The American Trinity

September 14, 2011 Leave a comment

Image-Arizona - SQ

Image via Wikipedia

On FamilyTalk with Ryan and James Dobson I got to hear Dennis Prager addressing a University of Denver crowd explaining the American Trinity: e pluribus unum, liberty, and in God we trust. Without all three of these principles, American society would cease to be American society. I’ll attempt to give a short summary here.
E pluribus unum: out of many one. The American ideal is that we can welcome people from a wide variety of backgrounds who want to adopt our founding principles and way of life. Here in America, people groups are assimilated faster than in any other country. Here in America although we have a wide variety of cultural backgrounds we can find unity in adopting and adhering to a common value system and a common set of laws. The left would prefer that we see and relate to the culture as a large mass of distinct, conflicted cultural groups. However, this is not the American ideal for e pluribus unum.
Liberty: we run into a problem with liberty and equality. Equality is a supposedly primary value for the left. Equality means everyone gets treated the same. Not that we all have the same opportunity. Equality in the paradigm of the left means that everyone must be treated the same and if they’re not that is unfair. This excludes any opportunity for people to use hard work and initiative to change their level of prosperity and influence.
In God we trust: it is naïve and a product of several decades of deconstructionist teaching that many have come to believe that America was founded as a secular nation. The fact is that our foundation was religious and on a Christian foundation. For more information on that you might want to read Original Intent by David Barton. For more on the concept of deconstructionism please see my post on the Five Historical Traps of the Left.
There is a culture war going on between the left and right in America. The left wants to divide America into multi cultural groups and divorce it from its religious heritage and therefore its values base. Most from the right embrace our religious heritage and values. We embrace the truth that all men are created equal: all men regardless of race, color, creed are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.

If you would like to hear Dennis Prager’s speech please follow this link the the FamilyTalk Broadcast Archive.

Filed under Conservative Thinking Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Avoiding the Historical Traps of the Left

September 5, 2011 3 Comments

First page of Constitution of the United States

Image via Wikipedia

Avoiding the Historical Traps of the Left – summarized from WallBuildersLive!

WallBuilders is one of my favorite organizations for informing, encouraging, and equipping Christian conservatives to take back the land.  I encourage you to check out their half hour show available in some areas on the radio and online.

“David Barton gives a presentation on avoiding the historic traps of the left. Listen as he presents facts about our nation that you were never taught. What is it about our history that the left doesn’t want us to know? Our nation has Christian roots. When we understand that, we will understand where we come from and where we are going.”

Below is my brief summary of the traps. For a detailed and enjoyable explanation of each one, go listen to the archive of the series of six shows starting August 23, 2011.

1. Poststructuralism – to believe that only groups not individuals give meaning to the whole. This trap makes us consider people not as individuals but as members of groups. They consider everyone on the merits of their group membership. This is coupled with the belief that the Bill of Rights protects the rights of the minority from the rights of the majority not the rights of individuals from an overreaching government.

2. Modernism. Modernism is to use a modern context to interpret any events whether fairly recent or in the distant past. For example, Thomas Jefferson attended church in the Capitol building during his presidency. He even ordered the Marine Corps band to play foe the worship services. Some would look at this through a modern lens and say he misunderstood the Constitution, but it is more likely to say that he understood it, but we’ve grown to misunderstand it now.

3. Academic collectivism. This trap happens when a series or set of academics agree amongst themselves and reference each other’s works to back up their assertions. They rarely, never, or selectively go back to historical documents for fact-finding. Instead they simply cite one another’s work to support their theories. This tends to get away from anything based on history and ends up allowing them to support the agenda of their choosing.

4. Minimalism is the practice of focusing on a tiny subset of what was happening at a time in the past as though that is all that was happening. An example would include saying that we separated from England because of taxation without representation. This is one of the reasons but it is one of 27 reasons. Unfortunately that is probably the only reason most schoolchildren could give today.

5. Deconstructionism a steady stream of negative designed to tear down the positive image in the mind of the people. When the historians and press only focus on negative aspects of the founding era and from founding fathers lives, people are not aware of the positive things and the Christian religious nature of many of their beliefs and actions. It changes our attitude toward our country and its founding.

Again, this was simply my brief summary of the traps. For a detailed and enjoyable explanation of each one, go to the archive of the series of six shows starting August 23, 2011 and listen for yourself.

Filed under Conservative Thinking Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Newer posts →