Race Relations and Cultural Conflict
Race Relations and Cultural Conflict
The culture of a community concerns a community’s universalizing individual sensibilities, in life styles, during the maintenance of the individual and the community’s healthful well-being. The word culture derives from the ancient Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero’s (106 BC-43BC) employment of the terms cultura animi to describe the cultivation of the soul.
Though most secularists hold that ancient Greco-Roman culture is the world’s greatest culture, the Landscape of Truth’s 6th and 7th chapters demonstrate how Protestant Christianity alone created a cultural synthesis that enabled the enfranchisement of the commoner and the West’s upward social mobility. Taking lessons learned from the Landscape of Truth, we can assess in various ways how the peoples of former European colonies and other non-Western peoples, who did not experience Europe’s cultural maturation, struggle in today’s global economy: we can assess how non-European cultures retain kindred prejudices and indigenous religious practices that undermine Western principles. As well, we can assess how the West loses its strength as it moves away from its Christian identity, seeking to incorporate pagan practices that Europe’s ancestors have long since abandoned after they adopted Christianity.
The Landscape of Truth’s sixth chapter traces the maturation and decline of the natural succession of cultures, during the cultures’ life cycles. The Landscape describes how degrees of disenfranchisement occur as cultures’ economies advance in sophistication beyond the patriarchic kindred group based societies unto modernity’s individual, contract-based society: in succession, the Landscape’s chapter 6 details how degrees of liberty and oppression occur in patriarchic, monarchic, aristocratic, democratic, and modernity’s bicameral, federal or parliamentary governments. The Landscape details how most people are generally enfranchised in patriarchic agrarian societies. Afterward, the Landscape notes how segments of the population become disenfranchised as higher level civilization arises upon specialization and the division of labor. Chapter 6 of the Landscape details how classism first arises in monarchies and aristocracies. Subsequently, the Landscape details how a middle class arises in democratic societies, which eventually succumbs to anarchy as individualist spirits and kindred and religious prejudices rob the societies of their social consensus. Next, the Landscape’s 6th chapter details how federal autocracies eventually rule over a conglomerate of diverse peoples, upon which nihilistic governments conceal injustices for the sake of the governments’ stability. At the last, the Landscape’s seventh chapter discusses how Christianity reconciled the Germanic kindred groups and how Protestants enfranchised the commoners by reconciling all, despite class, kindred group, religious work, race, and male or female sex. Like so, the Landscape details how the Protestant Church nurtured Western culture’s upward social mobility.
The Landscape of Truth’s seventh chapter concludes by detailing how socialist and capitalist liberal forces gradually give rise to a nihilistic and centralized autocratic government. Chapter 7 details how the liberal forces unsuccessfully seek to transfer Western sensibilities to non-Western cultures that did not experience Europe’s cultural maturation under Christianity.
The Landscape of Truth’s seventh chapter concludes by detailing how socialist and capitalist liberal forces gradually give rise to a nihilistic and centralized autocratic government. Chapter 7 details how the liberal forces unsuccessfully seek to transfer Western sensibilities to non-Western cultures that did not experience Europe’s cultural maturation under Christianity.
What Happens After Trump? The Pending Political Realignments that Will Decide Whether Western Democracy’s Embrace of Post-Cold War Globalism Is Sustainable
Published May 20, 2019 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
Well known is the fact that self-serving political leaders are the greatest internal threat to democracy: the one system of government that consigns its leaders to be nothing more than formal representatives of the citizens’ will and interests.
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Therefore, to be a truly astute political observer, one must have the capacity to discern whether a political leader’s speeches are expressions of the leader’s sincere convictions to fight for and secure the best interests of the people; or the observer must have the aptitude to discern whether a political leader’s speeches are expressions of the leader’s self-serving interests that play upon the people’s wants and insecurities in order for the leader to exploit the people’s support. Only by discerning a political leader’s true intentions can the political observer assess the political leader’s vision, leadership, and effectiveness in safeguarding the people’s democratic government and prosperity.
As the New Testament scriptures suggest, one may gauge the sincerest expression of a person’s efforts to aid another when that person risks harm to him or herself during the efforts. The ultimate expression of one’s sincerity, Lord Jesus captures when he said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” Thus, a sound measure that political observers employ in their efforts to gauge the sincerity of a political leader is the observer’s assessing the personal risks that the political leader incurs, in terms of the leader’s life, livelihood, and reputation, as the leader seeks the good for whom he or she seeks to serve. Likewise, a political observer discerns a political leader’s ill-will if the leader has obvious gains, while putting at risk the lives, livelihood, and reputation of those whom the leader purports to serve.
Howbeit, the best political observer cannot always draw the stark contrast between benevolent intentions and malevolent intentions: often at critical moments, political leaders purposely rouse their supporters, either to reinvigorate the leaders themselves, or to encourage their supporters to endure whatever hardships that stand in the way of securing their goals. Yet, all too often, political leaders initially harbor good intentions but then become seduced by their own popularity and ability to manipulate the masses. Routinely, we witness these political misfortunes immediately preceding the rise of dictators. Then, boundless are the spirits of patriots who seek to overthrow the tyrant.
Our nation, the United States of America, has so far not succumb to the oratorical charms of tyrants; moreover, the nation has so far survived several critical challenges where our developing nation questioned whether it could assimilate and make all cultures compatible with democracy and its free market. Now having the advantage of historical hindsight in assessing how our democracy survived the several critical challenges, we can gauge the effectiveness of America’s political leaders. We can see that during uncertain times, political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum have employed both sincerity and manipulation in their sundry attempts to guide the nation through the challenges that threatened its democracy.
In its very formation, we see the first challenge that our nation, the United States, faced. In order to form the United States of America as a democracy, the founders who instigated the nation’s Declaration of Independence had to overcome the dramatic cultural and moral conflict between, first, southern states that British mercantile, joint-stock companies organized around slave labor and, second, northern states that British companies did not employ slave labor to organize. And so, in order to unite all the former British colonies under one federal government of an United States of America, the framers of the U.S. Constitution deferred the question of not only the liberty of slaves, but also the full political enfranchisement of women. The framers allowed individual states to determine full voting rights, and the states overwhelmingly gave property holding European-American males full political enfranchisement.
Many now criticize the framers of the U.S. Government as having had characters that were self-serving and hypocritical since they allowed the continuation of slavery, while pursuing the liberty of European American males only. Nevertheless, the vast majority of political observers acknowledge the sincerity of the framers: we can determine that the framers’ beliefs and efforts to secure the Colonial Americans’ independence as sincerely benevolent. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the framers not only risked their livelihoods and reputation, but also risked their lives, because they knew that their British opponents could have likely won the war and hung them for treason. And so, we can easily attest their leadership, vision, and effectiveness from the fact that government daily takes heed to their admonishments: President George Washington’s Farewell address, which admonishes the nation to avoid factionalism and foreign dependent entanglements, is annually read in the United States’ Senate to this day. The visionary first American President, George Washington (1732-1799), understood that party and kindred group factionalism as well as foreign dependency and allegiances are the very elements that will threaten the American democracy for as long as it stands. In fact, our third President, the likewise visionary Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) who himself owned slaves, predicted how the injustice of slavery would tear the democracy apart. Jefferson said, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
In consideration of the rampant factional strife that they experienced, the framers of the U.S. Government feared that the American democracy would not survive a generation. The framers’ fears proved to be justified. A mere generation later, the burgeoning industrial power of the Northern states as well as the rapid incorporation of new states for the union proved that the democratic principles that the framers’ enshrined into law were sound. At the same time, the framers’ fears that factional strife would tear the democratic union apart proved to be justified as well.
