From Grateful Hearts: Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

America had much to be grateful for on October 3, 1863. Her chief executive, Abraham Lincoln, set his hand to formalize that gratitude in a National Day of Thanksgiving. States had celebrated individually, but the nation as a whole had never offered a unified voice of appreciation.
Among early American colonists, unified prayer, fasting and thanksgiving had often been used. The Pilgrims, who had arrived in the New World in 1620, had successfully pled for relief from a 12-week drought that threatened them with winter starvation. In 1631, the Puritans unitedly fasted to speed the arrival of supplies, and the supply ship, the Lyon, arrived the day the last cornmeal was distributed. They fasted, again, fifteen years later, when, within hours, a sudden, mysterious caterpillar infestation began to devour their summer crop. They received an equally immediate, miraculous end to the pestilence, for which they gratefully offered thanks.

The gratitude of prayer saved colonial British America from French invasion. The citizens of Boston gathered in Old South Church on October 16, 1746, with the Reverend Thomas Prince. The arrival of French Duke d'Anville, with 70 ships, 10,000 troops, and orders to destroy the American seacoast from Boston to Georgia was imminent. Reverend Prince called on God, "Deliver us from our enemy! Send Thy tempest, Lord ... Scatter the ships ... Sink their proud frigates beneath the power of Thy winds!" Sunshine immediately gave way to roiling clouds. A sudden, shrieking wind set the church bell ringing "a wild and uneven sound" in the unattended steeple. The fleet was miraculously stopped, two frigates sank and the remainder were scattered, the men aboard developed a mysterious pestilential fever and the Duke died at his own hand for the disgrace of it all.
President Lincoln had set a previous pattern for national gratitude when he closed the doors of the federal government for a day of fasting on September 28, 1861. National requirement, as stated in the Constitution's First Amendment, was to keep government out of religion. Today, we misunderstand; we keep religion out of government, instead. This prevents us, as a union, from calling down the powers of heaven to help us in times of need.
In 1863, as the United States was locked into mortal North/South conflict, Lincoln focused his Thanksgiving Proclamation on the blessings they had received, despite the war.

 

"In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude ... peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict," he said.
He explained that "needful diversions of wealth and of strength ... to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines ... have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore."
The nation was being blessed and President Lincoln, referring to the "blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies, noted the source of their blessings. "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God ... he should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People."
President Lincoln called upon the nation to join in a national day of gratitude on the last Thursday of each November. He counseled them to remember, "all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged." In conclusion he called on the nation to "fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation ... and to restore it ... to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union."
As residents of this marvelous place to live, we owe gratitude to the Divine Hand that has overseen our prosperity and peace. As we gather with our families this Thanksgiving Day, let us offer thanks to God who has made all things possible and plead that He again "heal the wounds of the nation."

Is the World Running Out of People?

Running Out of People

The world is in danger of running out of people. Forget the bogus idea that there is a population explosion and we are going to run out of food. That was never true; it was a convincing piece of progressive hype. The opposite is the real problem—not enough people to grow the food, run society’s services, and produce children to people energetic, bustling nations.

Stand for the Family, a national conference on family issues worldwide, was held in the Salt Lake City area on 15 November, 2013. The thought-provoking conference presented national experts on a large variety of topics dealing with the integrity and well-being of the basic unit of society—the family.

Don Feder, Director of Communications for the World Congress of Families, told the conference that the biggest crisis of the 21^st century is declining fertility worldwide, which has fallen 50% in less than 50 years. This fertility decline has hit every industrialized nation, with developing nations now trending downward, as well.

In order for a population to remain stable, with neither growth nor decline, the fertility rate must be 2.1: every woman in the society, on average, must produce one child to replace herself and one to replace a man, and one woman in 10 must have a third child to compensate for infant deaths and a slightly higher birth rates among males. Mr. Feder’s statistics on Japan, for instance, give an example of what is happening across the world. Japan’s birthrate is 1.39, meaning that the nation, which does not allow immigration, will be reduced in size by one-half in the next 45 years. Japan’s population is rapidly aging and the nation now uses more adult diapers than baby diapers. Thousands of schools close every year, and, as one national expert put it, Japan is quietly and comfortably dying.

Other countries are following suit: Italy, Greece and Spain, the European triumvirate of failed socialist policies, is experiencing population rates below 1.5; Italy’s fertility rate is 1.26. Bulgaria has a 1.2 fertility rate. These are becoming vanishing cultures.

The United States has a birthrate of 1.93 in 2011, the lowest in our history. While this rate is better than European countries, it is still well below replacement levels. When that number is broken down to Caucasian and minority figures, it becomes more worrisome: Caucasian Americans have a birthrate of 1.65, taking them to a few generations away from half its current size.  The birthrate among Hispanic Americans is also plummeting.

