Saturday, May 31, 2014

American Minute with Bill Federer 'Government Corrupted by Vice' - Samuel Langdon, Harvard President


American Minute with Bill Federer
'Government Corrupted by Vice' - Samuel Langdon, Harvard President

Just three weeks after the Second Continental Congress convened, and six weeks after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Harvard President Samuel Langdon addressed the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, MAY 31, 1775.



Samuel Langdon's address was titled "Government Corrupted By Vice":

"They...attempted, by a sudden march of a body of troops in the night, to seize and destroy one of our magazines, formed by the people merely for their own security...

The fire began first on the side of the king's troops...

But for what? Because they have made a noble stand for their natural and constitutional rights, in opposition to the machinations of wicked men...aiming to enslave and ruin the whole nation..."



Samuel Langdon continued:

"We must keep our eyes fixed on the supreme government of the ETERNAL KING, as directing all events, setting up or pulling down the kings of the earth at His pleasure...

That for the sins of a people God may suffer the best government to be corrupted, or entirely dissolved; and that nothing but a general reformation can give ground to hope that the public happiness will be restored..."



Harvard President Langdon spoke further:

"The kingdom of Israel was brought to destruction, because its iniquities were full...because there remained no hope of reformation...

Their government degenerated in proportion as their vices increased, till few faithful men were left in any public offices...

At length, when they were delivered up for seventy years into the hands of the king of Babylon, scarcely any remains of their original excellent civil polity appeared among them..."

Langdon added:

"When a government is in its prime...virtue prevails--every thing is managed with justice, prudence, and frugality...



But vice will increase with the riches and glory of an empire; and this gradually tends to corrupt the constitution, and in time bring on its dissolution.

This may be considered not only as the natural effect of vice, but a righteous judgment of heaven, especially upon a nation which has been favored with the blessing of religion and liberty, and is guilty of undervaluing them; and eagerly going into the gratification of every lust..."



He went on:

"They were a sinful nation...who had forsaken the Lord; and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger...

Their princes were rebellious against God...seizing the property of the subjects...and robbing the public treasury.

Every one loved gifts...they were influenced in every thing by bribery...they even justified and encouraged the murder of innocent persons to support their lawless power...

And God, in righteous judgment, left them to run into all this excess of vice to their own destruction, because they had forsaken Him...



The public greatly suffered, and the people groaned, and wished for better rulers and better management.

But in vain they hoped for a change...when the spirit of religion was gone, and the infection of vice was become universal.

The whole body being so corrupted, there could be no rational prospect of any great reformation in the state, but rather of its ruin..."



Rev. Langdon continued his address to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress:

"Yet if a general reformation of religion and morals had taken place, and they had turned to God from all their sins --

if they had again recovered the true spirit of their religion, God, by the gracious interpositions of His providence, would soon have found out methods to restore the former virtue of the state, and again have given them men of wisdom and integrity...



We have rebelled against God. We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it. We have neglected...the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy commands and institutions...

Their hearts are far from Him. By many, the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism..."




Get the book, Three Secular Reasons Why America Should Be Under God

Rev. Samuel Langdon concluded:

"Let us repent and implore the divine mercy. Let us amend our ways and our doings, reform everything that has been provoking the Most High and thus endeavor to obtain the gracious interpositions of Providence for our deliverance...

May the Lord hear us in this day of trouble...We will rejoice in His salvation, and in the name of our God, we will set up our banners!...



Wherefore is all this evil upon us? Is it not because we have forsaken the Lord? Can we say we are innocent of crimes against God? No, surely it becomes us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand, that He may exalt us in due time...

If God be for us, who can be against us? The enemy has reproached us for calling on His name and professing our trust in Him. They have made a mock of our solemn fasts and every appearance of serious Christianity in the land...



May our land be purged from all its sins! Then the Lord will be our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble, and we will have no reason to be afraid, though thousands of enemies set themselves against us round about."

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Thursday, May 29, 2014

Parental Rights- Did the Whole World Just Go Crazy? Call Today!

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May 28, 2014
Did the Whole World Just Go Crazy? Call Today!
Every once in a while, so many senseless things happen all at once that you have to ask yourself if maybe the whole world suddenly “went nuts” and simply forgot to tell you about it. Last Friday was one of those days.

In New York, a fuming mom went to the news after her slim nine-year-old brought home a “Fitnessgram” from school warning that the girl was “overweight” based on her BMI, or body mass index. The girl is 4’1” and weighs 66 pounds.

Child called overweight
Twitter photo of the student classified as "overweight" by New York school district
In Connecticut, a couple filed suit against their local school system and four staff members for “indoctrinating their three daughters into a religious cult.

In Colorado, a second-grade boy drew a handgun during an assignment to sketch what he saw in the clouds. That is “drew” with a pencil, not “drew” from a holster. The student was punished for his sketch.

In Pennsylvania, a math teacher was charged with having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student. Yes, another one.

And it’s not just in our country. A bill being considered in the United Kingdom would send parents to jail for up to ten years for harming their child’s “physical, intellectual, emotional, social, or behavioral development.” Some fear parents could face jail time just for hurting their child’s feelings. You know, hampering their emotional development.

As these stories crossed my desk one after another on Friday, I thought two things. First, did the whole world just go crazy? All of these in a single day? Really??