Indeed, we witness the second critical challenge that the American democracy faced as the Union questioned could it morally embrace industrial modernity and geographic expansion with 12.6 percent of the population enslaved.
As the New Testament scriptures suggest, one may gauge the sincerest expression of a person’s efforts to aid another when that person risks harm to him or herself during the efforts. The ultimate expression of one’s sincerity, Lord Jesus captures when he said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” Thus, a sound measure that political observers employ in their efforts to gauge the sincerity of a political leader is the observer’s assessing the personal risks that the political leader incurs, in terms of the leader’s life, livelihood, and reputation, as the leader seeks the good for whom he or she seeks to serve. Likewise, a political observer discerns a political leader’s ill-will if the leader has obvious gains, while putting at risk the lives, livelihood, and reputation of those whom the leader purports to serve.
Howbeit, the best political observer cannot always draw the stark contrast between benevolent intentions and malevolent intentions: often at critical moments, political leaders purposely rouse their supporters, either to reinvigorate the leaders themselves, or to encourage their supporters to endure whatever hardships that stand in the way of securing their goals. Yet, all too often, political leaders initially harbor good intentions but then become seduced by their own popularity and ability to manipulate the masses. Routinely, we witness these political misfortunes immediately preceding the rise of dictators. Then, boundless are the spirits of patriots who seek to overthrow the tyrant.
Our nation, the United States of America, has so far not succumb to the oratorical charms of tyrants; moreover, the nation has so far survived several critical challenges where our developing nation questioned whether it could assimilate and make all cultures compatible with democracy and its free market. Now having the advantage of historical hindsight in assessing how our democracy survived the several critical challenges, we can gauge the effectiveness of America’s political leaders. We can see that during uncertain times, political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum have employed both sincerity and manipulation in their sundry attempts to guide the nation through the challenges that threatened its democracy.
In its very formation, we see the first challenge that our nation, the United States, faced. In order to form the United States of America as a democracy, the founders who instigated the nation’s Declaration of Independence had to overcome the dramatic cultural and moral conflict between, first, southern states that British mercantile, joint-stock companies organized around slave labor and, second, northern states that British companies did not employ slave labor to organize. And so, in order to unite all the former British colonies under one federal government of an United States of America, the framers of the U.S. Constitution deferred the question of not only the liberty of slaves, but also the full political enfranchisement of women. The framers allowed individual states to determine full voting rights, and the states overwhelmingly gave property holding European-American males full political enfranchisement.
Many now criticize the framers of the U.S. Government as having had characters that were self-serving and hypocritical since they allowed the continuation of slavery, while pursuing the liberty of European American males only. Nevertheless, the vast majority of political observers acknowledge the sincerity of the framers: we can determine that the framers’ beliefs and efforts to secure the Colonial Americans’ independence as sincerely benevolent. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the framers not only risked their livelihoods and reputation, but also risked their lives, because they knew that their British opponents could have likely won the war and hung them for treason. And so, we can easily attest their leadership, vision, and effectiveness from the fact that government daily takes heed to their admonishments: President George Washington’s Farewell address, which admonishes the nation to avoid factionalism and foreign dependent entanglements, is annually read in the United States’ Senate to this day. The visionary first American President, George Washington (1732-1799), understood that party and kindred group factionalism as well as foreign dependency and allegiances are the very elements that will threaten the American democracy for as long as it stands. In fact, our third President, the likewise visionary Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) who himself owned slaves, predicted how the injustice of slavery would tear the democracy apart. Jefferson said, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
In consideration of the rampant factional strife that they experienced, the framers of the U.S. Government feared that the American democracy would not survive a generation. The framers’ fears proved to be justified. A mere generation later, the burgeoning industrial power of the Northern states as well as the rapid incorporation of new states for the union proved that the democratic principles that the framers’ enshrined into law were sound. At the same time, the framers’ fears that factional strife would tear the democratic union apart proved to be justified as well.
Indeed, we witness the second critical challenge that the American democracy faced as the Union questioned could it morally embrace industrial modernity and geographic expansion with 12.6 percent of the population enslaved.
As it were by divine providence, we may credit one man as being responsible for answering this question. And that man is Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), the 16th President of the United States. Having been universally known as an abolitionist (a vocal advocate for the abolition of slavery), President Lincoln garnered enough northern states supporters to win the 1960 presidential election. And his election immediately initiated the secession of southern slave owning states who feared that the northern states supporting Lincoln would rob them of their constitutional rights of property and self-determination. Lincoln, therefore, used the full industrial strength and military man-power of the northern states to force the southern states to return into the Union. Lincoln then emancipated the slaves, giving them constitutional liberty for once and for all.
A paragon of virtue seems to be the appropriate appellation that captures the commendation that is due to President Abraham Lincoln for achieving the universal liberty that the framers could not achieve; however, many contemporary critics note how Lincoln often sought to save the Union by accepting a gradual emancipation of the slaves as a compromise. Yet, we can establish Lincoln’s sincerity by considering that for the preservation of the Union, Lincoln prosecuted America’s bloodiest war without compromise, in order to return the slave states to the Union. After he emancipated the slaves, Lincoln demanded the full subjugation of the south, despite many of his generals’ unwillingness to fight. In his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln commemorated the fallen and captured his vision and purpose for America’s future: he said that the new nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. He said that the bloody war was a test to see if the nation with such a proposition could endure. Lincoln then closed the speech by saying that the fallen died to preserve the nation’s sought after liberty. He said that we as a nation must finish their work “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
As we ought to, we still celebrate not only President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but also President Lincoln’s sincerity and vision informing the address. President Abraham Lincoln led the nation to live up to its democratic principles at the dawn of modernity: the age of industrialization and its increasingly integrative global commerce. And so, the increasingly integrative market forces instigated unforeseen domestic and foreign challenges that lead up to the global challenge that Western democracy faces today: that is, a global version of President Lincoln’s domestic challenge of expanding economically without forfeiting our principles.
The market forces triggered the unforeseen domestic challenges causing many to wonder could free citizens fairly use their private property to engage in the free market without exploiting their fellow citizens’ private property, leaving some enslaved by debt and penury. Likewise, the unforeseen challenges caused many to wonder could the necessary government intervention, to protect exploited citizens, avoid government’s inclination to become progressively autocratic. The nations’ industrialization meant the increase of urbanization, which resulted in a growing dependency upon a wage-earning means for the people to make a living, instead of their relying on the millennia old agrarian means for subsistence; therefore, industrialization brought about the peoples’ reliance upon the market-cycles of privately owned commercial businesses, and the centralized governments’ monetary and commercial policies that regulate the businesses for the supposed public good. And so, the unforeseen foreign challenge that the market forces also triggered centered upon the manner in which necessary market expansion oversees produced foreign entanglements as our nation necessarily defended other industrialized democracies from the industrialized nations that had succumbed to autocracy.
