Family, Freedom, God, and Country

In commemoration of the celebration of our nation’s independence, I am posting Hyrum T. Arnesen’s winning essay for the 2009American Freedom Festival in Provo, Utah.

No civilization in history has succeeded in maintaining itself. Each one has risen to power, become prosperous, and eventually declined, falling into decay. Can any country escape this fateful cycle? Yes! The Founding Fathers understood the reasons for the downfall of civilizations. They warned the Americans about these dangers, teaching them how they could maintain their freedom. Their formula for freedom included strong families, a willingness to sacrifice, and a strong reliance in God. Building on this foundation will keep our country strong.

For our country to stay strong, its people must be strong. They must be a virtuous, well-taught people if they are to carry on the tradition of freedom in this country. Good families build good people. The teaching in the home cannot be rivaled by any other organization. The Founding Fathers understood this principle. John Adams wrote, “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families.... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?”[1] John and Abigail Adams exemplified the strength of a good family. While John was away in Congress, Abigail wrote constantly to him, supporting him, encouraging him, and prodding him to keep working in his trying circumstances. She helped to shape his ideas about freedom, as he shaped the country’s ideas about freedom. Today, when children learn in their homes about the heritage of freedom in our country, they can fight for it with strength and power.

America was founded on immense sacrifice. Soldiers bled, froze, and suffered extreme trials. Civilians’ homes were burned or used as stables, livestock was scattered, and food was destroyed or used by the British. However, these people were glad to sacrifice for freedom, for “liberty must at all hazards be supported…at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”[2] The Americans were fierce for freedom. They would not, for any reward, give it up. The soldiers at Valley Forge could have deserted, but instead, they endured their trials knowing that “they that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”[3] This heritage of sacrifice continues today. During the Vietnam war a captured American soldier, carefully stitched an American flag from the threads of his own clothing. When the flag was discovered, it was destroyed and he was severely beaten. Undaunted, as soon as he recovered, he started stitching a new flag—the flag that represented freedom, his country, and his willingness to sacrifice for both.

Throughout all their trials, the Americans maintained a firm reliance on divine providence, trusting that God would help them. This reliance is as vital today as it was then. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.”[4] Similarly, George Washington clarified why America needs a strong reliance on God. He said, “The foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ...the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”[5] Our government, our country cannot stand without a firm reliance in God. This country was founded with His aid. It cannot survive without it. We cannot maintain our freedom if we foolishly throw away our Christian morals and principles. As John Adams said, “Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.”[6]

Following these principles of strong families, sacrifice for freedom, and a firm reliance in God will give America strength. Without these principles, America will decline and fall into decay. With these principles, freedom will be protected and America will remain strong. Strong families create strong individuals, sacrifice protects hard-fought liberty, and a firm reliance in God ensures divine intervention in our behalf. The fateful cycle of civilization is broken and America endures in freedom.

---

[1] Diary, June 2, 1778

[2] John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

[3] Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

[4] Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

[5] First Inaugural Address, April 30 1789

[6] John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams, June 21, 1776

A Nation Imperiled?

President Obama has made some very alarming moves in the last several weeks. Below, I am posting a copy of an article from the Patriot Post by Mark Alexander regarding the socialization of the United States. We are seeing unprecedented concessions from the Obama administration. American is changing day by day. Another development we should pay serious attention to is Obama's recently telling the world that we are no longer a Christian nation. Please see the article by Stephen M. Studdert by clicking the link immediately below.

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/090604promise.html

Obama's 'Peace for Our Time'

"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson

On 30 September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain addressed his countrymen in regard to the Munich Agreement, which assured Adolf Hitler that Britain would "wink and nod" at Der Fuhrer's annexation of western Czechoslovakia to satiate Germany's need for additional "living space." (Six months earlier, Hitler had annexed Austria, without so much as a whimper from Britain and France.)

Chamberlain insisted, infamously, that appeasing Hitler with the Munich Agreement would provide "peace for our time." But on 1 September 1939, Herr Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II, the bloodiest conflict and genocide in history, was underway.
Fortunately, Chamberlain was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940, the same day Hitler invaded France and the Low Countries.

