Brushfires of freedom

Brushfires of freedom
By Ben Thompson

Throughout the history of mankind there have been tyrants who are more than willing to takeaway our God-given freedoms for their own selfish purposes. More importantly, there have also have always been a few courageous patriots who have been willing to give their all to protect those freedoms. Our Founding Fathers are an excellent example of the latter.

Thomas Jefferson: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God."

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." — Thomas Jefferson

At the time of the American Revolution a substantial majority of Americans (colonists) were NOT willing to confront Great Britain. It took the courage of LEADERS like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, among others, to stand up to King George's oppressive regime and formidable armed forces.

"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." — Samuel Adams

This nation was founded by courageous, humble, selfless individuals — statesmen, soldiers, farmers, housewives, businessmen and blue collar workers, who were willing to give their lives, reputations and honor in exchange for our freedom.

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it." — Thomas Paine

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks." — Samuel Adams

They created and supported the divine Founding Documents- the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which define and guarantee our God-given rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (property).

President John F. Kennedy stated: "Our rights come from God, not government."

Thomas Jefferson: "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not violated but with his wrath?"

In these inspired writings the Founders put first things first.

The first God-given right in the Declaration is "life." The first function of the Constitution is "to form a more perfect Union." The first right in the Bill of Rights is freedom to worship, without government interference.

Why did the Founders place these items first? Because they knew that the surest way to maintain all of our freedoms was to protect the three firsts: Life, preserving the union and freedom of worship.

During the past 225 years We the People have allowed wolves in sheep's clothing to enter our freedom flock and destroy many of our natural rights:


Thirty years of abortions have killed 40,000,000 innocent human beings.


God, prayer and the Ten Commandments are being desecrated, demeaned and removed from our public lives.


High taxes have forced mothers into the workforce and our children and society are suffering the consequences.


Socialists are overtaking our education system, re-writing history and preparing our children to live under a governing system of total dependence, at the expense of the independence, individual responsibility and opportunity, for which our brave soldiers have fought and died.


Our right to self-defense, to protect our family, neighbors, community and nation is being threatened by self-righteous elitists who want to control every aspect of our lives.


Where are the leaders today who are willing to make the sacrifices that our Founders made in order to establish and secure our precious freedoms? Do we find them in Washington D.C.?

Do we find them in our churches? What has become of the true American patriot?

What can be done to reverse this self-destructive journey that is rapidly leading to this nation's demise?

The real question today is do we even have adequate numbers these tireless patriots who are willing to lay their very lives on the line by starting brushfires of freedom wherever they may live?

The answers lie in first asking ourselves how were our founders able to develop the necessary character traits which compelled them to such indomitable actions?

Our Founders themselves have given us the clear answer: it is because they were true Christians after the manner of Jesus Christ Himself.

Thomas Jefferson: "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator."

One of our greatest challenges in today's society is finding true Christians who will not compromise their claimed principles for the sake of political expediency or for desired influence or power. We often hear from those religionists, who claim to be Christians, but they lack faith when confronted by those whom they think have power and influence.

Patrick Henry: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For that reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of worship here."

Who are these "religionists"? Where do we find these false Christians and false patriots in today's society?

"The religion builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so unconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers.....Happy the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity.

"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in His genuine words." — Thomas Jefferson

Unfortunately we find them all around us, in our churches, elected officials, courts of justice, schools.

How can we recognize these wolves in sheep's clothing?

They are the compromisers, the middle of the roaders, the marshmallow, cotton candy ministers, legislators, judges and teachers who are afraid to stand up for godly and constitutional principles when the heat is on. They believe in peace at any price, even if it means giving up our God-given freedoms of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

"...[W]e live in a great and free country only because our forefathers were willing to wage war rather than accept the peace that spells destruction." — Teddy Roosevelt

Whose responsibility is it to oust these phony naysayers? It is clearly and profoundly We the People's responsibility, that's who!