Mr. Feder warned that, at some point, the population decline will become population freefall, with drastic consequences. Like a train chugging slowly up a steep hill, once the summit is reached and the train starts down the other side, or in this case, the population issue reaches critical mass, the momentum of decline will rapidly pick up speed and the population drop will produce serious, immediate problems.

This issue is a reversal for those of us who endured the contempt of population explosion fanatics a few decades back. The “We-are-going-to-starve-to-death” crowd taunted those of us who had more than the two children population explosion theorists allowed. We were living in California at the time, the hotbed of this emerging philosophy, and I was hissed on the streets, held up to public ridicule, and threatened with involuntary sterilization by a military doctor after the birth of our fourth child. He told me I was irresponsible and was destroying the world. Now we know it was all a hoax; there is no threat of starvation from too many of us, but rather a threat from too few of us.

In the next few posts we will look at the effect a declining population has on the economy (just a hint: declining population means a declining economy), and then we’ll look at what is causing this worldwide phenomenon.

(Big) Business (as usual) And The Radicals

What is going on with the Republicans? There's grumbling on the national scene, and we see the same things happening in Utah that have created the ire. Val Hale's comments in the October 24 Daily Herald column, 2Sense, are eye-opening. He quotes sages at the Dallas Morning News who describe two factions in the Republican Party: the Business Republicans -- "limited-government" types who "believe government must do core functions right" and who "uphold principle but will compromise for the larger good" -- and Tea Party "radicals." What a surprise! If you don't go with the (big) business (as usual) crowd, you are a radical?

 The Daily Herald column says Utah state party leaders blame the membership woes of the Republican Party on Tea Party "extremists" who alienate business owners. They also blame the party's financial woes on Tea Party radicals who won't contribute funds to the party. A remedy is suggested for both problems: silence the Tea Party; get rid of the caucus system and put one more level of politicians between the people and self-government.
Amazing! Right here in Utah!
Have these people read the US Constitution and the Utah State Constitution, both of which put The People in charge of government? You know, those of us who lead ordinary lives and aren't part of big business, whose names don't regularly appear in the paper or on TV, those for whom the two constitutions were written? Do the Business Republicans think they can govern better than normal citizens, so they want to silence a chunk of ordinary folk by labeling them radicals and extremists? Shades of elitism! They do have a point -- if they turn the volume off and lock the doors, they can throw their own party.
Just an idea, but has anybody among the Business Republicans asked why discontented people are leaving the party? People rarely look for something new when they are content. Could it be that Joe and Jane Utah feel they aren't being listened to? Because a good share of them do feel that way. They say thought-provoking things like "I want the Republicans to follow the Constitution," or "I elected you to bring back limited government and I don't see you doing that." One of their prickly lines is, "Why do the leaders in the state and national Republican party attack their own for trying to defund the hated Obamacare?" Another says, "I'm not happy with the Republican party because it ignores small business owners and no longer represents what I believe in." And, the oft-repeated clincher, "I'm not going to give the party another dime until they start acting like Republicans, instead of like Democrats and the Establishment." People get touchy with their money. They have to really trust you before you get their greenbacks.
If it was the "undereducated voters", or even the distracted, too-busy-to-be-involved crowd fomenting discontent it would be one thing, but it's not. It's the patriotic group, the ones who study the issues, who try to make a difference, the ones who don't sip at the font of the elite. More directly, many of those who wax eloquent on their dissatisfaction previously invested time and effort in the Republican cause -- state officers, Republican state central planning committee members, county and precinct leaders, and state delegates by the droves. If your own believe the party has deserted the people, you have serious dissatisfaction afoot.
As for the Tea Party, the "extremists" rarely designate it as their new political home. They have not embraced the Tea Party as much as they have abandoned the Republican Party. They seem mainly to be normal Utahns who want to feel welcome and safe back in the Republican Party but can't find a foothold of belief to welcome them. Maybe they tried the Tea Party, but they don't seem to be drinking much tea.

So, (big) Business (as usual) Republicans, blame yourselves for the membership drop and the funding crisis. There are a lot of Utahns that think the hen has come home to roost.

