SECULAR SUCCESS:
Legacy of Jonesboro & Columbine
— By William J. Federer
Success has
finally been achieved in secularizing our students. The National Education Administration,
ACLU, liberal courts and mis-guided educators, aided
by the "progressive" media, have worked hard the last several decades
to eradicate from the class room all acknowledgments of a Supreme Being and a
person's accountability to Him.
They have labored tirelessly to remove
the Ten Commandments with their restraining influence. They prohibit prayer, obstruct Bible
studies, forbid graduation benedictions and erase religious references from
history. They intimidate students
from wearing religious T-shirts, confiscate Christmas & Easter cards and
silence singing carols about Jesus' birth.
They have even transformed the
Thanksgiving holiday from the Pilgrims thanking God to a native Indian
festival. These crusaders of an
amoral education believe they should be congratulated. Should they?
The fruit of their
labors appalled America on March 24, 1998.
The Nation was rudely awakened by the report of two boys in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, ages 13 and 11, who set off a fire alarm at Westside Middle School,
and then, from a hiding spot in some nearby trees, shot students and teachers
who filed outside. Four classmates
and one teacher died, with 11 others wounded. Later, May 21, 1998, in Springfield,
Oregon, a fifteen year old boy opened fire in a cafeteria, killing one student
and wounding 19 others. [1] Two students were killed in Pearl, Mississippi; three were killed in
Paducah, Kentucky, and April 20, 1999, two seniors wearing trench coats killed
fourteen students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colorado.
Thus, the noble effort to create an
educational system void of archaic values, such as "Thou shalt not murder," may have inadvertently created a
Frankenstein generation with no conscience. After working so hard to strip away
moral restraints from our youth, should we be surprised by the atrocities that
they commit as a result?
Our prevailing teaching philosophy has
socially engineered children to justify and rationalize any action. They believe that the only absolute is
that there are no absolutes … that there are no eternal laws and no
eternal God to be accountable to for violating those laws. Some have even been taught that it is
wrong for one society to impose its values on another society, that perhaps a
lower value for human life is permissible in other cultures … such as
China. That we should not impose
our western values on other countries!
Students have been instructed in values
clarification and situation ethics to the point that they actually believe it
and are acting it out. We teach
them in the classroom that if there are too many people in a lifeboat, they
need to decide which one to shove over the side. They get outside the classroom, think
there are too many kids in their neighborhood, and decide to shoot some!
Why are we shocked when children act
out what they have been taught?
What did we expect them to do?
Maybe those who taught that philosophy should be held guilty for the
resulting crimes?
What is more unbelievable than the
atrocity itself is the "spin" given by the media, namely, that guns
are responsible for this tragedy and should be taken away. With that logic, if kids stab each other
should we outlaw all knives? Are
mothers going to be forced to register their kitchen utensils? Are they going to take away scissors
next? What if kids murder with
sticks and stones … should they be confiscated? Thousands are killed when teenagers turn
automobiles into weapons by driving intoxicated. Should we outlaw cars?
The answer is not restraining inanimate
weapons, but putting internal restraints back into our youth and our populous. We must once again focus our attention
on children controlling themselves, rather than government controlling weapons.
Teaching influences behavior. If teachers didn't believe this, they
wouldn't be teaching. Even liberal
educators believe that by teaching diversity, students will learn to accept
every "alternative" lifestyle.
If educators sincerely want kids not to murder, they should teach
it. Maybe they should put a sign on
the wall of every public school that says "DO NOT MURDER." And while they're at it, put up signs
saying "Do Not Rape," "Do Not Steal," "Do Not
Lie," "Do Not Kill Someone For Their Tennis
Shoes" ("You shalt not covet thy neighbor's
goods.")
Slogans such as JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS or
KNOW WHEN TO SAY WHEN are an admission that internal
restraints are needed. Maybe the
Ten Commandments on the wall wasn't such a bad idea
after all?
Television influences behavior. When a horrendous crime is committed,
Hollywood denies it influenced that behavior, but yet advertisers are willing
to spend millions of dollars on sixty-second commercials because they've proven
television does influence behavior!
An entire generation has swallowed
programming which encourages youth to cast off inhibitions and give in to the
passions of lust, anger, violence, and perversion. Why should we be shocked when children
act out what they've seen. Monkey see, monkey do! If Hollywood was sincere about not
wanting kids to murder, they should produce shows where moral virtues and
self-restraint are exemplified!
Our society depends on our ability to
control ourselves, as James Madison expressed in Federalist Paper #39, we
rest all our political experiments
on the capacity of mankind for self-government. [2]
President John Adams, October 11, 1798,
stated:
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. [3]
Our country was designed to govern
people who could govern themselves.
