This 56 page booklet tells the story of our glorious founding and a form of government which had, as James Madison said, “no model on the face of the earth.”
It is critical for the continued success of the United States that (1) citizens and people elected to act as trustees representing them maintain the Constitution and (2) students in American schools learn about the founding of our nation which will include the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration assures equal rights and the Constitution states the government was to be limited to protecting those rights. If America is to survive as founded we must return to the moral foundations of these documents and ensure that our liberties are protected.
Hillsdale College in Michigan, whose motto is “Pursuing truth and Defending Liberty since 1844” requires every student to complete a one-semester course on the principles, meaning, and history of the Constitution. Hillsdale has made the course available online at no cost.
The Barney Charter School Initiative has provided an incredible resource to schools entitled The Constitution Reader. I’m attaching the link to this free interactive resource for your enlightenment and enjoyment.
The U.S. Constitution: A Reader
Constitution Course from Hillsdale College
Killing Kennedy
I just finished reading Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. It is an excellent account of John F. Kennedy’s last days before his assasination during a campaign trip to Dallas in 1963. This book was hard to put down. I look forward to reading Killing Lincoln by the same authors. Both books have been #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
This short powerful book will change the way you look at success and failure, wealth and happiness. Steven K. Scott shares solutions to life’s problems through the Book of Proverbs and King Solomon’s secrets to unimaginable wisdom and success. I especially learned from the chapter about the power of partners. “Without counsel plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.” Proverbs 5:22
Mr. Scott shares his failure in two of his own businesses and six of seven jobs and on job number ten partnered with his mentor for radically different results. Partners will help you accomplish your dreams. Solomon’s experiences teach us that with effective partners we can win battles that would otherwise be lost, we’ll gain wisdom that will serve us the rest of our lives and in hard times we’ll have someone to help us out. Solomon also warns of reaching out to the wrong partners.
How Do You Kill 11 Million People?
If you've got 45 minutes you have time to read a wake up call by Andy Andrews. Eleven million - 11,283,000 actually - is the number of people killed in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Andrews shows how a citizenry that is largely apathetic, uninformed and "not interested" in politics can suffer terrible consequences. How do you kill 11 million people? "Lie to them."
Hitler rose to power in a time of challenging economic conditions and promised in his campaign speeches whatever the current audience wanted to hear. It is a fact that only approximately 10% of the German population actively supported Hitler but the remaining 90% largely stood by and watched. As Andrews says, "Mothers and fathers held their voices, covered their eyes, and closed their ears....And when the Nazis came for their children, it was too late."
One of the most unsettling stories in this short book is that of members of a church who could hear each Sunday morning the whistle of a train roaring down the tracks directly behind their place of worship. While these eyewitnesses had heard about what was happening to Jews in Nazi Germany they largely blocked it out distancing themselves from it. However it was hard to block out the cries and screams of the people in the cattle cars as Jews and other prisoners were transported by the church to the death camps. But block them out they did. When the church members heard the whistle and accompanying screams they sang their hymns louder and louder until they no longer heard the horrifying sounds.
Andrews' book is a wake up call to become informed citizens who demand the truth and integrity from the people elected to lead. The murder of innocents - in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, the Soviet Union, North Korea and countless other nations - didn't come about overnight. It started with a too trusting population that didn't demand the truth and largely stood by and watched.
Andrews quotes Hitler who said, "How fortunate for leaders that men do not think. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
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