What if YOU could start a country? How would YOU design it? Our Founding Fathers studied the ancient civilizations of Israel, Greece, Rome and the Anglo-Saxons to learn what works and what doesn’t work in “the affairs of men.” They called these principles “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Can you explain these laws to your friends? The first step to restoring our Country must be to learn what they learned and to see what they saw. Knowing these elementary truths will help you understand why so many of our modern laws don’t work today. Why, after 50 years of the War on Poverty and trillions of dollars spent do we have a higher percentage of poor than we have ever had before? The following essay will introduce you in the briefest of fashions to the basic elements of their wisdom. For a downloadable copy of this essay in a tri-fold brochure format that you can keep in your briefcase or share with your friends, click here. Put the Ancient Wisdom at your finger tips!

The American Experiment is faltering and we may have only a short time to keep it alive. To do so, we must return to the Formula our Founding Fathers developed that led to greater personal prosperity and human rights progress than ever before in recorded history. This Formula is based on the presupposition that just as there are physical laws that govern the physical world, so there are social laws that govern Civil Society and preserve the family. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called these laws the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” but most Americans no longer know what they are or how to activate them. The statutes that legislators pass must cooperate with these fundamental truths or they will be unsuccessful in the long term. We have woefully strayed from these eternal principles and they must be restored for social order and prosperity to return to our nation. (cf. Jeremiah 6:16 NASV)

Additionally, Jefferson described these laws as: “self-evident.” That means they are readily apparent to anyone with basic common sense who will take the time to look at the world around them. We cannot violate these principles and expect a different outcome any more than we can walk off the Empire State Building and expect not to fall or we can plant corn and expect to get beans. The civil Laws of Nature don’t necessarily resolve themselves immediately like the law of gravity does, but over time, they are surely tied to the law of sowing and reaping which says that all seeds reproduce after their own kind. (cf. Gen 1:34)

Many of these principles are financial. We all know instinctively the universal truths attributed to Abraham Lincoln:*

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the poor by robbing the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot avoid fiscal failure by spending more than you take in.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they will not do for themselves.

Some of the other Laws of Nature that were discovered by our Founders are not so obvious today. The Cornerstone Truth is this:

1. Mankind’s inalienable rights do not come from our government but from our Creator.

The government does not grant them and cannot legitimately take them away. If they try, the people have a duty to resist. The purpose of government is to protect these rights not abuse them.

2. The authority to govern flows from the bottom up not from the top down.

This law is underscored in our Declaration which says governments derive their just powers from the “consent of the governed.”

This must begin at the precinct level of county government and percolate up throughout all agencies and offices above it. See: (Precinct Patriots)

3. Elected officials must be chosen from leaders of verifiable, proven character.

4. Protecting innocent life and the nuclear family is crucial to a Civil Society.

Benjamin Franklin: “Marriage is… is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness. Your reasons against entering into it at present appear to me not well founded. It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being. Separate, she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he, her softness, sensibility, and acute discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in that state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. If you get a prudent, healthy wife, your industry in your profession, with her good economy, will be a fortune sufficient.” Letter to Dissuade a Young Man from Taking a Mistress, 1783

Properly structured families ensure the lowest financial cost to society and help maintain our culture’s stability.

5. Life and Liberty are secure only if the right to property is secure.

We have forsaken the sanctity of private property in America and we must re-establish it as one of our most prominent pillars.

6. Government’s proper role is to ensure equal opportunity not provide an equal outcome.

Samuel Adams: “The utopian schemes of leveling (redistribution of the wealth), and a community of goods (central ownership of the means of production and distribution), are as visionary and impracticable as those that vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional. Now what property can the colonists be conceived to have, if their money can be granted away by others, without their consent?” Letter on behalf of the Massachusetts House of Representatives to the colony’s agent in London, 1768

Equal opportunity also means that our laws are applied equally to all people. One application of this means that if people must show a valid birth certificate to obtain a driver’s license from the DMV, candidates for office should have to do the same to stand for election. Otherwise, our application of the law has become grossly unjust.

7. To be free, the people must remain virtuous and morally strong.

This is why we must regulate certain immoral activities and prevent them from running rampant throughout our communities. Some would say that we cannot legislate morality, but it is more correct to realize that all law is the imposition of someone’s moral code. Then the question becomes, whose moral code will we honor and follow?

8. Peace can only be secured by strength.

If virtuous people are unable to protect themselves, evil bullies will subdue them.

In more modern times, someone has said, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” This, too, is a Law of Nature.