President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919); President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945); Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968); and President Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004) are among the key leaders that led the United States to overcome the immediate unforeseen challenges that industrialization presented to the American democracy; however, the lasting challenges that recent industrializing, undemocratic nations present, in the global economy, remain for contemporary leaders to overcome.
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt tackled the unforeseen domestic challenges that the integrating markets brought about; whereas the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King spearheaded the social challenges that had remained since the end of the American Civil War. Serving as president from 1901 to 1908, Theodore Roosevelt championed a “Square Deal” as the cornerstone for his domestic policies, in which he promised common citizens fairness. Vigorously enforcing the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, he either broke up or regulated large corporations. The highly popular theme of President Theodore Roosevelt’s speeches (a saying that he coined at a 1901 Minnesota state fair) was “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” In response, the people affectionately nicknamed the President “Teddy”, thinking of him as a big soft Teddy Bear, whose policies were tough and effective.
Next, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) held the presidency from 1933 to 1945. FDR championed a “New Deal” as his domestic policy to tackle the Great Depression, the greatest economic crisis that the nation has ever seen. FDR began is administration at the height of the Great Depression, which saw over a quarter of the U.S. population unemployed; banks closed in 32 states; and 8 million people homeless. FDR immediately issued a series of executive orders for recovery: he regulated the country’s banking system by creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And famously, FDR gave relief to the elderly, poor, sick, and unemployed through the Social Security Act, which drew money from individual income to be distributed to the needy.
Along with the future President Ronald Reagan, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also tackled the unforeseen foreign challenges that the integrating markets caused; whereas the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King’s tackling the resulting social challenges inspired changes in the dynamic of foreign countries that U.S. foreign policies still confront. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) resorted to gamesmanship and political craft to manipulate a highly pacifist U.S. public into reconfiguring the U.S. economy to protect the embattled democracies of Europe, during World War II.
Upon officially entering the war in response to the December 7th 1941 Japanese attack upon the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, FDR’s speech to congress envisioned that the profound consequences of the attack would recall December 7th 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” Indeed, FDR went on to oversee the development of the first Atomic bombs, which were dropped upon key Japanese cities. FDR then oversaw the creation of post-war institutes, including the United Nations, which seek to preserve and ensure global peace.
Then as returning African American soldiers witnessed the U.S. government liberate foreign peoples abroad, the soldiers inspired civil rights organizations to demand full equality for African Americans at home. In response, Doctor Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement to win their full constitutional liberties, which included full voting rights and the abolishment other economically disenfranchising practices. Doctor King primarily inspired political leaders to grant full citizen rights through his august speeches that pragmatically envisioned the public wealth that equality would gain for the generations that follow. “I have a dream,” King famously said. “Let freedom reign,” King sounded.
So primarily in response to the Civil Rights movement, the U.S. congress abolished a national origins quota in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. This act allowed non-Christian and non-European peoples to immigrate into the U.S.; moreover, this act now plays a key role in the present global challenge of new kindred group and religious factionalism that the American democracy had defeated centuries earlier.
Now, to impede freedom’s reign abroad stood the epitome of an industrialized autocratic super power, that is, the Soviet Union, which was the American democracy’s greatest unforeseen foreign policy challenge that the age of industrialization brought forth. And so, to meet this challenge stood President Ronald Wilson Reagan. President Reagan ended the decade’s old “Cold War” hostile standoff between the two major nuclear powers, that is, the United States and Soviet Union, by advancing America’s capitalist economy to fund its military over the Soviet Union’s socialist economy that could not match the U.S.’s output. In his famous speech before the German Capital City Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, which overlooked the other half of Berlin that the Soviets held captive, President Reagan roared to the Soviet leader, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
All Western democratic leaders recognized and celebrated the justice of President Reagan’s speech; however, none including Reagan understood the dire outcome that we experience today. Shortly following the end of Reagan’s presidency, the Berlin Wall came down, and shortly after that the Soviet Union fell. In its wake emerged the greatest unforeseen and yet to be understood challenge that Western democracies face. The challenge is preserving true democracy world-wide as we engage the global economy. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the integrative market forces compelled governments to initiate economic trade deals with non-Western and non-democratic countries. Ill-advisedly, Western leaders entered the freed-trade deals regardless of the non-Western countries’ lack of the freedoms that leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, President Theodore Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt, Reverend Martin Luther King, and President Reagan preserved in America.
Though some benefits appear as a result of globalism, the short-term and long-term ill-effects are becoming more apparent to many common citizens. Yet, mainstream politicians whose campaigns often benefit from the financing of global economic businesses routinely overlook private citizens’ concerns. Thus, currently no significant leader has arisen to articulate a vision that confronts the global challenge of preserving democracy; even as leaders have articulated before.
The curious rise of President Donald John Trump (b. 1946) is the surest sign that American leaders from all political sides do not understand the global challenge. Assuming the office of the presidency, on January 20th 2017, President Trump has garnered supporters from both sides of America’s two main political parties, the Republican Party and Democratic Party. Trump campaigned for the presidency using a series of speeches that spoke out against the ill-effects of globalism: Trump spoke out against the growth of illegal immigration; the offshoring of American jobs; the U.S. national debt; Islamic terrorism; and the needed renegotiating of U.S.-China economic relations and other free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
After his election, President Donald J. Trump made good on his campaign promises by renegotiating trade deals and fighting illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism. President Trump’s administration also saw a profound reinvigoration of the American economy as a result.
President Donald Trump’s critics, however, dismiss his temporal success as being the immediate outcome of a demagogue who whips up the prejudices of ill-effected people, causing short-term national excitement. We here at thelandscapeoftruth.com will not defend President Trump, personally, other than to say that Donald Trump has privately complained about foreign exploitation of the U.S. economy for decades; therefore, we take at least President Trump’s concern over the unfairness of international free trade deals to be sincere.
What we can say is that all sides of America’s political spectrum cannot overlook President Donald Trump’s proven policies that undermine globalism for the sake of preserving the prosperity of the American democracy. What all sides, including President Trump, are overlooking is the political realignments that must take effect in order to represent the people’s interests to overcome the challenges of the global world order that the current established alignment of political parties fail to understand. In point of fact, past political realignments either preceded or proceeded the above visionary leaders that we listed, in order to establish what the leaders envisioned for democracy’s continued advancement. Let’s take a brief look from a landscape perspective and see what political leaders need to accomplish in order to address the critical challenges of globalism.