War on Religious Freedom

Reposted because we thought this is a very important topic

by Phyllis Schlafly

November 6, 2013

Americans who believe in God had better wake up and realize that a well-orchestrated campaign is moving to fundamentally transform the United States into a scrupulously secular nation. If this succeeds, we will no longer enjoy our First Amendment right of “free exercise” of religion but will be forbidden to speak or display any prayers, Bible quotations, or other evidences of religion in any public place or event.
The major strike force working to accomplish this consists of the ACLU plus various atheist groups. They are always ready to file lawsuits to get some supremacist judge to restrict religious expression.
This effort is magnified by two other organizations that have a major impact on our culture: the military who feel the temptation to be politically correct and the liberal bureaucrats in public schools who now feel free to teach their leftwing views. Barack Obama’s fingerprints are not on most of these acts, but his anti-religious attitudes are widely enough known to encourage those on the public payroll to charge ahead with extremist politically correct policies.
We’d like to know if Pentagon officials have met with any Christian leaders to balance the aggressive lobbying by those who want to silence all religious expression by members of the military. Nine senior Army or Navy officers were dismissed this year, and some wonder if this was a purge of senior officers suspected of not toeing the Obama party line.
A Young Marines program in Louisiana, which has been helping at-risk youth for 25 years, lost its federal funding because its graduation ceremony mentions God. The oath says simply, “I shall never do anything that would bring disgrace or dishonor upon my God, my country and its flag, my parents, myself or the Young Marines.”
Graduation also includes a voluntary and non-denominational prayer that, in 25 years, no one ever complained about. But Obama’s Department of Justice discovered the oath and prayer in a random audit and then demanded that both be removed or else the government would cut off its $15,000 in federal funding.
Some public school busybody bureaucrats are trying to suppress any and all religious mention on school property. Their orders are far more extreme than anything courts have ever held to be violations of the First Amendment.
Sports are a favorite target of the anti-religious crowd. A high school football coach, Marcus Borden, was forbidden even to bow his head or “take a knee” during voluntary student-led prayers before the games.
In Texas, a boy’s track relay team ran its fastest race of the year and defeated its closest rival by seven yards, which should have enabled it to advance toward the state championship. The team’s anchor runner pointed to the sky to give glory to God as he crossed the finish line, but someone didn’t like the gesture so the authorities disqualified this winning team because of it.
The ACLU in Rhode Island filed a lawsuit to force Cranston High School to remove a prayer banner in the auditorium, even though there had been no complaints in 38 years. The banner reads in part: “Our Heavenly Father: Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship, help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School.”
High school officials in Kountze, Texas, and a Wisconsin atheist group called Freedom From Religion made a tremendous effort to stop the cheerleaders from displaying a banner before a football game that read: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”
In North Carolina, a high school junior knelt for a brief two-second prayer before a wrestling match, and the referee penalized him a point for doing so. A senior at Tomah High School in Wisconsin was given a zero on an art project because he added a cross and the words “John 3:16 A Sign of Love” to his drawing of a landscape.
You can laugh at the following rule issued by the principal at Heritage Elementary in Madison, Alabama, but she was downright serious. She allowed Easter observances including a costumed rabbit, but she issued this imperious warning, “Make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter bunny’ because that would infringe on religious diversity.”
America was founded on very different beliefs about government actions. As Alexis de Toqueville, the Frenchman who traveled around our country in the mid-19th century, wrote: “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. … The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.”

You and Government Control

Would you like to take a trip across the vast Nevada desert at a forced 55 mph? Trust me, you wouldn’t.

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter imposed a 55 mph federal speed law across the country in the wake of rising oil prices. Our family made a trip from California to Utah across Nevada’s vast stretches of uninhabited terrain during this speed limit freeze. I remember, as my husband and children slept, the frustration of crawling at 55 mph on a flawless road in perfect weather when I could see not a single car on the divided freeway in either direction for miles ahead.

Nevada did not need a 55 mph speed limit, and I did not need a heavy-handed government to set speed laws. (As a side note, the anticipated savings that drove this law were a disappointment, promised safety benefits were questionable, and states largely ignored enforcement of a law they considered out of line.) This was government interference with individual and state rights. The right of states to set their own laws takes on new meaning when you consider Nevada’s desert.

When Alexis de Toqueville visited America in the early 1830s, he studied the American personality. What made America “tick”? How could her success, her strength, her national character be explained? He returned to Europe to write the two volume work, Democracy in America, a centuries old best seller. While his writing is Political Thought 501 and requires a ready dictionary, it is instructive reading.

One of his thought-provoking ideas is this: individuals are harder to control if they are not all alike. He says, “when the individual disappears into the throng, and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity…who shall say at what point the exigencies (requirements) of power and the servility (slavery) of weakness will stop?” In modern language: make men alike and it is easier to control them and take their rights away.