9.The borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7

George Washington: “There is no practice more dangerous than that of borrowing money, for when money can be had in this way, repayment is seldom thought of in time; the interest becomes a moth; exertions to raise it by dint of industry cease; it comes easily and is spent freely, and many things indulged in that would never be thought of, if to be purchased by the sweat of the brow; in the meantime, debt is accumulating like a snowball rolling.” Letter to Samuel Washington, 1797

Borrowing must be done only in true national emergencies and must not be more than can be paid off by the generation that incurred the debt or, surely, we will become enslaved to our creditors in time.

10. People spend their own money more carefully than they spend someone else’s.

This explains why “social welfare” must be LOCAL and VOLUNTARY or it will divide the people betwee n entitlement thinking on one hand and resentment on the other eventually leading to civil war.

The Founders believed it is immoral to practice charity with another person’s property. They called this “legal plunder” and said that theft by majority rule is no different than a gang mugging a victim in a back alley. When charity is forced or offered with other people’s money, it ceases to be charity at all. When it is removed from the local community, it will not be managed as efficiently or fairly and be much more apt to create dependency.

11. Taxes must be fair to all, simple to calculate, and easy to collect or the people will feel exploited and rebel.

Jefferson: “I think it an object of great importance…to simplify our system of finance… We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every member of Congress, and every man of any mind in the Union, should be able to comprehend them, to investigate them, and consequently to control them.” Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1802

There is no better rationale for eliminating our current income tax code and replacing it with a consumption tax. Our present system is squandering trillions of dollars & must be reformed. Go to www.FairTax.org to learn how such a tax on new retail sales establishes fairness, simplicity, and transparency for all, while:

Untaxing basic necessities for all people.
Eliminating the IRS w/all forms and record keeping.
Collecting taxes from the underground cash economy (including illegals and drug dealers).
Creating an economic boom that will increase government revenues and alleviate the debt crisis we have imposed on our children.

12. Good government cannot exist without an educated electorate.

We must re-establish these foundational pillars in the hearts of our adults and in the classrooms of our children or our political house will surely collapse.

Abraham Lincoln: “Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of ’76 did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and the laws [of God], let every American pledge his life, his property and his sacred honour; let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample upon the blood of his fathers and to tear the charter of his own and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling books, and almanacs. Let it be preached from the pulpits, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. In short, let it become the POLITICAL RELIGION of the nation.” Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, IL, 1837

How to Restore the Lost Formula

These are just a few of the elementary principles that our Founding Fathers said are crucial to the success of any nation. But “We the People” have not required our leaders to abide by them. We have before us what may be our final chance to restore the Republic that was handed down to us. As we look toward the future elections, we must use the time ahead to learn these principles ourselves and determine which candidates for office will truly honor them.

Step One

The best way I know to begin this process is a thorough study of the book by W. Cleon Skousen called “The 5000 Year Leap” who explains more fully 28 of these “secrets” to America’s past success. This book is available at The National Center for Constitutional Studies (www.nccs.net) and most large book stores.

As we consider laws proposed during the next legislative session, we must pass only bills that cooperate with these timeless truths. As we recruit and support candidates for office, we must look for men & women with the virtue of George Washington and vote for those who will voluntarily submit themselves to the limits of the enumerated powers of Article 1, Section 8 and the 10^th Amendment of the US Constitution and who will seek first to protect state sovereignty rather than their own re-election. And as citizens, we must pledge ourselves with firm reliance on Divine Providence to the same oath that every US soldier and public servant takes when he or she enters the service of our country. This is the same oath every member of Congress swears upon taking office but all too often forgets as soon as they get into power: “I do solemnly swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign or domestic, SO HELP ME GOD!”

Step Two

Step two in “getting grounded” is to complete the online, pre-recorded Making of America Seminar available at the National Center for Constitutional Studies website. Download the Seminar Guidebook and start the Recorded Videos by clicking here. Another great resource is the video coursework available from Hillsdale College from this link: Constitution 101.

*These quotes were published in 1942 by William J. H. Boetcker, a Presbyterian minister. He released a pamphlet titled Lincoln On Limitations, which did include a Lincoln quote, but also added 10 statements written by Boetcker himself. People who got the pamphlet thought the 10 statements were written by Lincoln and they have been distributed widely under Lincoln’s name. Source: www.truthorfiction.com

This site is offered in memory and honor of Major General Israel Putnam (www.israelputnam.com)
and the Patriots who served under his command at the Battle of Bunker Hill
and during the American War for Independence.“He dared to lead where ANY dared to follow.”

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How to Restore the Lost Formula