Tag American history | Hannah Ihms

August 2, 2012 by Hannah

Regressive Progressivism

Freedom can be inconvenient. It can demand things of us we’d rather not give, and demand us to think when we’d rather coast. But it’s better than the alternative.

Noah Webster defined a slave as:

“1. A person who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no will of his own, but whose person and services are wholly under the control of another…

“2. One who has lost the power of resistance; or one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as a slave to passion, to lust, to ambition…”

If we refuse to think, others will do our thinking for us. If we cede our right to conscience, the battle is over. Without the ability to personally decide and act upon what we believe to be right and true, we will be utterly defenseless. What’s “right,” or “politically correct,” will then be what those who rule us determine it to be. This is the logical result of relativism: alternate realities must reconcile somehow, and force is the simple, direct method.

All this is nothing new. The current administration’s slogan may be “Forward,” but it’s leading us down a path rejected centuries ago. Collectivism? State-induced infanticide? That’s so 5th century. Progressives are regressing.

Of course there’s the argument that new civilizations need new methods. But we Americans already vetted and rejected these long ago.

It’s ironic that President Obama would deliver his “You Didn’t Build That” speech in Virginia, because this is where we already put collectivism on trial. It didn’t go so well. The Jamestown colony nearly starved. As Jamestown Secretary Raphe Hamor wrote in a letter in 1614:

“[F]ormerly, when our people were fedde out of the common store and laboured jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting corne, glad was that man that could slippe from his labour, nay the most honest of them in a generall businesse, would not take so much faithfull and true paines, in a weeke, as now he will doe in a day, neither cared they for the increase, presuming that howsoever their harvest prospered, the generall store must maintain them, by which meanes we reaped not so much corne from the labours of 30 men, as three men have done for themselves…”

If a colonist was assured a share in the reapings, why should he break his back bringing it in? The trouble was, not enough food was brought in. Killing the profit motive killed the profit.

As Mr. Hamor further explained:

“Sir Thomas Dale hath taken a new course, throughout the whole Colony, by which meanes, the generall store… shall not be charged with any thing: and this it is, he hath allotted to every man in the Colony, three English Acres of cleere Corne ground, which every man is to mature and tend, being in the nature of Farmers… and they are not called unto any service or labor belonging to the Colony, more then one moneth in the yeere, which shall neither be in seede time, or in Harvest, for which, doeing no other duty to the Colony, they are yearly to pay into the store two barrells and a halfe of Corne: there to be reserved to keep new men… thereby the lives of many shall not onely be preserved, but also themselves kept in strength and heart, able to performe such businesses, as shall be imposed upon them: and thus shall also the former charge be well saved, and yet more businesse effected.”

When a wise Jamestown governor abolished collectivism and put each colonist in charge of his own life, the colony thrived. Over two hundred years later, the Founders encouraged personal ingenuity, for example by placing Article 1, Section 8 in the Constitution. It gives Congress the power “[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Instead of creating bloated agencies such as the National Endowment of the Arts or the National Science Foundation which redistribute funds bled from the productive private sector, the Founders created an environment where an individual could protect and benefit from his own ideas.

But, of course, that required that an individual himself be protected. “Intention to abort” was first grounds for conviction in Maryland in 1652, and Virginia classified abortion as murder in 1710. The Declaration of Independence affirms each American’s “right to life,” and throughout American history this was increasingly interpreted as encompassing unborn children. By 1965, abortion was illegal in all 50 states. Roe v. Wade turned the clock backward. We regressed from what we already knew.

In May, 1857 the American Medical Association appointed a Committee on Criminal Abortion. It investigated the causes of criminal abortion and ways to reduce them, presenting three major findings about “this general demoralization”:

“The first of these causes is a widespread popular ignorance of the true character of the crime — a belief, even among mothers themselves, that the foetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.

“The second of the agents alluded to is the fact that the profession themselves are frequently supposed careless of foetal life…

“The third reason of the frightful extent of this crime is found in the grave defects of our laws, both common and statute, as regards the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being. These errors, which are sufficient in most instances to prevent conviction, are based, and only based, upon mistaken and exploded medical dogmas. With strange inconsistency, the law fully acknowledges the foetus in utero and its inherent rights, for civil purposes; while personally and as criminally affected, it fails to recognize it, and to its life as yet denies all protection.”

After hearing these findings, the Association adopted resolutions “against such unwarrantable destruction of human life.” This remained the official position of the Association until 1970.

How far we’ve fallen. Redistribution is so widespread it’s become commonplace, and on August 1, 2012, the Health and Human Services’s mandate that all insurance companies cover sterilizations, abortifacients, birth control, and abortion took effect.

