American Minute with Bill Federer
He sat next to George Washington in the pew at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York during the religious service following Washington’s Presidential Inauguration.
He helped ratify the U.S. Constitution.
His name was Fisher Ames.
Fisher Ames was a Congressman from Massachusetts where, on August 20, 1789, he proposed as the wording of the First Amendment (Annals of Congress, 1:766):
“Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience.”
Fisher Ames compared monarchy to a republic, as recorded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Essays, Second Series, (chapter 7, “Politics,” p. 97, 1844; Library of America, 1983):
“Monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water.”
Of America’s Republic, Fisher Ames wrote in an article titled “Monitor,” published in The New England Palladium of Boston, 1804, (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston: T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 272):
“We now set out with our experimental project, exactly where Rome failed with hers. We now begin, where she ended.”
Warning against the temptation to increase government, Fisher Ames stated in “Speeches on Mr. Madison’s Resolutions” (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston: T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 48):
“To control trade by law, instead of leaving it to the better management of the merchants…(is) to play the tyrant in the counting house, and in directing the private expenses of our citizens, are employments equally unworthy of discussion.”
At the Massachusetts Convention, January 15, 1788, Fisher Ames warned that democracy without morals would eventually reduce the nation to the basest of human passions, swallowing freedom:
“A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction.”
Fisher Ames commented in “The Dangers of American Liberty,” 1805 (published in Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854, pp. 349):
“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.”
Russell Kirk described Fisher Ames in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2001, chapter 3, p. 81-85):
“As time runs on, Ames grows more intense. Democracy cannot last…When property is snatched from hand to hand…then society submits cravenly to the immorality of rule by the sword…
Of all the terrors of democracy, the worst is its destruction of moral habits. ‘A democratic society will soon find its morals…the surly companion of its licentious joys’…
Is there no check upon these excesses?…The press supplies an endless stimulus to popular imagination and passion; the press lives upon heat and coarse drama and incessant restlessness. ‘It has inspired ignorance with presumption’…
‘Constitutions,’ says Ames, ‘are but paper; society is the substratum of government’…
Like Samuel Johnson, (Ames) finds the key to political decency in private morality.”
Aaron McLeod wrote in “Great Conservative Minds: A Condensation of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind” (October 2005, Alabama Policy Institute, Birmingham, AL, chp. 3, p. 9-10}:
“Ames was pessimistic about the American experiment because he doubted there were sufficient numbers of men with the moral courage and charisma to preserve the country from the passions of the multitudes and the demagogues who master them.
He was convinced that the people as a body cannot reason and are easily swayed by clever speakers and political agents. In his words, ‘few can reason, all can feel’…
Democracy could not last, Ames thundered, ‘for despotism lies at the door; when the tyranny of the majority leads to chaos, society will submit to rule by the sword.’”
Aaron McLeod continued:
“To Ames, what doomed the American experiment was the democratic destruction of morals…
Ames believed that justice and morality in America would fail, and popular rule cannot support justice, without which moral habits fall away.
Neither the free press nor paper constitutions could safe-guard order from these excesses, for the first is merely a stimulus to popular passion and imagination, while the other is a thin bulwark against corruption.
When old prescription and tradition are dismissed, only naked force matters.”
George Washington died December 14, 1799.
Fisher Ames delivered a eulogy “An Oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington,” February 8, 1800, at Boston’s Old South Meeting-House, before the Lieutenant Governor, the Council, and both branches of the Massachusetts Legislature (Boston: Young & Minns, 1800, p. 23):
“Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits…
It is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.”
Fisher Ames wrote in The Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston (Vol. XVII, No. 2,8, Tuesday, January 27, 1801, p. 1; John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames, 1809, p. 134-35; The Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, T.B. Wait & Co., Boston, 1809, p. 134-135; Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. II, New York: Birt Franklin, 1971, pp. 405-406; Frederick C. Kubicek, Evolution-Guilty As Charged, Shippensburg, PA; Treasure House, 1993, p. 125):
“It has been the custom of late years to put a number of little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons…
Many books for children are…injudiciously compiled…the moral is drawn from the fable they know not why…
Some of the most admired works of this kind abound with a frothy sort of sentiment…the chief merit of which consists in shedding tears and giving away money…
Why then, if these books for children must be retained…should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble.
The reverence for the Sacred Book, that is thus early impressed, lasts long – and probably, if not impressed in infancy never takes firm hold of the mind.
One consideration more is important: In no book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant – and by teaching all the same book they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.”
D. James Kennedy summarized Fisher Ames words in “The Great Deception” (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Coral Ridge Ministries, 1989; 1993, p. 3; The Great Deception-a speech delivered December 1, 1992, Ottawa, IL):
“We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We’ve become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons.
We’re spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book.”