A paragon of virtue seems to be the appropriate appellation that captures the commendation that is due to President Abraham Lincoln for achieving the universal liberty that the framers could not achieve; however, many contemporary critics note how Lincoln often sought to save the Union by accepting a gradual emancipation of the slaves as a compromise. Yet, we can establish Lincoln’s sincerity by considering that for the preservation of the Union, Lincoln prosecuted America’s bloodiest war without compromise, in order to return the slave states to the Union. After he emancipated the slaves, Lincoln demanded the full subjugation of the south, despite many of his generals’ unwillingness to fight. In his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln commemorated the fallen and captured his vision and purpose for America’s future: he said that the new nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. He said that the bloody war was a test to see if the nation with such a proposition could endure. Lincoln then closed the speech by saying that the fallen died to preserve the nation’s sought after liberty. He said that we as a nation must finish their work “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
As we ought to, we still celebrate not only President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but also President Lincoln’s sincerity and vision informing the address. President Abraham Lincoln led the nation to live up to its democratic principles at the dawn of modernity: the age of industrialization and its increasingly integrative global commerce. And so, the increasingly integrative market forces instigated unforeseen domestic and foreign challenges that lead up to the global challenge that Western democracy faces today: that is, a global version of President Lincoln’s domestic challenge of expanding economically without forfeiting our principles.
The market forces triggered the unforeseen domestic challenges causing many to wonder could free citizens fairly use their private property to engage in the free market without exploiting their fellow citizens’ private property, leaving some enslaved by debt and penury. Likewise, the unforeseen challenges caused many to wonder could the necessary government intervention, to protect exploited citizens, avoid government’s inclination to become progressively autocratic. The nations’ industrialization meant the increase of urbanization, which resulted in a growing dependency upon a wage-earning means for the people to make a living, instead of their relying on the millennia old agrarian means for subsistence; therefore, industrialization brought about the peoples’ reliance upon the market-cycles of privately owned commercial businesses, and the centralized governments’ monetary and commercial policies that regulate the businesses for the supposed public good. And so, the unforeseen foreign challenge that the market forces also triggered centered upon the manner in which necessary market expansion oversees produced foreign entanglements as our nation necessarily defended other industrialized democracies from the industrialized nations that had succumbed to autocracy.
President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919); President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945); Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968); and President Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004) are among the key leaders that led the United States to overcome the immediate unforeseen challenges that industrialization presented to the American democracy; however, the lasting challenges that recent industrializing, undemocratic nations present, in the global economy, remain for contemporary leaders to overcome.
Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt tackled the unforeseen domestic challenges that the integrating markets brought about; whereas the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King spearheaded the social challenges that had remained since the end of the American Civil War. Serving as president from 1901 to 1908, Theodore Roosevelt championed a “Square Deal” as the cornerstone for his domestic policies, in which he promised common citizens fairness. Vigorously enforcing the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, he either broke up or regulated large corporations. The highly popular theme of President Theodore Roosevelt’s speeches (a saying that he coined at a 1901 Minnesota state fair) was “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far.” In response, the people affectionately nicknamed the President “Teddy”, thinking of him as a big soft Teddy Bear, whose policies were tough and effective.
Next, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) held the presidency from 1933 to 1945. FDR championed a “New Deal” as his domestic policy to tackle the Great Depression, the greatest economic crisis that the nation has ever seen. FDR began is administration at the height of the Great Depression, which saw over a quarter of the U.S. population unemployed; banks closed in 32 states; and 8 million people homeless. FDR immediately issued a series of executive orders for recovery: he regulated the country’s banking system by creating the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And famously, FDR gave relief to the elderly, poor, sick, and unemployed through the Social Security Act, which drew money from individual income to be distributed to the needy.
Along with the future President Ronald Reagan, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also tackled the unforeseen foreign challenges that the integrating markets caused; whereas the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King’s tackling the resulting social challenges inspired changes in the dynamic of foreign countries that U.S. foreign policies still confront. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) resorted to gamesmanship and political craft to manipulate a highly pacifist U.S. public into reconfiguring the U.S. economy to protect the embattled democracies of Europe, during World War II.
Upon officially entering the war in response to the December 7th 1941 Japanese attack upon the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, FDR’s speech to congress envisioned that the profound consequences of the attack would recall December 7th 1941 as “a date which will live in infamy.” Indeed, FDR went on to oversee the development of the first Atomic bombs, which were dropped upon key Japanese cities. FDR then oversaw the creation of post-war institutes, including the United Nations, which seek to preserve and ensure global peace.
Then as returning African American soldiers witnessed the U.S. government liberate foreign peoples abroad, the soldiers inspired civil rights organizations to demand full equality for African Americans at home. In response, Doctor Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights movement to win their full constitutional liberties, which included full voting rights and the abolishment other economically disenfranchising practices. Doctor King primarily inspired political leaders to grant full citizen rights through his august speeches that pragmatically envisioned the public wealth that equality would gain for the generations that follow. “I have a dream,” King famously said. “Let freedom reign,” King sounded.
So primarily in response to the Civil Rights movement, the U.S. congress abolished a national origins quota in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. This act allowed non-Christian and non-European peoples to immigrate into the U.S.; moreover, this act now plays a key role in the present global challenge of new kindred group and religious factionalism that the American democracy had defeated centuries earlier.
Now, to impede freedom’s reign abroad stood the epitome of an industrialized autocratic super power, that is, the Soviet Union, which was the American democracy’s greatest unforeseen foreign policy challenge that the age of industrialization brought forth. And so, to meet this challenge stood President Ronald Wilson Reagan. President Reagan ended the decade’s old “Cold War” hostile standoff between the two major nuclear powers, that is, the United States and Soviet Union, by advancing America’s capitalist economy to fund its military over the Soviet Union’s socialist economy that could not match the U.S.’s output. In his famous speech before the German Capital City Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, which overlooked the other half of Berlin that the Soviets held captive, President Reagan roared to the Soviet leader, “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
All Western democratic leaders recognized and celebrated the justice of President Reagan’s speech; however, none including Reagan understood the dire outcome that we experience today. Shortly following the end of Reagan’s presidency, the Berlin Wall came down, and shortly after that the Soviet Union fell. In its wake emerged the greatest unforeseen and yet to be understood challenge that Western democracies face. The challenge is preserving true democracy world-wide as we engage the global economy. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the integrative market forces compelled governments to initiate economic trade deals with non-Western and non-democratic countries. Ill-advisedly, Western leaders entered the freed-trade deals regardless of the non-Western countries’ lack of the freedoms that leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, President Theodore Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt, Reverend Martin Luther King, and President Reagan preserved in America.
Though some benefits appear as a result of globalism, the short-term and long-term ill-effects are becoming more apparent to many common citizens. Yet, mainstream politicians whose campaigns often benefit from the financing of global economic businesses routinely overlook private citizens’ concerns. Thus, currently no significant leader has arisen to articulate a vision that confronts the global challenge of preserving democracy; even as leaders have articulated before.
The curious rise of President Donald John Trump (b. 1946) is the surest sign that American leaders from all political sides do not understand the global challenge. Assuming the office of the presidency, on January 20th 2017, President Trump has garnered supporters from both sides of America’s two main political parties, the Republican Party and Democratic Party. Trump campaigned for the presidency using a series of speeches that spoke out against the ill-effects of globalism: Trump spoke out against the growth of illegal immigration; the offshoring of American jobs; the U.S. national debt; Islamic terrorism; and the needed renegotiating of U.S.-China economic relations and other free trade agreements such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
After his election, President Donald J. Trump made good on his campaign promises by renegotiating trade deals and fighting illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism. President Trump’s administration also saw a profound reinvigoration of the American economy as a result.