George Washington’s words ring true today:

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own… The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission.”

July 24, 2012 by Hannah

The Root of Law

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

When a small band of American colonists took on the world superpower of their day, they didn’t speak from a position of military superiority. They also didn’t cite a Rasmussen poll or make an emotional appeal. They presented the facts: King George III’s actions assaulted God’s laws.

Their actions weren’t based on a moral majority; they were based on a moral authority. This appeal to a higher law is not to be underestimated. The Founders were deeply motivated by a Judeo-Christian worldview which showed that the unchanging God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the definition of all that was good, and that He had revealed absolute truth by embedding it in each person’s soul, and providing a written, unchanging account of His Word. The Founders freely acknowledged the role that Judeo-Christianity played in the framing of this new nation’s laws. As John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” James Wilson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and signer of the Constitution, said, “Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine… Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”

According to Judeo-Christianity, each person has inherent worth because he is created in God’s image. But because man is fallen, he is not perfectible in this life. God is the ultimate authority, and no man is “above the law.” Anyone’s actions can be weighed against the ideal that God provided. The Founders established a system where all laws were compared to the Constitution, and, ultimately, to the absolute law of God. Americans could pursue a “more perfect” union by studying the ideal God provided for their nature and human systems and work to more closely approach the ideal. The Founders’ understanding of this and their first-hand experience with a tyrant allowed them to build a system that affirmed personal freedom and provided a limited government with separated powers. They gave us something they had not inherited from the Crown: a Constitution.

The words of our Declaration and Constitution were not intended to molder behind glass; they were intended to be read and understood by every American citizen. They can stand up to detailed legal scrutiny, but they can also be grasped by someone who wants to understand the Founders’ original intent. Interpreting the Constitution isn’t a privilege reserved for nine men in black robes; it’s something each of us should do. How else can the policeman, soldier, judge, or President’s oath to uphold the Constitution have any meaning? How can any of us obey a law we don’t understand?

The genius of the Founders’ system is evident, even as we see it crumbling through misuse. A person did not have to be a Jew or a Christian to survive and thrive in America, but he did need to respect the principles that governed the nation’s founding: principles such as the equality of all people before the law, the right to own private property, and the requirement for multiple witnesses to testify in criminal proceedings.

Law was not arbitrary, but purposeful. Laws could be found to be good or bad based on how they compared to the highest law of the land, and the Law of God. Even after many of our leaders ceased to be personally guided by Judeo-Christianity, a latent memory of this worldview maintained the original design of our nation.

All that is changing. Clay and iron are being mixed, and the amalgam is brittle. Various worldviews overlap to a point, but some of their core properties are completely incompatible. One must gain the ascendancy. A battle of worldviews is taking place in America, and it’s unclear which will dominate. Six of the major players are Biblical Judeo-Christianity, Secular Humanism (“liberalism”), Marxism-Leninism (“Leftism”), Cosmic Humanism (“New Age”), Postmodernism, and Islam.

All offer very different approaches to ethics, history, law, theology, and other aspects of a worldview. If Judeo-Christianity offers a bounded sandbox for statecraft, Marxism-Leninism stokes animosities between sandcarriers and sandcrafters, Islam demands a pre-fab home, and Postmodernism questions the existence of sand. Since many of the worldviews deny the very existence of God, they lift up man to the throne of absolute judgment. They see truth not as a fixed ideal, but as an evolving mass, which the more ambitious seek to shape. All have different answers to the question “What is the basic nature of man?” which is why they differ so completely on questions such as the ethics of taxation and redistribution, union lobbies, abortion, and homosexuality. Many worldviews do not see the Constitution as a guide to understand ultimate reality or a protective barrier that applies the truth discovered in a triumph over tyranny, but shackles on human development.

Several key battlegrounds between the worldviews are the education, culture, and politics. The trend in these institutions is not for a person to critically evaluate ideas on their merits, but to find the consensus and conform to it. Our educational system could be a location for the free interchange of ideas, but more often it radically transforms a person’s worldview by making full use of authority structures. The process that began inside the classroom can continue outside, if a person does not critically evaluate the messages of worldviews blazing to them through films, celebrities, and the news feed. Finally, as Sharia Law’s codified dhimmitude so eloquently demonstrates, a person does not have to convert to be manipulated and subjugated. A worldview can dominate others by occupying positions of power, even if its adherents are in the minority. Because the laws of our nation reflect our lawmakers, as the elected officials go, so goes the nation.

If we are to reclaim our nation, we must do what our Founders did. We must compare our laws and our leaders to the ultimate standard, draw our own conclusions, and take action. This country is too precious to surrender.