A month later, Churchill delivered his "finest hour" speech, to the House of Commons: "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that ... if we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

This week, Barack Hussein Obama endeavored to appease the world's most dangerous fascist movement since the Third Reich. Islam has long provided safe haven for the Islamist movement of "Jihadistan," that borderless nation of countless jihadis devoted to the destruction of the West and the imposition of a worldwide caliphate and Shariah law. If we seek to appease this abominable movement rather than confront it, the world most certainly will, as Churchill warned, "sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age."

Last fall, Obama campaigned on a promise to mollify our Islamic foes and "re-set" the terms of understanding between American democracy and Middle Eastern tyranny -- to great applause from his legions of mesmerized peacenik sycophants.

In January, Obama recommitted to making peace with Islam, saying, "I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

Before his departure this week, a key Obama aide reiterated Obama's Muslim roots: "The president himself experienced Islam on three continents ... you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans are a key part of Illinois and Chicago."
Then Obama served up this gem: "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world."

Huh? There are currently some 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. Indonesia has 200 million, Pakistan has 165 million, dozens of other countries have tens of millions more, and the U.S. has less than 3 million.

Obama's "ignorance" of Muslim demographics is appalling. Yet he has the audacity to say, "We have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam."

Lest anyone doubt Obama's determination to appease Islam, consider the fact that on Monday, the day before his departure, American Islamic convert Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two young military recruiters in Arkansas, murdering Pvt. William Long -- and Obama initially offered no official comment.

Contrast that to the killing the previous day of George Tiller, infamous for murdering thousands of babies just prior to birth. Within hours of that incident, Obama served up an official statement of "shock and outrage." Obama's Attorney General also dispatched U.S. Marshals to protect "appropriate people and facilities around the nation."

But law enforcement resources have not been dispatched to protect recruiting centers (even though hundreds of those have been attacked in recent years), nor is Obama sending Marshals to protect synagogues, after last month's arrest of four Islamists who planned to bomb Jewish houses of worship in New York.

Ironically, the last time a sitting president attempted to appease his abortion constituency by mobilizing federal law enforcement resources was when Bill Clinton sent the FBI, ATF and U.S. Marshals to search for lone abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph -- ironic, I say, because at the same time thousands of agents were unsuccessfully attempting to apprehend Rudolph in North Carolina, al-Qa'ida terrorists were taking flight lessons a few hundred miles down the road in Florida, preparing to crash civilian airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol Building to the tune of "Allahu akbar."

In other words, Obama appeased his pro-abortion constituency with a show of force and appeased his Islamic constituency with inaction.

Under increasing pressure, Obama's handlers finally posted a comment late Wednesday on the murder of the military recruiter, indicating that he was "deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence." Personally, I am "shocked and outraged."

Suffice it to say that BHO didn't want to offend our Islamist enemy in the same week he is trying to appease them.

But I digress.

After stopping for another bow to Saudi King Abdullah, Obama crossed the Red Sea (perhaps he actually walked on it) to address his peace-loving brethren in Egypt -- accompanied by a security force of more than 3,000 agents, far exceeding the security detail accompanying George W. Bush for his visits to war zones in Iraq. That seemed a bit excessive, since there were more than 30,000 Egyptian security forces in, on and around Al Azhar University, where Obama delivered his version of Rodney King's "can't we all just get along" speech.

Perhaps someone recalled that on 6 October 1981, Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar Al Sadat was assassinated by his own Egyptian security forces acting on a fatwa issued by peace-loving Muslim cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman. Omar, a.k.a. "inmate 34892-054," is now serving a life sentence in a North Carolina federal prison after being convicted for planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was an associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned the 2001 attack. (Hey, maybe the Tar Heel State, which gave its electoral votes to Obama, will take those Gitmo detainees off his hands.)

Obama offered these olive branches to the Islamic masses from his teleprompters in Cairo: "[I have] unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things ... confidence in the rule of law; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. ... Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism -- it is an important part of promoting peace. ... I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. As a boy, I heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. ... [Jerusalem should be] a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra [from the Koran], when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer. ... Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance."
While Israel was not on Obama's Middle Eastern itinerary, as some sort of atonement, his plans take him from Egypt to Germany for a visit to the Nazis' Buchenwald concentration camp and a token tribute to Holocaust victims.

Then Obama will proceed to Normandy for the 65th anniversary of the Allies' D-Day invasion of France, which ultimately brought the Third Reich to collapse.

