Paul's Travels
Apostle Paul Founder of Christianity

Happy Constitution Day

From: batesfam@postoffice.pacbell.net
To: "userper" userper@sullivan-county.com
Subject: Happy Constitution Day
Date: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 4:11 PM

I wish you all a happy Constitution Day. I hope that we can appreciate what the revolutionary Patriots, some Protestants, some Catholics, a number of Deists, a few freethinkers, and one Jewish money lender, did to help make this a great country. People came across religious lines to help make this the free Republic that it still is today, in spite of the growth of Big Government and the erosion of the Bill of Rights in the name of gun control, and also in the name of the phony "War on Drugs".

Our nation was attacked a year and a week ago. We stood up in defense of freedom, against the disapproval of the cowards in the world. We remade Afghanistan in to a free country, or at least freer than it was. We have made mistakes in our foreign policy, but we have also fed the poor, stood up to aggression in the Gulf, and helped to free people groaning under Nazi and Stalinist tyranny. We did not do so on our own energy and power.

We drew on the foundations built by our Founding Fathers, and by their predecessors the Revolutionary Patriots. We resolved to honor their memories by leaving a legacy of freedom and idealism. Lincoln and Kennedy drew on their memories when they stood up to slave regimes. The Civil War and the Cuban Missile Crisis were both grave episodes of danger for this nation. Lincoln and Kennedy pulled through, because they drew on the American heritage of freedom.

We must not forget that the freedom guaranteed under the Constitution is a freedom that comes with a heavy set of responsibilities. Liberty is not license. In our Madison Avenue world we forget that real life is often more grit than glory. The Left and Right often take freedom as the total absence of the State.

The one disregards standards higher than individual whim in the social sphere, the other does the same in the economic sphere. At the extremes, both have conspired with the enemies of America, and would hardly have the best interests of our nation at heart.

Go back in to history. Few of the Founding Fathers were PURE individualists, in the sense exalted today. Even the most freethinking of the Founding Fathers, Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine among them, expected that we would remain a religious nation, in some sense.

Paine was sympathetic to the French Revolution, yet he was horrified when atheistic doctrines were promoted by these revolutionaries, and when God was mocked in their schools. This Leftist was about where the moderate religious Right would be today, as far as believing in the need for an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of Higher Power in society.

For our entire national history we have been an individualistic people. Heirarchies of caste and age have not been respected here. It is important that we temper that spirit with an understanding of human compassion. Freedom is only free when we temper it with human love. Few of the Founding Fathers would have wanted a purely individualistic society in which greed reigns supreme.

We must remember to honor their memories by doing deeds of compassion. The world peace under God that they hoped for can only come about by doing deeds of righteousness. This brings the Spirit of God closer to Earth. A purely individualistic democracy cannot last.

That is why the Founding Fathers founded a Godly Republic, one in which the federal government was secular, but in which the States and communities would be expected to uphold a standard of righteousness. This is the greatness of our nation, and one important reason why God has blessed it.

Some in the United Nations think that maybe we are not so special. Some think that we should abandon our sovereignty for "global governance", or a non-Constitutional world government, more honestly put. They have friends in the intellectuals elites.

Large corporations seem to feel that our labor and environmental laws, passed by large democratic majorities and ratified by our Courts acting under standards of righteousness, are too onerous.

Repressive regimes like China and Singapore are better for business, these misguided titans declare. Their opponents on the Left are more brazen. They condemn America as "bourgeois" and "indifferent".

A few on the Right may also feel that we are not as godly or righteous as our murderous opponents, in spite of the rich history of Godly faith in America that has inspired deeds of action, not simply pious rhetoric covering deeds of mass murder.

Friends, it is time to put the counsel of these traitors and dupes aside. It is time to emphasize what is good, and to reform what does not conform to the good.

Be critical of your country out of love for it, out of the belief in its highest ideals, not out of hatred or malice for your country and your countrymen. Please remember your heritage of freedom, and do not let go of it.

There are seven binding Laws of God on this world, one of them is the Commandment to uphold Just Courts. We have this tradition enshrined on our country's founding charter in the form of the Supreme Court. I get very upset with the Court at times.

They have upheld both slavery and abortion, against substantial democratic majorities favoring the abolition of both. "Dred Scott" and "Roe vs. Wade" are two blots on our country's memory.

I can understand the lack of faith on the part of some in our Supreme Court, and the belief that power should be entirely vested in Congress. However, the Commandments of God clearly state that we uphold Just Courts.

That is also what the Constitution mandates. This does not mean that we do not attempt to address unjust decisions. However, think of how much worse the country would be if we did not have a system of binding arbitration, and a place where the powerless can find redress.

Let us reform our unjust legal system, in which money prevails. Let us act on this. Do not give in to cynicism which says "There is no justice in the world". There WILL be justice in the world, and if you do not act when injustice reigns, and support Just Courts, than you are liable under the Laws of God for your inaction.

Yet, please do this from a sense of solidarity with our system, not in disrespect of your national leaders. God raised them up for His purposes. Remember that.

Please read the Constution through, at least once. Honor it. Treasure it. Hold it in your hand, along with the Declaration of Independence. It is your heritage. Do not forget it.

"General" Bates

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