Toqueville makes the same point about states. While he was talking about the provinces of European countries, is ideas are near prophetic today. “When the…(states) formed so many different nations in the midst of their common country, each of them had a will of its own, which was opposed to the general spirit of subjection”. He continues, “now…having lost their immunities, their customs, their prejudices, their traditions…(they) have become accustomed to obey the same laws, (and) it is not more difficult to oppress them all together than it was formerly to oppress one of them separately.” His point: states that lose their individuality are also easier to control.

The Founders intended that states be different, unique, independent—sovereign entities. The original Constitution made that a priority to each state: emphasize individual customs and strengths, deal with your own unique challenges, create your own laws. Rhode Island and Arizona should not have the same policies and priorities. Each state was to experiment and find solutions to its problems and share with the others, who would copy, adapt, or ignore the innovations. Their union, which bound them firmly but loosely, benefitted them all. Cooperation and overall harmony were the goal. There were rules: each must remain democratic republic and would share a common mail system, national navy, and universal laws about such things as bankruptcy, patents, and extradition laws. Beyond those unifying factors, each state was unique and independent.

Logically, then, a federal government bent on control, rather than on rights and freedom, would impose federal standards on everything from education to commerce to agriculture to transportation. As a nation, in fact, we are being overwhelmed with government control. It makes sense that people who want freedom would oppose these government controls and work to change these policies. This begins with telling your elected representatives that you want less control: more individual freedoms and state rights. Stay on them and insist they comply. Study the issues and put your vote on the side of individual rights and less government control. That’s a start.

Get it Right: Ode to the Bulldogs of Freedom

“The people who do not revere the deeds of their ancestors will never do anything to be remembered by their descendants.” 

So said British historian Lord Macauly. It is notable, then, that history so well favors Samuel Adams, Boston's unyielding bulldog of American independence. Two and a half centuries ago Adams turned colonial anger at unfair taxation into full-blown American independence. Three recent patriots, Utah County's homegrown Senator Mike Lee, along with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin recently invested themselves in a modern crusade against repressive taxation,as well.

On May 24, 1764, Samuel Adams took to the rostrum in Boston's Faneuil Hall to instruct new representatives to the Massachusetts provincial legislature. That day, Adams, the consummate politician so at ease in Boston's political arena, lit the bonfire that ultimately chased the British from colonial America. A fundamental transformation had been foisted on the colonists, as British Parliament declared its intention to violate colonial charters and tax American prosperity to enrich British coffers. Adams said, "If our trade may be taxed, why not our lands and everything we possess or make use of? This ... annihilates our charter(ed) right to govern and tax ourselves." The rest is history. Samuel Adams drove his principles to national independence as those who could hear the infant chant of freedom responded to his clarion call.
Over the last few weeks a similar refrain echoed through the United States Congress as three legislators put themselves on the political grill to plead freedom from unethical taxation. While Cruz took to the Senate rostrum in a marathon filibuster, Lee and Ryan worked the partisan crowd. They also fought fundamental transformation that will enslave one-sixth of the American economy to total government control. Like Adams, their past experience with myopic, runaway government fueled their fears.

Samuel Adams fought the Sugar Act, a seemingly benevolent law the British claimed would increase colonial prosperity by reducing taxes to half the amount of previous policies. The problem, however, was that this tax would be strictly enforced rather than universally ignored, as was its predecessor. Our recent legislative triad fought the ill-named Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), a supposedly benevolent policy to bring health insurance to the uninsured. Its problem is 2500 extra pages of pork barrel, government-imposed fee structures, reduced availability of medical care, an open format that allows endless additions to the law and a legion of add-ons that have nothing to do with health care.
Both Adams and our current legislators feared the precedent set by federal appetites -- what will come next if we permit this power grab? Both responded to the bullying of federal authorities -- Adams to Parliament's scorn of the colonists; our modern legislators to the resentment of Americans who watched the ramrod passage of an oppressive law by extortion, bribery and outright lies.
Political forces moved against Samuel Adams in the aftermath of his stand against tyranny. British Governor Bernard and British-loving Tories clamored for his removal, and those who later embraced his activism initially viewed him with skepticism. So, also, forces within their own party turned against the modern trio of legislators. For Lee, within his own state under the Count Your Vote initiative, powers are at work to unseat him for his stand against bureaucratic health care.
The more things change the more they remain the same -- in history, in politics, in leadership. Repressive governments seek control; patriots seek liberty. Party leaders can shamefully turn on their own who take the moral high ground. Unfair taxation leaves welts on the backs of those who suffer under the political lash. The ledgers of history record that Samuel Adams, the bulldog of American freedom, never gave up. Is there more our modern bulldogs can do to derail Obamacare, this fast track from partial to full socialism? Pray that there is. If not, another major segment of liberty has become history.