President Donald Trump’s critics, however, dismiss his temporal success as being the immediate outcome of a demagogue who whips up the prejudices of ill-effected people, causing short-term national excitement. We here at thelandscapeoftruth.com will not defend President Trump, personally, other than to say that Donald Trump has privately complained about foreign exploitation of the U.S. economy for decades; therefore, we take at least President Trump’s concern over the unfairness of international free trade deals to be sincere.
What we can say is that all sides of America’s political spectrum cannot overlook President Donald Trump’s proven policies that undermine globalism for the sake of preserving the prosperity of the American democracy. What all sides, including President Trump, are overlooking is the political realignments that must take effect in order to represent the people’s interests to overcome the challenges of the global world order that the current established alignment of political parties fail to understand. In point of fact, past political realignments either preceded or proceeded the above visionary leaders that we listed, in order to establish what the leaders envisioned for democracy’s continued advancement. Let’s take a brief look from a landscape perspective and see what political leaders need to accomplish in order to address the critical challenges of globalism.
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The foundation and continuance of every nation and/or culture are a group of people’s regard for certain principles that define how they view their interaction with their environment and one another as they pursue their livelihoods. The lifecycle of the nation’s advancement or deterioration depends upon justness of the nation’s founding principles; moreover, the nation’s lifecycle depends upon the nation’s ability to maintain and agree upon its principles as the nation expands and encounters differing peoples and environments. When the nation finally fails to agree upon its founding principles, the nation’s lifecycle ends as the nation divides into hostile factions.
The greatest example of a nation advancing to encompass a multitude of diverse peoples, while staying true to its principles, is the people of ancient Israel’s expansion to encompass the vast majority of the global population, in the form of Christianity. From among a litany of Israelite principles that serve as the ethical basis of Western morality, we highlight one key principle that influences modern constitutional government; and that principle, which was foundational to ancient Israel’s ethical understanding, is the equality of all classes and people under the Law, under God.
In our website’s overview, we discuss the means through which the principle of the equality of all under the law, under God, became possible through the New Testament of the Israelite Messiah, the Christ. He first fulfilled and embodied the Israelite Law. Then, after death, he freely gave his eternal Holy Spirit to all who seek the eternal life and righteousness of the Law through simple faith and belief. Howbeit, what we have not discussed is the immediate challenge that the original Christian Israelites had in accepting the abstract manner in which the Christ’s New Testament annulled the actual religious rites that the Law prescribed: the New Testament proclaimed the justification of individual faith only, despite the religious rites. The difficulty that the original Israelite Christians had is that they revered the manner in which the Law decried amoral behavior, such as adultery, thievery, and slander; therefore, the Israelite Christians found it difficult to accept simple faith as justification without an adherence to the ethics of the Law. Thus, to explain the effectualness of the New Testament, an Israelite Jewish teacher, the Apostle Paul, detailed how the observance of the New Testament by faith seeks the liberty of the Law in a manner that detest the bondage of those repetitions of sins that the Law decries. In this manner, the Apostle Paul described how the New Testament fulfills the principles of the Law, making it possible for every individual to seek the Law’s righteousness in repentance, no matter what circumstance that the individual finds him or herself in, during the individual’s perennially imperfect life. The Apostle Paul’s doctrine reconciled the emerging factions of the early church, giving the church the stability to spread worldwide.
We emphasize the original Israelite Christians’ struggle to understand the abstract implications of the New Testament because their coming to terms with the New Testament’s justifying of individual faith (rather than justifying religious practices or other group-based recognition) is the key understanding that Protestant Christians returned to, as they inspired modern citizens to recognize the equality of all under constitutional government. Upon a people so naturally enlightened, the framers of the U.S. Constitution pragmatically adapted enlightenment philosophers’ prescriptions for constitutional governments to found the United States of America: they put forth a constitution that recognizes the God-given endowment of the individual and his or her rights. In this way, the framers codified the Christian ethos of equality under the law under God, in regards to respecting individual faith. And so, by securing individual allegiance to a constitution that protects individual rights, the framers overcame humanity’s tendency toward group-based factionalism. As a consequence, every philosophical, political, technological, and social advancement that the United States has achieved realized the nation’s ends by reconciling all achievements with the nation’s founding principles, inherent in its primarily Christian population.
To meet the aforementioned critical challenges, the United States’ continuously adapted its democratic government by realigning the nation’s political parties, in order to better represent the affected citizens; therefore, in order for the nation’s political parties to adapt and realign themselves while unifying the people under one government; they primarily agreed upon the nation’s founding principles. In this manner, they inhibited the diverse population from succumbing to the irreconcilable strife of foreign entanglement and factionalism: the two banes of democracy.
Like all modern constitutional governments, two major strains of political parties exist within America, despite the parties’ evolutions: the first strain is a party that embraces statism, that is, a party that supports a strong centralized government that intervenes socially and economically in attempts to ensure domestic equality. The second strain is a party that advocates libertarianism, that is, a party that seeks to diminish the centralized powers of government in the interests of the people’s individual liberty and the people’s unabated right to participate in a free market. Furthermore, as we initially concluded, the nature of democracy dictates that the representatives of either party only serve to express the will of the people; therefore, the common people’s capacity to overlook group-based allegiances and stay committed to the individual liberties that the constitution guarantees is the only bulwark against the respective party’s either succumbing to the tyranny of centralized government or the anarchy of a zealously free people’s conflicting values. Thus, the majority of people’s embrace of the New Testament principle of justification by individual faith, regardless of religious works or other group based allegiances, endowed the people with enough cultural cohesion to censure the excesses of both parties.
Our briefly qualifying the manner in which America’s two major political party strains adapted to meet the critical challenges to the American democracy will give us direct insight into the greatest challenge that the American democracy has ever faced; and of course that challenge is unfettered globalism. The challenges of globalism entail all the critical challenges that our leaders and political parties have overcome: globalism entails slave labor, a challenged that our nation defeated in a bloody Civil War. Globalism entails tyrannical socialist governments, a challenge that free Western nations defeated in two World Wars and a Cold War of economic and military attrition. And globalism entails the acceptance of billions of people who lack basic civil rights, a challenge that our nation defeated in a cultural revolution.
The initial American political party alignment stood between Federalists (who wanted a strong Federal government with strong fiscal and foreign policies) and the Democratic-Republican Party (who resisted a domineering Federal government and its foreign entanglement). The initial, that is, first, American political party alignment stood from the early 1790s to the mid-1820s.
The greatest example of a nation advancing to encompass a multitude of diverse peoples, while staying true to its principles, is the people of ancient Israel’s expansion to encompass the vast majority of the global population, in the form of Christianity. From among a litany of Israelite principles that serve as the ethical basis of Western morality, we highlight one key principle that influences modern constitutional government; and that principle, which was foundational to ancient Israel’s ethical understanding, is the equality of all classes and people under the Law, under God.
