"Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just."  
--
Candidate Barack H. Obama

"We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation" -- President Barack H. Obama

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” -- President Barack H. Obama

"And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." -- President Barack H. Obama

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam" -- President Barack H. Obama

"More than a billion people practice Islam and an overwhelming majority view their obligations to a religion that reaffirms peace, fairness, tolerance." -- President Barack H. Obama


No Longer A Christian Nation? | Reaffirming Peace? | Reaffirming Tolerance? | Obama Family

Another Way

 

"Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty." 
-- President Abraham Lincoln, from First Inaugural Address, 1861

"The fundamental basis of this Nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state." 
-- President Harry S. Truman, from Attorney General's Conference Address,1950 link

We Once Were...

We once were the
United States of America
A Nation Trusting in God & Founded on Christian Principles

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

-- John Adams, to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798.
[John Adams - Declaration of Independence signer, the first Vice President and the second President of the United States]

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime & pure, [and] which denounces against the wicked eternal misery, and [which] insured to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.

-- Charles Carroll, in a letter to James McHenry of November 4, 1800, in The Life and Correspondence of James McHenry (1907).
[Charles Carroll of Carrollton - Declaration of Independence signer, and United States Senator for Maryland]

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” 

-- James Madison, to the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, 1778.
[James Madison, Jr. - "Father of the Constitution" and first author of the Bill of Rights, and the fourth President of the United States]

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

-- James McHenry, in One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland, 1810-1920 (1921).   [James McHenry - United States Constitution signer]

At the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

-- Joseph Story, in Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.
[ Joseph Story - Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court]

Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.

-- Noah Webster, in History of the United States (1832).
[Noah Webster - “Father of American Scholarship and Education”]

"Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens."

-- Daniel Webster, a discourse delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1820.
[Daniel Webster - United States Senator from Massachusetts, and 14th United States Secretary of State]

"In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity."

-- John Quincy Adams, an oration delivered before inhabitants of the town of Newburyport, July 4, 1837.
[John Quincy Adams - the sixth President of the United States]

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

-- John Jay, in a letter to John Murray Jr. on October 12, 1816.
[John Jay - the first Chief Justice of the United States]

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

-- Benjamin Rush, in Essays, Literary, Moral & Philosophical (1798).
[Benjamin Rush - Declaration of Independence signer]

One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations.

-- Joseph Story, in Life and Letters of Joseph Story (1851).
[Joseph Story - Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court]

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

-- George Washington, General Orders of May 2, 1778, in The Writings of Washington (1932).
[George Washington - Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, United States Constitution signer, and the first President of the United States]

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

-- Noah Webster, in the preface to his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).
[Noah Webster - “Father of American Scholarship and Education”]

Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man toward God.

-- Gouverneur Morris, from The Life of Governeur Morris (1832).
[Gouverneur Morris - United States Constitution penman and signer]

Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both.

-- James Wilson, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson (1804).
[James Wilson - Declaration of Independence signer, and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court]

"Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement. ... Manners, by which not only the freedom but the very existence of the republics are greatly affected, depend much upon the public institutions of religion."

-- John Hancock, from Inaugural Address as Governor of Massachusetts, November 2, 1780.
[John Hancock - Declaration of Independence signer]

"The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed. ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality."

-- Gouverneur Morris, from An Inaugural Discourse Delivered Before the New York Historical Society by the Honorable Gouverneur Morris, September 4, 1816.
[Gouverneur Morris - United States Constitution penman and signer]

Mr President [George Washington, Constitutional Convention],

The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other--our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding.

We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?

In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. - Our prayers, Sir, were heard, & they were graciously answered.

All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity.

And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance?

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?

We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that "except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel:

We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages.

And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move - that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that Service.

-- Benjamin Franklin, from Constitutional Convention address delivered June 28, 1787, in Philadelphia, as recorded in "Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison"
[Benjamin Franklin - Declaration of Independence signer, United States Constitution signer]

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

-- Thomas Jefferson, in a January 1, 1802 letter sent to messers Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
[Thomas Jefferson - principle author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third President of the United States]

"To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. All efforts made to destroy the foundations of our Holy Religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation… in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom… Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government – and all the blessings which flow from them – must fall with them."