At age 46, Fisher Ames was elected Harvard’s president, but he declined due to an illness which eventually led to his death.
On July 4, 1808, exactly 32 years to the day after America declared its Independence, Fisher Ames died at the age of 50.
One of the most famous orators in Congress, Fisher Ames was quoted in the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Bela Bates Edward, editor of Quarterly Observer, Brattleboro, VT: Joseph Steen & Co.; Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.; New York: Lewis Colby, 1851, p. 78):
“No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.”
The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.
DABBLING IN THE CLASSICS, ARISTOTLE
Author of Liberty or Not?
Author of Liberty or Not?
Is God the author of liberty, or not?
A valid, and need I say, vital question.
But in this age of secularism, humanism, and socialism, just try mixing God and government in the same breath and get ready for the snickers, sneers, hisses, and guffaws for daring to exercise one’s free speech as regards this off-limits, dangerous, homophobic subject.
Yet the right to free speech and freedom of religion is ours, and the question a must for all to at least consider.
A number of years ago, the dean of a Social Science Department scolded me in BIG RED LETTERS, highlighted by a BIG WITH EMOTION lecture, for infusing God and morality (via quoting the Founders) into a paper (and my portion of a group discussion) that focused on the historical foundation of ethics in American government.
The report was “very well written,” he condescendingly noted, “but inappropriate! No American university would accept your approach as valid!” The grade, a GPA destroying D minus.
I had no doubt about his assessment of America’s universities. (1) Admittedly, I half expected the unfair grade from this ‘ethical’ liberal who put political prejudice ahead of academic honesty. I was, after all, outspoken in class, hard-hitting in my school newspaper columns, and decidedly Christian and conservative. Here was his big chance to make an example of me, to frighten others into submission. He took it.
And it hurt, and he won, or so he thought.
But what of it? Early on, I decided that when it came to ‘getting ahead,’ my religion and morality would come first, and so I would be honest, come hell or high water or D minuses.
Pooh! on his humanistic ethics! “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” is an uncompromising command from the Deity—not something to be abandoned to appease such professors, politicians in my case, nor to settle scores and teach Christian conservatives a lesson about ‘how things are” in academia, like it or not, as he chose to do.
With ethics, however, you can do far worse and not think twice about it. Because when it comes to ethics, the ends justify the means; utilitarianism outbids God-given rights; morality (if the word hasn’t been outlawed) mutates into relativism; and so we have the kind of religion the mass murdering French and communist revolutionaries practiced — and in full fellowship, the secular religion of the American courts, where without conscience men and women abandon their oath of office to promote perversity and socialism, the very things at odds with our way of life – well, because ‘it’s ethical.’
And so it is.
That’s why we need something more solid to steady the arc of liberty than ethics; something that can stand the test of time against the unremitting onslaughts of crisis, propaganda, social change, and wars; something that will not give in, nor give up; something that feels no necessity to succumb and adapt and support the loudest voice, the strongest arm, or the golden calf opportunity.
George Washington knew what it was, and so do you.
Providence has connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue. (2)
Virtue, that is, to Higher Laws. Thus, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” (3)
He knew it. He saw and felt God’s miraculous hand aiding the colonists throughout the revolution and guiding her in the establishment of the best constitution the world had ever known.
In his First Inaugural Address, he noted:
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. (4)
With that in mind, he understood that
it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States … and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. (5)
He was turning over the watch care of the nation to the Being whose right it is to preside, who was “the Great Author of every public and private good.” (6)
And why did he say this?
These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. (7)
He believed it. He believed it with every fiber of his being. And why should you or I or any haughty and wicked instructor or government official or supposed patriotic legal organization take it upon themselves to suppress the truth about America from the very mouths of the men who founded this nation?
“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens”, (8) concluded Washington in his Farewell Address.
That is the truth about the issue. No greater enemy of the state is there than those who labor to hide from man a view of whence cometh freedom, or who likewise labor to subvert the moral codes and Higher Laws that the very Author of our Liberty has laid down to keep us free.
Until we come to grips with this, and do and say more then we do and say presently – as is our right and duty, regardless of personal cost – one wonders how much we deserve to be called “citizen,” “child of God,” “honest, and moral man.”
Get your copy of Steve Farrell’s inspirational novel, Dark Rose
.
Steve Farrell is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Moral Liberal, one of the original pundits with NewsMax.com (1999-2007), and the author of the inspirational novel Dark Rose
. Steve also served as Press Agent for Defend Marriage, Managing Editor of Right Magazine, and is currently also serving as the Editor-In-Chief of the Center for Applied Philosophy’s, “Radical Academy,” a restoration project of The Moral Liberal. Steve’s projects at the Moral Liberal include Liberty Letters, Called Unto Liberty, They Were Believers, Founders Corner Library, the Americanist.
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