The Constitution Is NOT What We Should Be Trying To ‘Conserve!’

I’m just going to cut to the chase here: If we want to preserve individual liberty, the Constitution is not what we should be trying to save.  Now, I understand that many people will be quick to dismiss me.  After all, I’m just a blogger.  That’s well and fine, except for one thing: I’m not the one who said that — the founders were!  (But then, what would the founders know about preserving liberty, right?)

You see, the Constitution is just a tool.  It is designed to help us preserve liberty by chaining down the government, but it is still just a tool.  And, like any tool, if you do not understand how to use it properly, it will not work as designed.  Well, America has lost the understanding of how to use the Constitution.  However, rather than re-learn that understanding, we just keep pointing to and citing the Constitution.  As if that will somehow magically teach us what we have forgotten!  We might as well point to the nuclear reactor and cite Einstein and expecting that to teach someone how to operate a nuclear submarine.  The result is going to be the same.

You see, the problem is us: individual Americans!  We have forgotten… No!  That’s not true.  We have rejected the key, the absolutely essential ingredient to making the Constitution work: a sincere belief in and reverence for the Creator!  But again, not my words but the founders’ words.

When we become corrupt, the Constitution will no longer serve to shield us from ourselves.

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

–John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798

Corrupt people cannot govern others because they cannot govern themselves.

“Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question”.

–Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

So, how does a people keep from becoming corrupt?  Well, if we are to believe the founders, the only way is through religion and a sincere reverence for the Creator:

In the Founders’ Words: The Connection between God, Liberty and the Founding of America

[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the Sacred Book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and probably if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind.”

…we have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education….We’ve become accustomed of late to putting little books in the hands of children containing fables with moral lessons. We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principle text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man made book.

— Fisher Ames, author of the final wording for the First Amendment

Let us enter on this important business under the idea that we are Christians on whom the eyes of the world are now turned… [L]et us earnestly call and beseech Him, for Christ’s sake, to preside in our councils. . . . We can only depend on the all powerful influence of the Spirit of God, Whose Divine aid and assistance it becomes us as a Christian people most devoutly to implore. Therefore I move that some minister of the Gospel be requested to attend this Congress every morning . . . in order to open the meeting with prayer.

— Elias Boudinot, Served as President of Congress, signed the Peace Treaty of Paris to end the War for Independence, framer of the Bill of Rights, and respondent to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason with The Age of Revelation.

Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolaters [Atheists and pagans] should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

–Patrick Henry

I have cited only three of the long list of such quotes from our founders.  I beg you — even if you do not believe — read the rest, and see what our founders actually had to say about the link between God and liberty.

That is what we should be trying to preserve: a sincere belief and reverence for the Creator in as many Americans as possible.

[NOTE: I no longer think of my voice as anything special.  There was a time when I believed I had something important to say, but not so much these days.  I write now because I feel driven to do so.  Something inside me will not let me rest until I post the pages you just read.  I’d just as soon not bother anymore.  It all seems like no one is listening and I do more harm than good.  So I have come to trust that whatever it is driving me has all this under control.  Personally, I believe it is God, but others may not.  All I ask is that, if anything I write helps you, or you think it might help others in any way, please, share this page.  Re-blog it, share it on FB or send the link to your friends.  So long as you feel it will do more good than harm, then please, use this page however you wish.  Thank you.]