Part 2 of 2 from Issue #49
By Dinah Lundell
Leaders in this Greatest Country should become very quickly familiar with the 27 principles of liberty enshrined in the document. As politicians have come and gone, what stands out is that We The People have allowed this Constitutional Republic to tremble on a precipice of gigantic ruin! Only a moral and religious people can pull it back from the edge. What can you do?
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. But we are not good enough! We lack what is needed – integrity, sterling character, knowledge of history, knowledge of the communist threat, knowledge of the history of the Federal Reserve Act, knowledge of the history of education. As a people we are ignorant! Not at all like our Founding Fathers. They also understood human nature!
12. The United States of America shall be a Republic. Not a democracy. Democracies have a natural tendency to become mobocracies, and then on to tyranny and war.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their leaders.
14. Life and liberty are only secure so long as the right of property ownership is secure. A man’s labor and the work of his hands are his property. All property is an extension of a person’s life, energy, and ingenuity.
15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulation. Free to try, free to buy, free to sell, free to fail. Read the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. By the 1920’s Adam Smith was replaced by Karl Marx! The socialists/communists were after the USA very quickly! Haven’t we learned?
16. The government should be separated into three branches. Securing a balance of power. Read Polybius, the greatest of the Greek historians.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent abuse of power. Each of the departments was to be separate in its functions, but subject to the checks of the other two departments. Washington felt that the separation of powers with the accompanying checks and balances was the genius of the American system.
18. The Unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the Principles of Government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only Limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained by the people. (10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the US government nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved the the states respectively or to the people.)
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but Constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A Free people should be governed by Law and not by the whims of men.
23. A Free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education. Clear back in 1647 the legislature of Massachusetts passed a law requiring every community of 50 families or householders to set up a free public grammar school to teach the fundamentals in reading, writing, math, history, geography & Bible study.
24. A Free people will not survive unless they stay strong in moral principles.
A prosperous nation always attracts the greedy aspirations of predatory nations.
25. Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.
26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it, would make our country one the happiest upon earth.“ Debt is to be avoided like a plague.
Taken from Dr. Cleon Skousen’s The 5000 Year Leap
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