In our website’s overview, we discuss the means through which the principle of the equality of all under the law, under God, became possible through the New Testament of the Israelite Messiah, the Christ. He first fulfilled and embodied the Israelite Law. Then, after death, he freely gave his eternal Holy Spirit to all who seek the eternal life and righteousness of the Law through simple faith and belief. Howbeit, what we have not discussed is the immediate challenge that the original Christian Israelites had in accepting the abstract manner in which the Christ’s New Testament annulled the actual religious rites that the Law prescribed: the New Testament proclaimed the justification of individual faith only, despite the religious rites. The difficulty that the original Israelite Christians had is that they revered the manner in which the Law decried amoral behavior, such as adultery, thievery, and slander; therefore, the Israelite Christians found it difficult to accept simple faith as justification without an adherence to the ethics of the Law. Thus, to explain the effectualness of the New Testament, an Israelite Jewish teacher, the Apostle Paul, detailed how the observance of the New Testament by faith seeks the liberty of the Law in a manner that detest the bondage of those repetitions of sins that the Law decries. In this manner, the Apostle Paul described how the New Testament fulfills the principles of the Law, making it possible for every individual to seek the Law’s righteousness in repentance, no matter what circumstance that the individual finds him or herself in, during the individual’s perennially imperfect life. The Apostle Paul’s doctrine reconciled the emerging factions of the early church, giving the church the stability to spread worldwide.
We emphasize the original Israelite Christians’ struggle to understand the abstract implications of the New Testament because their coming to terms with the New Testament’s justifying of individual faith (rather than justifying religious practices or other group-based recognition) is the key understanding that Protestant Christians returned to, as they inspired modern citizens to recognize the equality of all under constitutional government. Upon a people so naturally enlightened, the framers of the U.S. Constitution pragmatically adapted enlightenment philosophers’ prescriptions for constitutional governments to found the United States of America: they put forth a constitution that recognizes the God-given endowment of the individual and his or her rights. In this way, the framers codified the Christian ethos of equality under the law under God, in regards to respecting individual faith. And so, by securing individual allegiance to a constitution that protects individual rights, the framers overcame humanity’s tendency toward group-based factionalism. As a consequence, every philosophical, political, technological, and social advancement that the United States has achieved realized the nation’s ends by reconciling all achievements with the nation’s founding principles, inherent in its primarily Christian population.
To meet the aforementioned critical challenges, the United States’ continuously adapted its democratic government by realigning the nation’s political parties, in order to better represent the affected citizens; therefore, in order for the nation’s political parties to adapt and realign themselves while unifying the people under one government; they primarily agreed upon the nation’s founding principles. In this manner, they inhibited the diverse population from succumbing to the irreconcilable strife of foreign entanglement and factionalism: the two banes of democracy.
Like all modern constitutional governments, two major strains of political parties exist within America, despite the parties’ evolutions: the first strain is a party that embraces statism, that is, a party that supports a strong centralized government that intervenes socially and economically in attempts to ensure domestic equality. The second strain is a party that advocates libertarianism, that is, a party that seeks to diminish the centralized powers of government in the interests of the people’s individual liberty and the people’s unabated right to participate in a free market. Furthermore, as we initially concluded, the nature of democracy dictates that the representatives of either party only serve to express the will of the people; therefore, the common people’s capacity to overlook group-based allegiances and stay committed to the individual liberties that the constitution guarantees is the only bulwark against the respective party’s either succumbing to the tyranny of centralized government or the anarchy of a zealously free people’s conflicting values. Thus, the majority of people’s embrace of the New Testament principle of justification by individual faith, regardless of religious works or other group based allegiances, endowed the people with enough cultural cohesion to censure the excesses of both parties.
Our briefly qualifying the manner in which America’s two major political party strains adapted to meet the critical challenges to the American democracy will give us direct insight into the greatest challenge that the American democracy has ever faced; and of course that challenge is unfettered globalism. The challenges of globalism entail all the critical challenges that our leaders and political parties have overcome: globalism entails slave labor, a challenged that our nation defeated in a bloody Civil War. Globalism entails tyrannical socialist governments, a challenge that free Western nations defeated in two World Wars and a Cold War of economic and military attrition. And globalism entails the acceptance of billions of people who lack basic civil rights, a challenge that our nation defeated in a cultural revolution.
The initial American political party alignment stood between Federalists (who wanted a strong Federal government with strong fiscal and foreign policies) and the Democratic-Republican Party (who resisted a domineering Federal government and its foreign entanglement). The initial, that is, first, American political party alignment stood from the early 1790s to the mid-1820s.
As the issue of slavery threatened to increase the factional divide between southern states that supported slavery (its being their key economic resource) and northern states that did not support slavery (its not playing a role in their commercial economy); the 1st political party realignment occurred to reconcile the will of the people, in respect of a united democratic government. First, President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), a slave holder, founded the Democratic Party, which stood for a libertarian republicanism that entailed states’ rights and a weak decentralized federal government. President Jackson’s Democratic Party, therefore, defended the rights of the South’s agrarian economy, featuring slave plantations. Then to oppose Jackson’s Democratic Party, a National Republican Party arose and soon became known as the Whig Party. The Whig Party represented northern middle-class peoples and northern business men; moreover, the Whig Party’s direct successor, the Republican Party, quickly succeeded it, in order to oppose the spread of slavery in newly created states.
The American Civil War, which the leader of the Republican Party—President Abraham Lincoln—commanded, decided the issue of slavery, giving victory to northern states, which successfully defeated slavery in the south. However, the northern states’ victory in the Civil War did not save the American democracy from being torn apart from factional strife. The willingness and capacity of both northern and southern common people to reconcile, without systemic animosity, saved the American democracy. Common ideals and commonly held faith enabled the people not to view their former foes as adversaries. The federal government thereby quickly allowed the southern states to send their representatives back to congress to resume the normalcy of one nation without retribution.
America’s 2nd political party realignment came in the early to mid-20th Century as a consequence of both domestic and foreign responses to the worldwide, economic Great Depression: so severe was the Great Depression that political leaders at home and abroad began to question whether capitalism and democracy were viable. Many governments (namely Russia, China, Italy, and Nazi Germany) began to adhere to some socialist practices that the 19th Century political philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) published in his notorious Communist Manifesto. The socialist governments began to abolish private property, political parties, freedom of the press, and religious practice; all to pursue a “common” classless society; moreover, the governments took over the means of industrial production. However, in America socialism failed to entice the vast majority of Americans, who were accustomed to governing themselves, while staying true to the principle of individual faith and volition. As an outcome, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instigated America’s 2nd political party realignment by transforming the libertarian Democratic Party into a statist party that supported his “New Deal” legislation that executed systematic government intervention into the economy. Yet, rather than the federal government’s succumbing to socialist-like tyrannical powers, like other 20th Century socialist tyrannies, America’s Republican Party, which had always supported free commerce, became more libertarian to limit the excesses of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.
The resulting American moderation of capitalism with some socialist public welfare safety nets became a good model for other Western democracies to follow, rather than their succumbing to tyranny. To this end, President Roosevelt led America to lead the fight in defeating Nazi Germany’s efforts to take over Europe in World War II. Furthermore, the American formula of a moderate capitalism propelled the United States into the position leading the creation of post-World War peace-keeping economic and international institutions, such the United Nations and the World Bank.
