If We Don’t Have a Proper Fundamental Moral Background We Will End Up With A Totalitarian Government

•    If there is no God or creator, then everything happens by chance or by mistake.

•    If there is no God, then man was not created in His image.

•    If there is no God, then there is no right or wrong.

•    If there is no God, there is only the natural world.

•    If there is no God, then man does not have an eternal soul and there is no life after death.

•    If there is no God, life has no meaning.

•    If there is no God, man does not have a free will, for he is the product of his environment.

Yale University history professor Donald Kagan acknowledges the consequences of the worldview that says “God is dead.” Based largely on the writings of Fredrick Nietzsche, this philosophy is often called nihilism. Kagan writes, “[A] vulgar form of Nihilism has a remarkable influence in our educational system through our universities. The consequences of the victory of such ideas would be enormous. If both religion and reason are removed, all that remains is will and power, where the only law is that of tooth and claw.” (Footnote #17)

If the government is the highest authority—and all rights are given to us by the government—then what the government gives the government also can take away. On the other hand, if our rights are given to us by the Creator, then they are “inalienable,” for all people, for all times, and for all places. It remains possible, of course, that our rights can be infringed or violated, but they cannot rightly be taken away. If Americans would embrace this eternal truth, they would eagerly support the election of leaders who acknowledge God and their accountability to Him for how they lead.

Not only must we elect people of such commitment and character, but Americans must earnestly fight attempts by the ACLU and other humanist organizations and by liberals who try to eradicate God from our country. If Americans allow the Source of freedom, liberty, and justice to be removed or downplayed, then we will receive our just reward—enslavement at the hands of men and women of power.

In his 1961 inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy intoned, “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

On February 15, 1959, at an Attorney General’s Conference, President Harry S. Truman warned, “If we don’t have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”

My friend Bill Federer, a prolific historian, correctly connects a leader’s religious beliefs to the actions of the government:

Thus it follows, that as long as a person is doing “actions,” they have thoughts preceding those actions—and that collection of thoughts is that person’s “system of belief” or “religion.” As long as the government is doing “actions,” the government has thoughts preceding those actions—and that collection of thought is the government’s “system of belief” or “religion.” So there can never really be a separation of “religion” and government—as long as the government is doing “actions” there are thoughts or beliefs underlying those actions. The ACLU is not trying to be “religion” neutral, but, in fact, it is promoting a religion —a “non-deity based” secular humanism system of belief. (Footnote #18)

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini demonstrate the destruction that results when a leader doesn’t believe in God, life after death, heaven, hell, or a judgment day on which he will be held accountable by the righteous Judge. In their atheistic worldviews, they were the highest authority. As a result, Hitler killed as many as six million Jews and five million non-Jews during his Holocaust; and while Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union, he killed some 20 to 40 million people according to experts. The twentieth century was the most murderous of any century in history, due largely to tyrants and dictators who did not acknowledge any authority higher than themselves. The Congressional Record wrote that 135 million people were killed by Communists in the twentieth century. (Footnote #19)

Our Founders so believed in the importance of elected officials believing in a deity higher than government to which they were accountable that Benjamin Rush, known as the Founding Father who promoted the establishment of schools in America, said, “Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinion of Confucius or Mohamed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament.” (Footnote #20)

Benjamin Rush understood that religion—or a belief in God—made for great citizens. He also knew that if America’s future educators were not firm in their belief in the Deity who rewards good and punishes evil, then our republican form of government would not last.

As we will explore later, the very form of government our Founders created required that not only the population but, moreover, those in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government acknowledge God and their accountability to Him. This belief was so central to early American leaders that even the individual states adopted constitutions that acknowledge God. Let’s look at a few examples:

•    Maryland, 1776 Preamble: “We the people of the state of Maryland, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberty . . . .”

•    Pennsylvania, 1776 Preamble: “We, the people of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance . . . .”

•    South Carolina, 1778 Preamble: “We the people of the State of South Carolina . . . grateful to God for our liberties, do ordain and establish this Constitution. . . .”

•    Minnesota, 1857 Preamble: “We, the people of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings. . . .”

•    Alabama, 1901 Preamble: “We the people of the State of Alabama, . . . invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish the following Constitution. . . .”

•    Alaska, 1956 Preamble: “We, the people of Alaska, grateful to God and to those who founded our nation and pioneered this great land . . . .”

I hope that before we forfeit our God-given rights to an increasingly powerful central government, Americans will once again grasp the need to acknowledge the Deity higher than the state, to reject the lies of those who oppose Him, and to cease voting for those that put themselves above God.

Footnotes:

Donald Kagan, “Nihilism rejects any objective basis for society and its morality, the very concept of objectivity, even the possibility of communication itself,” Academic Questions 8, no. 2 (spring 1995), 56.

18 Bill Federer, 3 Secular Reasons Why America Should Be under God (St. Louis, MO: Amerisearch, Inc., 2004), 66.

19 Dr. D. James Kennedy, Lord of All: Developing a Christian World-and-Life View (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 130.

20 Benjamin Rush, “On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia: Thomas and Samuel F. Bradford, 1798), 8.