"If there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own — that thing is the preservation of their own liberties and institutions." — Abraham Lincoln

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." — Plato

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature ... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces." — President James Garfield in 1877

Noah Webster had it exactly right:

"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers 'just men who will rule in the fear of God.' The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes; Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a Republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws."

What specifically do We the People need to do to prepare ourselves to be capable doing our godly duty of electing good and wise people to office and maintaining our god-given freedoms?

First of all, we need to be true and courageous Christians. We need to be willing to follow Christ's example in our daily lives and those undaunted examples of our Founding Fathers and brave patriots, by organizing ourselves and acting upon the principles we believe in.

From President Andrew Jackson, the declaration: "The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests."

We need to elect to office on the local, state and national levels men and women who will not compromise the basic principles of our Founding documents for the sake of political expediency. How can we do this?

Each American needs to stand up and be counted. God will not bless us if we sit on our couches or in our coffee shops and complain but take no action.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." — Edmund Burke

"To sit home, read one's favorite newspaper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing." — Theodore Roosevelt

We need to educate ourselves about the important issues that effect our daily lives — the right to life, the right to worship, freedom of expression, the importance of a quality education for our children and grandchildren, the right to protect ourselves.

"This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins." — Ben Franklin

One of the most important challenges we as Americans have is making sure that we understand the basic principles underlying the U. S. Constitution so that we can be well-informed and elect folks to office that will honor that divinely inspired document.

Thomas Jefferson stated: "On every question of Construction (of the Constitution) lets us carry our-selves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

It is unfortunate that so many citizens, elected officials and judges just plain have no idea what the Constitution should mean to us in our daily lives and what each of us needs to do to keep that sacred document alive and well.

"Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right." — Joseph Sobran

Our Founders pledged their lives, families, honor, property, literally all they had, so that we could be blessed by adhering to the principles of the Constitution.

When the British government made the Church of England the state religion and persecuted those devout worshipers who chose other religions the stage was finally set for migration to the new world, as a place where each could worship according to the dictates of his own conscience.

Then, we need to take action, to seek, find, support and elect to office those courageous individuals who will support and defend the principles of the Constitution, at all costs.

Most of the political rhetoric we hear today from elected officials, party leaders and candidates, from both sides of the isle, is that of compromising away the principles of the Constitution. Rather than sticking their necks out to stand up for what is right they claim that staying in the "middle of the road" and "coming together" is the only way to make progress. Nonsense.

"Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." — Thomas Paine

"Always stand on principle even if you stand alone." — President John Adams

"Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." — Thomas Paine

We need to study the scriptures and the Constitution, attend church, school board, city council, county board and other important meetings and speak out for the principles of Christianity and divine, constitutional principles of freedom. If we do anything less we do not deserve to be called true Christians, nor do we deserve the freedom for which our brave soldiers die every day.

We need to be willing to fight for the return of Christian principle to the classroom.

In 1782, the United States Congress voted this resolution: "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."

Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures: "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies, is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation for our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."

"Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure ourselves what that life would be if these standards were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves." — Theodore Roosevelt

It is only if We the People are willing to stand up for truth and right that positive changes will take place in our society.

Benjamin Franklin said, "He who shall introduce into the public affairs the principles of a primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world."

It has been said that you can lead a horse to water but you make him drink. If we wish to have a positive permanent influence to change people's lives for good it needs to come from the inside; the heart needs to change and the rest will follow.

Thomas Jefferson: "The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart."

We may also be amazed at how much can be accomplished by a few and how widespread our local efforts may eventually become.

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." — Edward Everett Hale

"...[I]t is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own." — Benjamin Franklin

"I hear many condemn these men [Founding Fathers] because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?" -Henry David Thoreau

"In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." — Mark Twain

George Washington said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

If we are not indeed willingly to learn and live the Christian principles that we claim to believe; if we are not willing to stand up for the truth of God and the Constitution what will be the results?

President John Adams advised: "Statesmen...may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.... The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."

"It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

"And, insomuch as we know that by his divine law Nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishment and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our nation reformation as a whole people?

