reveal ever so clearly.
God’s Plan for Mike Pence
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/gods-plan-for-mike-pence/546569/
“We’ve come to a pivotal moment in the life of this country,” Mike Pence soulfully intones (to Anderson, Indiana, during a rally this year, 2017). “It’s a good time to pray for America.” His voice rising in righteous fervor, the vice president promises an opening of the heavens. “If His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray,” he proclaims, “He’ll hear from heaven, and He’ll heal this land!” It’s easy to see how Pence could put so much faith in the possibilities of divine intervention. The very fact that he is standing behind a lectern bearing the vice-presidential seal is, one could argue, a loaves-and-fishes-level miracle.
Because God works in mysterious ways (or, at the very least, has a postmodern sense of humor), it was Donald J. Trump—gracer of Playboy covers, delighter of shock jocks, collector of mistresses—who descended from the mountaintop in the summer of 2016, GOP presidential nomination in hand, offering salvation to both Pence and the religious right. The question of whether they should wed themselves to such a man was not without its theological considerations. But after eight years of Barack Obama and a string of disorienting political defeats, conservative Christians were in retreat and out of options. So they placed their faith in Trump—and then, incredibly, he won.
Meanwhile, Pence’s presence in the White House has been a boon for the religious right. Evangelical leaders across the country point to his record on abortion and religious freedom and liken him to a prophet restoring conservative Christianity to its rightful place at the center of American life. “Mike Pence is the 24-karat-gold model of what we want in an evangelical politician,” Richard Land, the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary and one of Trump’s faith advisers, told me. “I don’t know anyone who’s more consistent in bringing his evangelical-Christian worldview to public policy.”
Such beliefs stand against the core beliefs the U.S. Founders – their religious beliefs, their national beliefs, and their belief in separation of church and state!