Though the American Democratic Party assumed a statist philosophy while the Republican Party assumed a libertarian philosophy as both parties sought to preserve American democracy from the fallout of Great Depression; the current Democratic and Republican Party realignment truly solidified in response to America’s mid-20th social revolution. The 1960s American social revolution primarily consisted of African Americans obtaining their full civil rights; changing attitudes toward social norms like sexuality; a growing acceptance of women in the work-place; an increasing criticism against American capitalism; and a growing acceptance of non-Christian cultures and people. Besides African American civil rights leaders’ being inspired by America’s liberating of foreign peoples after the World Wars; America’s first generation of college graduates in the late 1950s and 1960s instigated the social revolution. For the first time in human history, colleges throughout the Western world segregated young unmarried adults to live together away from the tutelage of their domestic family environment, exposing them to social lifestyles without traditional restrictions. Changing attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and marriage resulted; moreover, the fallout of these changing attitudes appeared in the 1980s and 90s in the form of a decrease in Church attendance, increased divorce rates, increase in sexually transmitted disease, and an increase in substance abuse.
During social upheaval of the 1960s, the Democratic Party harnessed the power of the Civil Rights Movement and the Social Revolution. For instance, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) championed his “Great Society” legislation, which sought to eliminate racial injustice and poverty. President Johnson also signed legislation allowing immigrants from Asia and non-Protestant European countries in South and East Europe. Nevertheless, conflicting attitudes arose in the public realm over every issue to the extent that the nation looked as though it was succumbing to anarchy as public riots appeared almost daily in the streets. In response, the Republican Party garnered the support of alarmed European Americans who supported libertarianism, capitalism, and Protestant Christianity. President Ronald Reagan came to power in 1980 in response to the fallout of the 1960s and 1970s social revolution. President Reagan successfully promoted capitalism, traditional Christian values, and libertarian democracy to the extent that Reagan led the Western world in defeating the Soviet Union, the world’s greatest socialist tyranny.
Still standing today is the political alignment between the social-welfare promoting statist Democratic Party and the free market capitalist promoting libertarian Republican Party; however, both parties stand incapable of addressing the critical challenges to the American democracy that post-Cold War globalism presents. For instance, the framers of the United States Constitution fervently warned their successors against the threats of foreign entanglement and factionalism; however, the global economy compels western leaders to end the identity of the nation-state itself, as the market forces seek to tear down national borders in the interests of the unfettered movement of labor forces and commerce. As Western borders and civil safeguards come down, globalism progressively undermines democracy in the subsequent manner: globalism first undermines the national consensus around universal principles, in regards to respecting individual liberty, as globalism intermingles peoples whose religious traditions are oppressive with groups of peoples whose traditions accept differences. Following, globalism intermingles free nations, which respect individual freedoms, with oppressive nations that allow slave labor, the confiscation of private property, and the denying of billions of people of their basic civil rights.
The unlikely capacity of President Donald Trump to gain supporters from both the Democratic and Republican parties pronounces the splits within both parties as they try to position themselves to address the peoples concern over the increasingly apparent ill-effects of globalism. Factions increasingly arise within the Democratic Party pitting Democratic representatives of new immigrant Hispanic, African, and Muslim Americans against the interests of European working class and progressive Americans. In the Republican Party, factions increasingly arise pitting Republican representatives who champion unfettered free trade against Republican representatives that support protectionist policies that protect American industries against unfair foreign competition.
To resolve these issues, we must keep in mind that democracy is a bottom up system of government, where the peoples’ voices rule; therefore, we must understand that we cannot depend entirely on the posturing of political leaders who may or may not prey upon the people’s fears, in order to gain the people’s support. Thus, to establish a sound basis for domestic and foreign policies that address the concerns of globalism, we must at all cost establish a general consensus around the principle of individual faith, belief, and liberty, which our public representatives must defend at all cost. For example, we must censure the belief systems of new immigrants ensuring that they respect and even champion the capacity for others to hold alternative beliefs. Many immigrants retain very prejudiced views against whole groups of people. Also, upon entering of free-trade deals, we must ensure that the nations that we enter agreements with have the same standards of living that we enjoy, in terms of civil and labor rights; else our entering trade agreements with nations who compromise individual rights will eventually diminish the political power of our individual rights. Future political leaders who respond to the people by proving the leaders’ sincerity at preserving true democracy in the new global order will find political parties realigned to support the democratic vision.
America’s 2nd political party realignment came in the early to mid-20th Century as a consequence of both domestic and foreign responses to the worldwide, economic Great Depression: so severe was the Great Depression that political leaders at home and abroad began to question whether capitalism and democracy were viable. Many governments (namely Russia, China, Italy, and Nazi Germany) began to adhere to some socialist practices that the 19th Century political philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) published in his notorious Communist Manifesto. The socialist governments began to abolish private property, political parties, freedom of the press, and religious practice; all to pursue a “common” classless society; moreover, the governments took over the means of industrial production. However, in America socialism failed to entice the vast majority of Americans, who were accustomed to governing themselves, while staying true to the principle of individual faith and volition. As an outcome, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instigated America’s 2nd political party realignment by transforming the libertarian Democratic Party into a statist party that supported his “New Deal” legislation that executed systematic government intervention into the economy. Yet, rather than the federal government’s succumbing to socialist-like tyrannical powers, like other 20th Century socialist tyrannies, America’s Republican Party, which had always supported free commerce, became more libertarian to limit the excesses of Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation.
The resulting American moderation of capitalism with some socialist public welfare safety nets became a good model for other Western democracies to follow, rather than their succumbing to tyranny. To this end, President Roosevelt led America to lead the fight in defeating Nazi Germany’s efforts to take over Europe in World War II. Furthermore, the American formula of a moderate capitalism propelled the United States into the position leading the creation of post-World War peace-keeping economic and international institutions, such the United Nations and the World Bank.
Though the American Democratic Party assumed a statist philosophy while the Republican Party assumed a libertarian philosophy as both parties sought to preserve American democracy from the fallout of Great Depression; the current Democratic and Republican Party realignment truly solidified in response to America’s mid-20th social revolution. The 1960s American social revolution primarily consisted of African Americans obtaining their full civil rights; changing attitudes toward social norms like sexuality; a growing acceptance of women in the work-place; an increasing criticism against American capitalism; and a growing acceptance of non-Christian cultures and people. Besides African American civil rights leaders’ being inspired by America’s liberating of foreign peoples after the World Wars; America’s first generation of college graduates in the late 1950s and 1960s instigated the social revolution. For the first time in human history, colleges throughout the Western world segregated young unmarried adults to live together away from the tutelage of their domestic family environment, exposing them to social lifestyles without traditional restrictions. Changing attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and marriage resulted; moreover, the fallout of these changing attitudes appeared in the 1980s and 90s in the form of a decrease in Church attendance, increased divorce rates, increase in sexually transmitted disease, and an increase in substance abuse.
