[I wonder who might be behind this, who might want to keep our children from having any deep seated values regarding any past[AND FUTURE] struggle for our guaranteed freedoms?? --MS] From: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_keyes/20000527_xcake_why_declar.shtml Why the Declaration of Independence matters Alan Keyes A furor has erupted in New Jersey regarding what I would have thought was a simple and forthright suggestion - that school children begin their day with a brief reading of the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. I confess that I still find it hard to understand how any American can suggest that there is something wrong with teaching and impressing upon our children the powerful importance of the central tenets of the Declaration of Independence. Apparently, however, there is need to recall again the blessings that this great text represents, and the implications of any attempt to remove it from the consciousness of the American people. If anything can be certain in history, it is that without the civic creed summarized in the opening of the Declaration, the United States would not exist as a free country. The Declaration gives the reasons for which the War of Independence was fought and expresses the motivation that enabled that war to be won. Since that day, the Declaration has been an indispensable foundation for a series of important struggles for justice in America, including of course the abolition of slavery. Without the Declaration, I believe, these struggles would not have been won. How can a single document be so decisive in the practical affairs of men? This really shouldn't surprise us. While crude wielders of power may think otherwise, ideas are far from impotent in the struggles of life. Ideas, and the words that express them, are actually the dominant force in shaping the destiny of human beings. How were uncountable masses of people held enthralled by handfuls of people through most of history and in most places in the world? It was not, typically, by the use of overwhelming force. Small groups of people never have enough force to overwhelm the masses. Masters succeed only when they enchain the minds and spirits of those subject to them. Around the Jefferson Memorial is inscribed a famous quote of Jefferson's: "I swear eternal enmity against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This recognizes the crucial insight into the real source of enslavement, that slavery is not a matter of physical shackles, but of spiritual, mental and psychological chains. Only if this insight is kept fresh can we prevent human beings from being enslaved once more, because just as the power of the enslaver is not chiefly physical, so must the defense of liberty be much more than physical. The chains of slavery are decisively broken wherever individual human beings realize that they are free by right, regardless of their physical condition. It is hard to enslave a man if he believes -- understands -- that he is not. Would-be masters invoke many implicit arguments against those they would subdue - differences of status, background, wealth, education, race and strength. But none of this will convince a man that he is a slave once he understands that he possesses a dignity that does not depend on the power and opinion of other human beings, but on the will of the Author of nature, whose power is beyond all human power. This insight into the source of human dignity provides the only truly effective motivation for the downtrodden to fight for their liberty. A people aware of the justice of its claims to liberty will find the courage do what is necessary no matter what the threat. This is not merely a pious imagination -- it is a statement of the actual course of American history. Every significant struggle for justice in America, from the very beginning, including the fights against slavery, for civil rights, for women's rights and for workers' rights, was led by people who pointed to the Declaration of Independence and challenged the nation to do what was right by those principles. The Declaration has been the source of the courage that was required to fight those battles. Given the Declaration's history of inspiring high-minded and effective struggles against injustice, we should look with pointed suspicion on the forces in our society today who are maneuvering to destroy our understanding of, and our allegiance to, the principles of the Declaration. Sometimes they argue that the hypocrisy of the Declaration's assertion of human equality is shown by the fact that its principal author, Jefferson, was a slave owner. In fact, however, even this shows the power that the truth can have if we are willing to speak it. Jefferson, and with him the leading lights of the Founding generation, had the decency to acknowledge what few in the course of human history before that era had ever acknowledged -- that slavery was wrong. Speaking this truth was the first step toward changing the life of America -- just as acknowledging the principles of justice is always the first step toward doing justice. This is the glory of the Founders -- despite having the power and opportunity to replicate in America the despotisms of Europe, they instead embraced and proclaimed a new understanding of politics. That understanding acknowledged in human nature itself, formed by God in a decision beyond the reach of human power or rejection, the basis for a universal claim to dignity and rights. This understanding was indeed inconsistent with the fact of slavery -- and over time, the true understanding of politics triumphed over the stubborn fact of slavery. The struggle against slavery was motivated by a profound sense of the contradiction between slavery and the basic American principle of human equality. Without the wise compromises of the Founders, too easily dismissed as mere hypocrisy, the decades that followed would not have led to an enormous crisis of conscience. But it was precisely this crisis that eventually made the nation face the injustice of slavery in order to uproot it from the national soul. Nothing in the course of human history has proved to be harder than actually establishing and preserving a society based on a practical acknowledgment of our equal human nature under God. This nation represents one of the great fruits of that struggle -- but it will not survive if we don't remember the moral principle that has been our strength. Are we still raising young people who will be emboldened by the truth of human equality to fight for their liberty? Will they resist the temptation to give in to the cowardly behavior that allows tyrants to reign? Will they have the courage to resist tyranny -- particularly when it offers the kind of comfortable servitude that our era of material abundance makes possible? If we intend to keep alive in our children the knowledge of the true source of their dignity, we must be sure that their minds are formed in the light of the Declaration. Recitation of the key passages of the Declaration is a simple -- and, one might even say self-evident -- step toward this goal. The suppression of this practice is an equally self-evident attempt to prevent the formation of young citizens capable of principled action in the preservation of our liberty. The result will be not simply a slide toward servility, but a corresponding slide toward brutality -- for, as we become a people fit to be slaves, there will arise a new class of Americans eager to assume the role of master. Here, too, the Declaration provides the crucial preventative medicine. Contained in the Declaration are the seeds of an ethic of responsibility, for its acknowledgement of our obligations to God leads to the acknowledgement of our obligation to one another. The doctrine of dignified human equality under God provides the basis, therefore, for shaping character in our civic culture in such a way that we eschew being serfs and subjects but at the same time refuse to be bullies and despots. A generation raised on the Declaration will insist we owe to our fellow citizen the same respect that we demand from him. The Declaration is not merely a powerful tool for spiritual and moral motivation -- it is probably an irreplaceable one. Those who propose removing what has been the Gibraltar of American resistance to tyranny don't even bother to propose a viable substitute. I think it would be the greatest folly in the world to wander away from such a blessing on the advice of those who are capable of seeing nothing but racism or sexism in a document that has done more than any other merely human creation to end both. The opponents of the use of the Declaration in our schools are consistently people who are quite facile in expressing their resentments but offer the blueprint of no other edifice of human spirit, intellect and moral understanding which they would put in the place of the great principle they urge us to abandon. The schoolchild who reads the Declaration, thinks about it and is moved to give it his assent in however simple a form, is a symbol of the American citizen of any age or intelligence. The full life of citizenship in America is a life lived in reflection on the truths of our founding, continued assent to those truths and continued resolve to act in light of them. This is the challenge of liberty. Rather than following the advice of the dim bulbs who would snuff out such reflection near the beginning of life, we should strive to renew the practice of ordering the education of our young so that it will strike a spark of rational citizenship in each of them, every day. The torch of liberty is, in fact, composed of these sparks. It will burn brightly only if we continue to take care to cultivate its humble beginnings in the awakening consciences of our young. Banish the Declaration from our schools? I don't get it. I can understand why the slave masters didn't want to permit their property to read. But I can't understand why a free people would keep from its children the very truths that make -- and can alone keep -- them free. ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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