Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

“Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its responses are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred.”

Thank you Mr. Duncan for your excellent observation that the founders relied on experience to ascertain truth, not “their unaided ability to reason out new solutions,” not “subtle thinking and cleverness,” and definitely not partisan politics.

Thanks to our enlightened, well educated founding fathers, the United States of America rests on the foundation of thousands of years of lessons learned from many civilizations.  As Hamilton observed in Federalist No. 9, “The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients.”

Our culture does not value history as much as it once did.  And there is an undisputable massive effort underway to re-write the history that we are teaching our children.  If our leaders are ever to return to a framework for decision making that incorporates an objective look at history, we must all work, in our own way, to instill in our children and fellow citizens a renewed passion for learning about the past.  We must work to preserve the integrity and accuracy of the history taught in our schools.

I am still thinking about Ron’s call to action last week in the comments section of Federalist No. 18, and how important it is that we all engage in culture creation.

As Janine so eloquently wrote in her op-ed,  A Call to Arms for America’s Parents, we as parents must take responsibility for teaching or children history.  We can start with some of the excellent books by Dr. William J. Bennett, including The American Patriot’s Almanac and America: The Last Best Hope Volume I and II. We can encourage our children to enter Constituting America’s We the People 9.17 Contest, asking them to think about and articulate how the U.S. Constitution is relevant today.  And we can share the 90 in 90: History Holds the Key to the Future project with our families.

Sign up for our newsletter email list and forward the emails out to your friends.  Forward the link to Juliette Turner’s Youth Videos like the one below where she reads from Dr. Bennett’s book and talks about the First Amendment.

Juliette Turner\’s Weekly National Youth Director Video

We can each have an impact in our circle of influence.  And if we all work in our own small way to change the culture, to encourage an awakening to our country’s roots, foundation, and founding principles, to encourage a thirst for learning the lessons written for us in history, we will succeed.

Good night and God Bless!

Cathy Gillespie

 

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