-- Jedidiah Morse, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America, delivered at Charlestown, MA, April 25, 1799.
[Jedidiah Morse - clergyman and early American educator, and "Father of American Geography"]

 

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

-- Francis Scott Key, the 4th verse of the "The Star-Spangled Banner"

In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

-- The Declaration of Independence  (see full text)

American Institution Founded Motto
University of Pennsylvania 1740 Leges sine moribus vanae
(Laws without morals are useless)
Princeton University 1746 Dei sub numine viget
(Under the protection of God she flourishes)
Columbia University 1754 In lumine Tuo videbimus lumen
(In Thy light shall we see light)
Brown University 1764 In Deo speramus
(In God we hope)

 

WeOnceWere.com

 



"America is like a healthy body and its resistance is three-fold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within."

   -- Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee

"Give me your four-year-olds and in a generation I will build a socialist state."

       -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic

"Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."

   -- Karl Heinrich Marx, author of Manifesto of the Communist Party, and often called the "Father of Communism"


 

 

They Once Were...

The Soviet Union appears the greatest megamurderer of all, apparently killing near 61,000,000 people. Stalin himself is responsible for almost 43,000,000 of these. Most of the deaths, perhaps around 39,000,000 are due to lethal forced labor in gulag and transit thereto. Communist China up to 1987, but mainly from 1949 through the cultural revolution, which alone may have seen over 1,000,000 murdered, is the second worst megamurderer. Then there are the lesser megamurderers, such as North Korea and Tito's Yugoslavia.

In sum the communist probably have murdered something like 110,000,000, or near two-thirds of all those killed by all governments, quasi-governments, and guerrillas from 1900 to 1987. Of course, the world total itself it shocking. It is several times the 38,000,000 battle-dead that have been killed in all this century's international and domestic wars. Yet the probable number of murders by the Soviet Union alone--one communist country-- well surpasses this cost of war. And those murders of communist China almost equal it.

How can we understand all this killing by communists? It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with the absolute power. Communists believed that they knew the truth, absolutely. They believed that they knew through Marxism what would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness. And they believed that power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, must be used to tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and rebuild society and culture to realize this utopia. Nothing must stand in the way of its achievement. Government--the Communist Party--was thus above any law. All institutions, cultural norms, traditions, and sentiments were expendable. And the people were as though lumber and bricks, to be used in building the new world.

Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths. The irony of this is that communism in practice, even after decades of total control, did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made their living conditions worse than before the revolution.

It is not by chance that the greatest famines have occurred within the Soviet Union (about 5,000,000 dead during 1921-23 and 7,000,000 from 1932-3) and communist China (about 27,000,000 dead from 1959-61). In total almost 55,000,000 people died in various communist famines and associated diseases, a little over 10,000,000 of them from democidal famine. This is as though the total population of Turkey, Iran, or Thailand had been completely wiped out. And that something like 35,000,000 people fled communist countries as refugees, as though the countries of Argentina or Columbia had been totally emptied of all their people, was an unparalleled vote against the utopian pretensions of Marxism-Leninism.

But communists could not be wrong. After all, their knowledge was scientific, based on historical materialism, an understanding of the dialectical process in nature and human society, and a materialist (and thus realistic) view of nature. Marx has shown empirically where society has been and why, and he and his interpreters proved that it was destined for a communist end. No one could prevent this, but only stand in the way and delay it at the cost of more human misery. Those who disagreed with this world view and even with some of the proper interpretations of Marx and Lenin were, without a scintilla of doubt, wrong. After all, did not Marx or Lenin or Stalin or Mao say that. . . . In other words, communism was like a fanatical religion. It had its revealed text and chief interpreters. It had its priests and their ritualistic prose with all the answers. It had a heaven, and the proper behavior to reach it. It had its appeal to faith. And it had its crusade against nonbelievers.

What made this secular religion so utterly lethal was its seizure of all the state's instrument of force and coercion and their immediate use to destroy or control all independent sources of power, such as the church, the professions, private businesses, schools, and, of course, the family.

Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked.

-- R. J. Rummel,   more...

 

         

Please, Uncle Do Take Me to Kharkiv.

We have neither bread nor anything else to eat. Dad is completely exhausted from hunger and is lying on the bench, unable to get on his feet. Mother is blind from the hunger and cannot see in the least. So I have to guide her when she has to go outside. Please Uncle, do take me to Kharkiv, because I, too, will die from hunger. Please do take me, please. I'm still young and I want so much to live a while. Here I will surely die, for every one else is dying ...

-- letter written to K. Riabokin, a University Professor at Kharkiv, by his niece Zina   more...

 

 

 

The Bloody History of Communism
video: source 1 | source 2

 

The Bloody History of Fascism
video: source 1 | source 2

 

We once were the
United States of America
A Nation Trusting in God & Founded on Christian Principles

 

 

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