"We have the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all of these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom or virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

"It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the Offended power, to confess our national sins, and pray for clemency and forgiveness." — President Abraham Lincoln.

Of what great national sins are we presently guilty which resulting in the withholding of God's blessings and justifying God's punishment?

What sin is greater and more deserving of punishment than allowing, through edict of the supreme court, the taking of over 40,000,000 innocent lives. This heinous act of infanticide and genocide in direct violation of our first God-given right: the right to life.

There are many important issues in this country which We the People need to deal with and correct, but none is more urgent and crucial that protect the innocent unborn. If we can't eliminate this devilish practice the Lord will certainly not bless us, let alone withhold deserved punishment.

9-11 is a timely example of how God reminds us that we need to repent. Unfortunately, among most Americans, the positive effects of this monumental reminder did not last long.

There are many ways to slay this satanic abortion dragon, but legal remedies can be the most effective IF we properly and effectively used the organic (Declaration and Constitution) law of the land as the basis upon which we present our legal argument.

"At the heart of the controversy in these cases are those recurring pregnancies that pose no danger whatsoever to the life or health of the mother but are, nevertheless, unwanted for any one or more of a variety of reasons — convenience, family planning, economics, dislike of children, the embarrassment of illegitimacy, etc. ... I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. ... As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court." — Justice Byron R. White — dissenting opinion.

"Our Supreme Court's decision in Roe is certainly not the final word on the issue of abortion, just as the Court was not the final word on slavery in Dred Scott. Our system gives us the opportunity to rectify past wrongs. It is my fervent hope and prayer for America that we base our laws on what science tells us: namely, that the young human embryo is a human life. I believe that I will live to see the end of the abortion industry, and the sanctity and dignity of every human life affirmed. Until then, abortion will continue to prod the conscience of our nation. Great labors remain before us, but the rights and lives of unborn children are absolutely worth our efforts. Reagan was our first great pro-life president, and surely others will follow in his footsteps. His legacy endures and the pro-life movement continues to make steady progress. We have come a long way since Reagan's 1983 essay, and we have a long way to go, but we are on the right track. On behalf of the unborn, let us pray and persevere; and may God bless America." — Senator Sam Brownback

The consequences of substituting the opinions of unelected federal judges for the plain text of the Constitution[5] is described by Justice Scalia[6]:

"[W]hen a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theoretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean." Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 621 (1857) (Curtis, J., dissenting).

Both the Declaration and Constitution are pro-life documents.

The 5th and 14th Amendments use the same language as does the Declaration in describing our three most fundamental and important God-given rights- "Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (property)." These three should trump all other constitutional rights, when courts need to make such determinations.

"It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power [the judiciary] is independent of the nation." — Thomas Jefferson

But until We the People have the courage kick out pro-abortion legislators and judges our unborn children will continue to suffer and this nation will continue on its downward path to self-destruction.

"[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, . . . the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." President Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1861), reprinted in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, p. 139 (1989).

"One single object...[will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation." — Thomas Jefferson

"For liberty, we need a respected judiciary. For the sake of preserving our liberty, we need to insist that the courts begin again to deserve the respect from a free people that makes their work possible. Bringing such discipline to the judiciary is, at bottom, a political task. It is one more essential job that only a principled and vigilant citizenry can accomplish." — Alan Keyes

The next satanic dragon which we need to slay, one that also has a profound destructive effect on society, is the sin of homosexuality. The scriptures make it abundantly clear that the Lord created a man and a woman (Adam and Eve) to procreate human life upon this earth. The unions of men with men and women with women, or any ungodly combination thereof, are gross and devilish acts, which cannot be tolerated by a Christian people.

In dealing with homosexuality we need to follow the Savior's example- hate the sin and love the sinner. These unfortunate folks, who have been fool by Satan's minions, can be saved through tough love and can return to lead the normal and productive lives of a traditional family, with its attendant blessings.

We the People must be willing to give our all to set these brushfires of freedom throughout America. If we will God will bless us and our beloved country.

© Ben Thompson