In other words, BHO began his trip by appeasing fascists in the Middle East (at great peril to future generations of Americans), and will end his trip "honoring" tens of thousands of Americans who died as a direct result of the appeasement of fascists in Europe.

For the record, I don't mean to suggest that because Obama has a penchant for appeasing Islam, he is a Muslim. In one of his two autobiographies, "The Audacity of Hope," he noted that both of his parents were atheists and, "In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf." Just sat there...

Based on the rest of his book, I'm certain that he is not a Muslim, but a Socialist like William Ayers and the Marxist terrorists who launched his political career.

As the MSM talkingheads fawn over the Obama show abroad, the greatest peril to Americans remains the plethora of domestic Neo-Marxist economic programs now being implemented by the Obama regime.

Even the Russian newspaper Pravda, once the primary dezinfomatsia organ of the old Soviet Union, recently published an article by Stanislav Mishin entitled, "American Capitalism Gone with a Whimper," in which Mishin writes that Obama has pulled the plug on the American way of life.

Mishin observes: "It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hopeless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people. ... First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in D.C. that directly affects their lives. ... The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been record setting, not just in Americaâ??s short history, but in the world. If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe. ... Prime Minister Putin, less than two months ago, warned Obama not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster."

More to the point, Fidel Castro's understudy, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, in a lecture on Socialism this week, said, "Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right."

It is indeed a sad day for America when our president becomes the butt of Marxism jokes between Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in the same week that he is appeasing Islam.

Short of some audacious "change" on the home front to dislodge these Leftists, future generations of Americans will look back upon ours and say, "This was not their finest hour."

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark AlexanderPublisher, PatriotPost.US

Obama "The Chosen One": What Does it Tell Us About Him?

Like never before, we have elected a president who welcomes the adoration of the popular media. What does this tell us about him and what will he do?

This article addresses this and askes some important questions:

http://www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/090313messiah.html

Never Beaten?

So, I have always understood that the Prophet Joseph Smith never lost a wrestling match or a stick pull. He was an amazing athlete. This catches the interest of 21st century young men (I believe the Lord blessed him with this unusual ability so he could deal with all of the persecution he did in his life!). However, there was one man Joseph was not able to completely throw, and so the match was a draw. The match was against Cornelius Lott, an “older man (45 in 1943 compared to Joseph’s age of 38),” and I understand the writing eye witness was Joseph’s son, Joseph III. Brother Lott was a very interesting man. He was the care taker of Joseph’s farm outside Nauvoo and a member of the Council of Fifty. He deserves a lot more study (the Council of Fifty is also quite interesting). The account below shows the competitive and fun-loving nature of the Prophet and that must have been exciting to hang around his red brick store in Nauvoo!

Here is an account of the exciting match:

Although we would like to believe the Prophet never lost a wrestling contest, this was not the case. Joseph Smith III remembered one man who prevailed over his father. He recalled that on one occasion several of the brethren came to visit and converse with the Joseph at his Red Brick store in Nauvoo. However, the conversation subsequently turned into a wrestling tournament which took place on an open space just west of the store. Each man took his turn grappling with the Prophet, but all were defeated one by one and the men returned to converse inside the store. While chatting, an elderly gentleman by the name of Cornelius P. Lott stopped by the establishment. Upon seeing the old man, young Smith recalled his father saying in a jolly tone, "'Here! I have thrown down pretty nearly everybody about the place except Brother Lott, and I believe I can throw him down, too!'" Cornelius, who was also a man of considerable brawn and muscle despite his age, was not to be intimidated by the more youthful Joseph Smith and agreed to the match. He also gave his rules for the contest. "Well, my boy, if you'll take it catch-as-catch-can you can't throw old man Lott!'" Joseph III remembered all of the men "immediately piled out of the house" to witness the competition. He stated that during the contest, "They ran together several times, but the best Father could do was to get the old man down to his knees. . . . He gave up his efforts to throw the sturdy old fellow." Some of the men who witnessed the event gave him a good-natured badgering for not being able to defeat the elderly gentleman. And in the midst of this ridicule, Cornelius rubbed his own salt into the wound when he exclaimed, "'I told you, my boy, that you couldn't throw old man Lott!'"
Cited in, Tate, Charles D., Black, Susan Easton, Joseph Smith: The Prophet, The Man, 141-142.