5000 Year Leap (27 page)

   "It is not to be doubted, that to the free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man."
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   In our own day the public schools have been secularized to the point where no Bible reading is permitted. The Founding Fathers would have counted this a serious mistake.

   A free people in a civilized society always tend toward prosperity. In the case of the United States, the trend has been toward a super-abundant prosperity. Only as the federal government has usurped authority and intermeddled with the free-market economy has this surge of prosperity and high production of goods and services been inhibited.

   But prosperity in the midst of thriving industry, fruitful farms, beautiful cities, and flourishing commerce always attracts the greedy aspirations of predatory nations. Singly, these covetous predators may not pose a threat, but federated together they may present a spectre of total desolation to a free, prosperous people. Before the nation's inhabitants are aware, their apocalypse of destruction is upon them.

   It was the philosophy of the Founders that the kind hand of Providence had been everywhere present in allowing the United States to come forth as the first free people in modern times. They further felt that they would forever be blessed with freedom and prosperity if they remained a virtuous and adequately armed nation.

   Clear back in 1747, Benjamin Franklin vividly comprehended the task ahead. Said he:

   "Were this Union formed, were we once united, thoroughly armed and disciplined, were everything in our power done for our security, as far as human means and foresight could provide, we might then, with more propriety, humbly ask the assistance of Heaven and a blessing on our lawful endeavors."
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   Peace was the goal, but strength was the means. Franklin envisioned the day when a prudent policy of national defense would provide the American people with the protection which their rise to greatness would require. He wrote:

   "The very fame of our strength and readiness would be a means of discouraging our enemies; for 'tis a wise and true saying, that "One sword often keeps another in the scabbard." The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked than the supine, secure and negligent."
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   Franklin further saw that those in authority have the inherent responsibility to initiate the means by which adequate defenses can be provided. He declared:

   "Protection is as truly due from the government to the people, as obedience from the people [is due] to the government."
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   In later life he held to the same solid philosophy of peace through strength as an assurance of survival in the future:

   "Our security lies, I think, in our growing strength, both in numbers and wealth; that creates an increasing ability of assisting this nation in its wars, which will make us more respectable, our friendship more valued, and our enmity feared; thence it will soon be thought proper to treat us not with justice only, but with kindness, and thence we may expect in a few years a total change of measures with regard to us; unless, by a neglect of military discipline, we should lose all martial spirit, and our western people become as tame as those in the eastern dominions of Britain [India], when we may expect the same oppressions; for there is much truth in the Italian saying, "Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you."
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   Franklin had a low opinion of people who waved the flag of liberty but would do little or nothing to provide the means for defending it. His mind-set called for action to back up the words. Writing from England, he declared:

   "Our people certainly ought to do more for themselves. It is absurd, the pretending to be lovers of liberty while they grudge paying for the defense of it. It is said here, that an impost of five percent on all goods imported, though a most reasonable proposition, had not been agreed to by all the States, and was therefore frustrated; and that your newspapers acquaint the world with this, with the non-payment of taxes by the people, and with the non-payment of interest to the creditors of the public. The knowledge of these things will hurt our credit."
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   George Washington is often described as "First in peace, first in war, first in the hearts of his countrymen."

   No American occupied a more substantive position, either then or now, to proclaim what he considered to be a necessary posture for the preservation of the nation. He had literally risked "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" for the cause of freedom and performed that task under circumstances which would have smothered the endurance of men with lesser stamina and courage. He fought the Revolutionary War with no navy of any consequence, no trained professional army of either size or stability, and no outpouring of genuine support from the very states he was striving to save. He could have retired in bitterness after Valley Forge and Morristown, but that was not his character. He did not relish the anguish of it all, but he endured it. To George Washington, it was all part of "structuring a new nation."

   Washington's position on national defense was in terms of grim realities experienced on the field of battle. No man wanted peace more than he. And no man was willing to risk more in life and property to achieve it. In nearly the same words as Franklin he declared:

   "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
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   Washington also saw the fallacy of waiting until an attack had occurred before marshalling available resources. He wrote:

   "A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite."
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   Washington also saw the fallacy of a policy of interdependence with other nations which made the United States vulnerable in time of war. In his first annual address to Congress, he spoke of the people's general welfare, then stated:

   "And their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essentials, particularly military supplies."
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   Washington felt that neither politics nor world circumstances should lure the American people into a posture of complacency. He felt that vigilance was indeed the price of freedom, and unless it was promoted with firmness and consistency the future of the United States would be in jeopardy. In another speech he said:

   "The safety of the United States, under Divine protection, ought to rest on the basis of systematic and solid arrangements, exposed as little as possible to the hazards of fortuitous circumstances."
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   As President, Washington perceived the tendency of Congress to avoid its responsibility to provide adequate defenses. Because the President was personally responsible for the nation's foreign relations, he was well aware that the new born United States had a long way to go to insure decent respect and deference from the arrogant European powers. In his fifth annual address to Congress, he said:

   "I cannot recommend to your notice measures for the fulfillment of our duties to the rest of the world, without again pressing upon you the necessity of placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense, and of exacting from them the fulfillment of their duties toward us."
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   Washington could already see the predatory monarchs of Europe planning to slice up the United States and divide it among them unless the people alerted themselves to the exigencies of the day. The British still had their troops stationed along the northern border of U.S. territory. The Spanish had definite aspirations to make a thrust into the Mississippi heartland. From Washington's point of view, all was not well in America's happy valley. Therefore he told the Congress:

   "There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."
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   Samuel Adams emphasized the moral responsibility of Americans to preserve the heritage of freedom and unalienable rights with which the Creator had endowed them. Once these blessings have been vouchsafed to a human being, Sam Adams felt it was a wicked and unnatural thing to allow those great fruits of liberty to languish by neglect or apathy. When individuals combine into a society, they bring all of their natural rights with them. Under no circumstances must these be allowed to dwindle away. Said he:

   "It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it [would be] in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which ... are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave."
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   Thus the Founders passed on to their posterity a policy of peace through strength. They were peace-loving, but not pacifists. They called for a rugged kind of strength bolted to a broad base. They saw the foundation for their security in a bustling, prosperous economy with a high standard of public morality; and they saw the necessity for a level of preparedness which discouraged attack from potential enemies by creating a rate of risk so high that the waging of war against this nation would be an obviously unprofitable undertaking.

   As Samuel Adams wrote to a sympathetic friend in England:

   "It is the business of America to take care of herself; her situation, as you justly observe, depends upon her own virtue."
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   "Friendship with all ... alliances with none." -- Thomas Jefferson

   These are the words of Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address.
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   As the United States emerged on the world scene in the eighteenth century, American leaders took a united and fixed position against entangling alliances with any foreign powers unless an attack against the United States made such alliances temporarily necessary.

   This was the Founders' doctrine of "separatism." This was far different from the modern term of "isolationism." The latter term implies a complete seclusion from other nations, as though the United States were to be detached and somehow incubated in isolation from other nations.