Lest We Forget, Tell the Children

We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom

by: bonnie alba | published: 07 01, 2008

This year we celebrate the 232nd anniversary of the painful birth of our nation. Many Americans will gather for barbecues and fireworks yet they never learned why we celebrate this day or its' importance to our present and future as a nation.

Penned by Thomas Jefferson, the significance of the Declaration of Independence is the inclusion of God:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitles them...We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. ...And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

After the Continental Congress approved the Declaration on July 2, 1776, John Adams proclaimed "...(this) will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America to be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival, commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty from one end of the Continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore."

Note that 56 convention delegates signed the Declaration of Independence who pledged "...to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

By the end of the Revolutionary War, many of these men had paid a tremendous price for those unique and precious words and for our freedom: "5 were arrested by the British as traitors, 12 had their homes looted and burned by the enemy, 17 lost their fortunes, 2 lost sons in the Continental Army and 9 fought and died during the Revolutionary War.

In our post-modern era, this basic and special document is routinely being ignored in our children's history education. History revisionists and secularists have toiled over the past decades to eliminate remembrance of God and His Providence in our nation's establishment.

In 1790, John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, stated to a New York grand jury, "Providence (God) has been pleased to bless the people of this country with more perfect opportunities of choosing, and more effectual means of establishing their own government than any other nation has hitherto enjoyed.

At that time, we can be sure he did not mean "Lady Luck" or "fate," but the Creator God clearly stated in the Declaration of the Independence and in all thirteen colonies' constitutions.

In 1980, President Reagan said: "The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him for the healing of America...our country is in need of and ready for a spiritual renewal....

In his 1989 farewell address to the nation, President Ronald Reagan advised parents of school-age children, "We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection. So we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important. ... If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

Reagan knew that, generation by generation, American history is increasingly watered down. Our children are being taught that our nation was totally secular from the beginning. In the words of Alabama Judge Roy Moore, future citizens will not know how and why they "must preserve and protect its laws and ideals.

Ask your children if they ever study and recite the Declaration of Independence in their history classes. Also, maybe you did not study or recite the "Declaration of Independence" during your school years. If so, then the schools did not do their job.

Shouldn't we teach our children the historic truths about God's involvement in our founding?

Reagan's warning almost 20 years ago should resound in our minds this Fourth of July. We should remind ourselves and our children why we have this uncommon and fragile freedom to gather together for backyard barbecues and watch fireworks with thanksgiving to God for His blessings of freedom and liberty.

Remember: Tell the children. Lest we forget.

May God Bless America!

2008 Bonnie Alba

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