"In the end we will remember not the words of our
enemies but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther
King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born January 15, 1929.A
Baptist minister, like his father and grandfather, he pastored
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery and Ebenezer
Baptist Church in Atlanta, before forming the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. In April 1963, Rev. King
wrote: "As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus
Christ...so am I compelled to carry the gospel...I must make
two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish
brothers...I stand in the middle of two opposing forces...One
is a force of complacency...The other force is one of
bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to
advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black
nationalist groups...the largest being Elijah Muhammad's
Muslim movement. Nourished by frustration over racial
discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have
lost faith in America... I have tried to stand between these
two forces...for there is the more excellent way of
love... One day the South will know that when these
disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they
were standing up for what is best in the American dream and
for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
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What If Liberals Wrote The Bill Of Rights? By
Joe Mariani It's become increasingly difficult to
hold rational discussions with those who regard the
Constitution of the United States as a "living document,"
subject to change without having to go through the bother of
voting.
Mass Exodus by Jeff Jacoby For the second year in
a row, the Census Bureau reports, the population of
Massachusetts has shrunk. During the 12 months ending July 1,
2005, the Bay State experienced a net loss of more than 8,600
residents, or 0.1 percent of its population. It was one of
only three states to end the year with fewer people than it
had at the start -- New York and Rhode Island were the others
-- and the only one to do so for the second year running.
...This is a state in which a tax cut can be decisively
approved by the voters yet never go into effect. In which
grocers can be prosecuted for pricing milk too low. In which
archaic blue laws decree when shops may and may not open for
business. In which local officials have been known to heatedly
object to opening town meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.
In which a $2 billion Big Dig ends up costing $14 billion. In
which Ted Kennedy keeps getting reelected.
Jefferson's Article of Religious Freedom,
which he commemorated on his tombstone, was passed this day,
January 16, 1786, in the Virginia Assembly. In it, Jefferson
wrote: "Almighty God hath created the mind free, and...all
attempts to influence it by temporal punishments...tend only
to begat habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure
from the plan of the Holy Author of religion, who being Lord
both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by
coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but
to extend it by its influence on reason alone."
In his Second Inaugural Address, 1805,
Jefferson wrote:"In matters of religion I have considered that
its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of
the powers of the General Government."
In 1808, Jefferson wrote to Samuel Miller: "I
consider the government of the United States as prohibited by
the Constitution from intermeddling with religious
institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or
exercises...Every religious society has a right to determine
for itself the times for these exercises, and the objects
proper for them, according to their own particular tenets."
Recommended Books for your 2006 Reading List
The Heritage Guide to the Constitution
In addition to the text of the Constitution itself, the
Guide takes three widely recognized sources to be especially
authoritative in this project. First, The Records of the
Federal Convention of 1787, the definitive collection of
the records and debates of the Constitutional Convention,
written by participants of the Convention, including in
particular the extensive notes taken by James Madison.
Second, The Federalist Papers, the great series of
essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James
Madison in 1787 and 1788 to defend the Constitution during
the debates over the document's ratification. And third,
Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the
United States, a classic and substantive work on the
meaning of the U.S. Constitution, written in 1833 by one of
its best scholars and one of the greatest Justices of the
Supreme Court.
Back Fired
by William J. Federer
A nation born
for religious tolerance no longer tolerates religion...
Where did the idea of "tolerance" originate? It did
not originate in Saudi Arabia, where it is still the death
penalty if someone converts from Islam to another faith; nor
did it originate in the former atheistic Soviet Union, where
thousands were persecuted for their faith; nor in Communist
China, where illegal house church leaders and Falun Gong
members are still arrested; nor did it originate with
Robespierre's Reign of Terror, where thousands accused of
not supporting the atheistic French Revolution lost their
heads via the guillotine. No – "tolerance", as we know it,
is an American Judeo-Christian contribution to the world. In
William J. Federer's new book,
Back Fired, you'll
learn how America went from Pilgrims seeking freedom to
express their Christian beliefs to discrimination against
those very beliefs in the name of tolerance
One
Nation Under God. America's Christian Heritage.
(Online Book) American school children and college
students today are being subjected to what we call "The
Liberal History Lesson," which goes something like this.
America, say liberals, was a product of the Enlightenment,
which was a rejection of Christianity. America, say
liberals, was founded primarily by Deists, not by
Christians. The Constitution, say liberals, and specifically
the First Amendment to the Constitution, erects a so-called
"wall of separation between church and state" that cannot
and must not be transgressed in anyway. Moreover, say
liberals, the government cannot in any way support or favor
religious faith. This philosophy, this misreading of
American history, this mistaken interpretation of our
Constitution, has led to a relentless assault on America's
religious institutions and traditions by our educational
system, the courts and throughout our popular culture. This
little book,
One Nation Under God, corrects the
"Liberal History Lesson," and provides a powerful refutation
to court rulings banning prayer from the schools,
prohibiting the Ten Commandments from being posted in
government buildings, and outlawing nativity scenes and
other religious displays from public places.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
Thomas E. Woods - The PC Crowd Has Rewritten U.S.
History, But This History Book Is Different: It's True One
of the first things Stalin, Hitler, Mao and other
totalitarians did was rewrite the histories of their
nations, remaking the past to foster their control of the
present. The American Left has done the same thing in our
country: most American history books - both for students and
adults -- are riddled with PC nonsense that makes the
Founding Fathers over into racist slaveholders, the settlers
of the West into genocidal land-stealers, and the welfare
state into the harbinger of the ultimate triumph of
liberalism. But now at last conservatives and patriotic
Americans have an antidote:
The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is a
handy one-volume guide to our nation's glorious past that
has one key advantage over today's dozens of dreary PC
history books: this one tells you what really happened --
not what liberals wish had happened. From the Puritans
through the drafting of the Constitution, the Civil War, the
World Wars, the rise of the "Great Society" all the way up
through the fiasco of the Clinton Administration, this
brightly written book gives you the whole truth and nothing
but the truth about our great nation: history professor
Thomas E. Woods presents the Founding Fathers as the
visionary heroes they were; discusses the real causes of the
Civil War and World War I fairly and objectively; and
examines in depth the ravages of statism, high taxes, and
the war against American initiative.
1776
by esteemed historian David McCullough covers the
military side of the momentous year of 1776 with
characteristic insight and a gripping narrative, adding new
scholarship and a fresh perspective to the beginning of the
American Revolution. "People who think that they don't owe
anything to anybody should read David McCullough's
outstanding new book '1776,'
to see what hell other people went through to create the
freedom that we enjoy and abuse today." Thomas Sowell