Second, we truly and desperately need the Parental Rights Amendment (PRA), and we need it soon!

Adding to the U.S. Constitution the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children will strengthen the role of parents in every situation where that role is currently eroding. We can’t say definitively that the PRA would reverse any one of these events (except to keep such laws as the UK is considering from coming here). But these stories show the insanity that takes root in our institutions once parents are no longer allowed.

Parents generally bring common sense and wisdom to local education decision-making. Most importantly, they provide accountability – but only if they are not powerless themselves.

The whole world hasn’t gone crazy yet. A large majority still support the traditional right of parents to make decisions for their children. But the time to preserve these rights is growing short.

Action Item
Please call today and urge your congressman to cosponsor HJRes. 50, the Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We are still 24 cosponsors away from our goal of 100 to move the PRA into a committee hearing this summer!

First, you can check to see if your congressman is already a cosponsor by clicking on your state at ParentalRights.org/states. Then you will also find there his or her DC office number. Or you can call them through the Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121.

In your own words, urge them to cosponsor HJRes. 50 before their next recess this weekend. They can sign on by contacting Martha Van Lieshout in Mark Meadows’ office.

If you don’t know what else to say, you might point out to them that every day we hear of schools banning parents, of teachers abusing students, of doctors over-riding parents’ wishes. “Zero-tolerance” has become “zero sense,” while states are taking children away from their parents over conflicting medical diagnoses from two different hospitals. When is enough enough? We need to protect the rights of parents to protect their children from government overreach while enough of us still remember what that means.

Please take a moment right now to call your congressman, and then to forward this email to your family and friends. Then check back at 4pra.us/house to see the list of cosponsors grow.

Only by all of us taking action together can we halt the insanity before it becomes the new normal.

Sincerely,

Michael Ramey
Director of Communications & Research

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P.O. Box 1090 Purcellville, VA 20134 * (540)-751-1200 * info@parentalrights.org

Saturday, May 24, 2014

American Minute with Bill Federer 'America...appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.' - Ralph Waldo Emerson

American Minute with Bill Federer
'America...appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.'
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poet Henry David Thoreau wrote in Civil Disobedience, 1849:

"That government is best which governs least."



A contemporary poet was Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote similarly:

"The less government we have, the better."



Ralph Waldo Emerson continued:

"The fewer laws...the less confided power.

The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual."



Ralph Waldo Emerson was born MAY 25, 1803.

He was friends with the famous writers Nathaniel Hawthorne

and

Louisa May Alcott.




Ralph Waldo Emerson composed some of the best loved poems in American literature, including The Concord Hymn, of which a stanza is inscribed on the base of Daniel Chester French's Minute Man Statue:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world." 



Get the book, Change to Chains-the 6,000 year quest for global control




Ralph Waldo Emerson commented on John Quincy Adams:

"No man could read the Bible with such powerful effect, even with the cracked and winded voice of old age."



In 1848, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Paris between the February Revolution and the bloody June Days.

When he saw that mobs had cut down trees near the Champ de Mars to form barricades across downtown city streets, he wrote in his journal:

"At the end of the year we shall...see if the Revolution was worth the trees."



When abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in 1838 and his printing press destroyed, Emerson said:

"It is but the other day that the brave Lovejoy gave his breast to the bullets of a mob, for the rights of free speech and opinion."



Emerson stated:

"I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom."

Abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner took Emerson to the White House to meet Abraham Lincoln.



Having voted for the Republican President Lincoln, Emerson stated of the Democrat South in a lecture at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.:

"The South calls slavery an institution... I call it destitution... Emancipation is the demand of civilization."



In 1865, Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked at a memorial service for Abraham Lincoln:

"I doubt if any death has caused so much pain as this has caused."



On September 12, 2001, the day after fundamentalist Muslims committed terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congressman J.C. Watts, Jr., quoted Emerson:

"Politics has taken the day off.

Today Congress remembers and recognizes the afflicted and the sorrowing and those who come to the aid of their fellow man.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1842, captured what we are thinking as a nation today:

'Sorrow makes us all children again,
destroys all differences of intellect.
The wisest knows nothing.'"

Get the book, America's God and Counry Encyclopedia of Quotations


In May-Day and Other Pieces (1867), Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: 

Boston Hymn, st. 2-
"God said, I am tired of kings,
I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor."

Voluntaries III-
"So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can." 



Ode, st. 5 -
"United States! the ages plead, -
Present and Past in under-song, -
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue."

Fragment-
"Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill."



In The Conduct of Life (1860), Emerson wrote:

Fate-"Men are what their mothers made them."



Regarding civilization, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

"The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out."



In Social Aims, Emerson wrote:

"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."



In The American Scholar (1837), Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

"In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?"



Ralph Waldo Emerson stated:

"All I have seen has taught me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen."



Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

"America is another name for opportunity.

Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race."
 Search AMERICAN MINUTE archives
  
Watch past FAITH IN HISTORY episodes for FREE

News from AmericanMinute.com
Invite Bill Federer to speak - email wjfederer@gmail.com

Visit the American Minute archive
 

Read the Daily Reading at:
 http://www.biblegateway.com/reading-plans/old-new-testament/today?version=NKJV

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