The more internal restraints a populous has, the less external
restraints are needed. But the less
internal restraints there are, the more external
restraints are needed. The Ten
Commandments have been taken off the school walls … now metal detectors
must be put at the school doors! Many a parent has told their teenager,
"if you control yourself, you will have lots of freedoms; but if you don't
control yourself, someone else will control you by putting you behind
bars!"
The British statesman Edmund Burke
stated in 1791:
What is liberty … without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible
evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in
exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own
appetites … Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will
and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more
there must be without. It is
ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds
cannot be free. Their passions
forge their fetters. [4]
On May 28, 1849, Speaker of the House
Robert Winthrop stated:
Societies of men
must be governed in some way or other.
The less they have of stringent State Government, the more they must
have of individual self-government.
The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must
rely on private moral restraint.
Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power
within them, or a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the
strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet. It may do for other countries, and other
governments to talk about the State supporting religion. Here, under our own free institutions,
it is Religion which must support the State. [5]
We have a choice before us. More internal laws or
more external laws. Either we will have a revival of morality, virtue and
character … or the resulting crimes will demand a stronger government to restore
order, on the ruins of personal liberty.
Noah Webster, in commenting on the
French Revolution, wrote in The American Minerva, September 21, 1796:
The reason why severe laws are necessary in France, is, that the people
have not been educated republicans – they do not know how to govern
themselves [and so] must be governed by severe
laws and penalties, and a most rigid administration. [6]
In 1833, Noah Webster wrote in the
Preface on one of his works:
There are two powers only, sufficient to control men and secure
the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the
combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet. [7]
In his Farewell Address, September 19,
1796, George Washington warned:
This leads at length to a more formal and permanent
despotism. The disorders and
miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and
repose in the absolute power of an Individual … [who] turns this disposition to the
purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. [8]
May America be saved from "Secular
Success!"
_____________________
[1] St. Louis Post Dispatch, (900 N. Tucker Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63101-1099, 3/25/98;
5/22/98. [Back]
[2] James Madison,
Federalist Paper #39. Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay & James Madison, The
Federalist, on the New Constitution written in 1788 (Philadelphia:
Benjamin Warner, 1818), pp. 203-204, James Madison, No. 39. [Back]
[3] John Adams, October
11, 1798, in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the 3rd Division
of the Militia of Massachusetts. Charles Francis Adams (son of John
Quincy Adams and grandson of John Adams), ed., The Works of John Adams -
Second President of the United States:
with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustration (Boston:
Little, Brown, & Co., 1854), Vol. IX, pp. 228-229. [Back]
[4] Edmund Burke, 1791, in
"A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly." Theodore Roosevelt, "5th Annual
Message to Congress," December 5, 1905. A Compilation of the Messages
& Papers of the Presidents, 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National
Literature, Inc., prepared under the direction of the Joint Committee on
Printing, of the House & Senate, pursuant to an Act of the 52nd Congress of
the United States, 1893, 1923), Vol. XIV, p. 6986. Keith Fournier, In Defense of
Liberty (Virginia Beach, VA: Law & Justice, 1993), Vol. 2, No. 2,
p. 5. [Back]
[5] Robert Charles
Winthrop, May 28, 1849, in an address, entitled "Either by the Bible or
the Bayonet," Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Bible Society,
Boston. Addresses and
Speeches on Various Occasions (Boston: Little, Brown & Company,
1852), p. 172. Benjamin Franklin Morris, The
Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the U.S.
(Philadelphia, PA: L. Johnson & Co., 1863; George W. Childs, 1864), pp.
227-228. [Back]
[6] Noah Webster,
September 21, 1796, in an article entitled "Political Fanaticism, No.
III," published in The American Minerva. Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, "The Providential Perspective"
(Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, P.O. Box 6759,
Charlottesville, Va. 22906, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 1. [Back]
[7] Webster, Noah. 1833.
Noah Webster, Common Version of the Holy Bible, containing the
Old and New Testament, with Amendments of the Language (1833), preface. Verna M. Hall, The
Christian History of the American Revolution—Consider and Ponder
(San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976), p. 21.
Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The
Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart'N Home, Inc., 1991), 2.9. Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, "The Providential Perspective"
(Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, P.O. Box 6759,
Charlottesville, Va. 22906, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 1. [Back]
[8] George Washington,
September 19, 1796, Farewell Address, published in American Daily
Advertiser, Philadelphia, September,
1796. James D. Richardson (U.S.
Representative from Tennessee), ed., A Compilation of the Messages and
Papers of the Presidents 1789-1897, 10 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, by Authority of Congress, 1897, 1899; Washington,
D.C.: Bureau of National Literature & Art, 1789-1902, 11 vols., 1907,
1910), Vol. 1, p. 213-224. [Back]
William J. Federer
is a nationally known author on America's heritage. He resides in the St. Louis area with
his wife and four children.
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