During social upheaval of the 1960s, the Democratic Party harnessed the power of the Civil Rights Movement and the Social Revolution. For instance, President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) championed his “Great Society” legislation, which sought to eliminate racial injustice and poverty. President Johnson also signed legislation allowing immigrants from Asia and non-Protestant European countries in South and East Europe. Nevertheless, conflicting attitudes arose in the public realm over every issue to the extent that the nation looked as though it was succumbing to anarchy as public riots appeared almost daily in the streets. In response, the Republican Party garnered the support of alarmed European Americans who supported libertarianism, capitalism, and Protestant Christianity. President Ronald Reagan came to power in 1980 in response to the fallout of the 1960s and 1970s social revolution. President Reagan successfully promoted capitalism, traditional Christian values, and libertarian democracy to the extent that Reagan led the Western world in defeating the Soviet Union, the world’s greatest socialist tyranny.
Still standing today is the political alignment between the social-welfare promoting statist Democratic Party and the free market capitalist promoting libertarian Republican Party; however, both parties stand incapable of addressing the critical challenges to the American democracy that post-Cold War globalism presents. For instance, the framers of the United States Constitution fervently warned their successors against the threats of foreign entanglement and factionalism; however, the global economy compels western leaders to end the identity of the nation-state itself, as the market forces seek to tear down national borders in the interests of the unfettered movement of labor forces and commerce. As Western borders and civil safeguards come down, globalism progressively undermines democracy in the subsequent manner: globalism first undermines the national consensus around universal principles, in regards to respecting individual liberty, as globalism intermingles peoples whose religious traditions are oppressive with groups of peoples whose traditions accept differences. Following, globalism intermingles free nations, which respect individual freedoms, with oppressive nations that allow slave labor, the confiscation of private property, and the denying of billions of people of their basic civil rights.
The unlikely capacity of President Donald Trump to gain supporters from both the Democratic and Republican parties pronounces the splits within both parties as they try to position themselves to address the peoples concern over the increasingly apparent ill-effects of globalism. Factions increasingly arise within the Democratic Party pitting Democratic representatives of new immigrant Hispanic, African, and Muslim Americans against the interests of European working class and progressive Americans. In the Republican Party, factions increasingly arise pitting Republican representatives who champion unfettered free trade against Republican representatives that support protectionist policies that protect American industries against unfair foreign competition.
To resolve these issues, we must keep in mind that democracy is a bottom up system of government, where the peoples’ voices rule; therefore, we must understand that we cannot depend entirely on the posturing of political leaders who may or may not prey upon the people’s fears, in order to gain the people’s support. Thus, to establish a sound basis for domestic and foreign policies that address the concerns of globalism, we must at all cost establish a general consensus around the principle of individual faith, belief, and liberty, which our public representatives must defend at all cost. For example, we must censure the belief systems of new immigrants ensuring that they respect and even champion the capacity for others to hold alternative beliefs. Many immigrants retain very prejudiced views against whole groups of people. Also, upon entering of free-trade deals, we must ensure that the nations that we enter agreements with have the same standards of living that we enjoy, in terms of civil and labor rights; else our entering trade agreements with nations who compromise individual rights will eventually diminish the political power of our individual rights. Future political leaders who respond to the people by proving the leaders’ sincerity at preserving true democracy in the new global order will find political parties realigned to support the democratic vision.
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Well versed was the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr, in the New Testament scriptures. Being an accomplished minister, he not only knew the scriptures, but also lived them. As the Lord Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”; Doctor King expected to give his life. He often told his aide Andrew Young of his premonition of being assassinated. Because he carried on with his fight for social justice, despite the danger, many people recognized the sincerity of King’s message and mimicked his actions beyond King’s fight for civil rights.
Doctor Martin Luther King began with the efforts to gain full civil rights for African Americans. His accomplishments then compelled him to fight for the chronically poor. He led march after march, strictly adhering to non-violence, even as Lord Jesus taught, when he commanded his disciples to turn the other cheek and love thy enemy. King’s sway upon people was so effective that he provoked ardent responses wherever he went, keeping law enforcement alarmed. Though, Doctor King’s voice was silenced by an assassination’s bullet on April 4th 1968, the Christian principles that Doctor King lived by still inspire the quests for social justice all over the world. Indeed, we here at thelandscapeoftruth.com can only hope that we will one day soon see Doctor Martin Luther Kings arising in the tyrannical nations that threaten democracy today.
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The surest sign of an ailing democracy is the event when increasing numbers of citizens do not respect the outcome of an election. In recent years, large groups of supporters from both the Republican Party and Democratic Party have not accepted the result of the respective presidential elections of President Barack Hussein Obama II (b. 1961) and President Donald John Trump (b. 1946). Upon President Obama’s ascendency to office, many conservative groups questioned Obama’s being a naturally born citizen. Many Republican Representative promised not to work with President Obama on any legislation, ultimately hoping that his presidency would fail. Likewise upon President Trump’s ascendency to office, many liberal groups questioned whether Trump used the Russian government to steal the election from Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton (b. 1947). Many Democratic leaders quest to remove President Trump from office for newly manufactured reasons daily.
The effect of the two political parties’ inability to recognize the legitimacy of the peoples’ voice in electing either parties’ candidates is that the democratic process itself becomes dubious. Tyranny and anarchy approach as this attitude persists.
The effect of the two political parties’ inability to recognize the legitimacy of the peoples’ voice in electing either parties’ candidates is that the democratic process itself becomes dubious. Tyranny and anarchy approach as this attitude persists.
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The need effort to secure the principle for a respect for individual liberty and faith must be the Church’s first quest for the foreseeable future. The fall of such liberty threatens the freedom of worship. Protestant Christianity’s return to Apostolic Christianity recognizes the fact that not all will share the Christian faith. Nevertheless, the Church can teach all of its liberal impact upon Western society and challenge others to do the same.
Our doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth systematically demonstrates the liberty that the New Testament gains for Lord Jesus’ elect. The treatise details the rise of Western philosophy, economy, science, and theology for laypeople, in order to ultimately demonstrate the key role that the Church has played in Western society. The treatise is an excellent tool for laypeople and ministers to use, in order to raise awareness in the fight for the preservation of democracy and our freedoms.
Our doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth systematically demonstrates the liberty that the New Testament gains for Lord Jesus’ elect. The treatise details the rise of Western philosophy, economy, science, and theology for laypeople, in order to ultimately demonstrate the key role that the Church has played in Western society. The treatise is an excellent tool for laypeople and ministers to use, in order to raise awareness in the fight for the preservation of democracy and our freedoms.
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Though the challenges that America faces are profound, we here at thelandscapeoftruth.com stand encouraged. Many have tasted liberty’s rewards and will not rest unless they see such liberty preserved. We hope to be there as a tool for such patriots to use as we all fight the good fight. Please be there with us as we take more landscape views in the attempt to capture the big picture.
The Ignominious Funeral of General Robert E. Lee: A Historic Lesson That All Sides Of America’s Culture War Must Learn If the United States Is To Lead In Securing Western Democracy From The Threats Of Globalism
Published October 3, 2017 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
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On December 2nd 1863, the United States of American was a young, volatile, and war torn nation that had been fearing, mere months before, that their brief experiment with a representative government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” might indeed perish from the earth. Several decades before, the framers of the United States Government predicted that the new nation could fall apart by the hands of factions over the unresolved issue that a great portion of their population remained in shackles though their federal constitution declared freedom and liberty for all. The political factions forming over the issue of slavery and states’ rights gave birth to the American Civil War (1861-1865). The war resulted in above 620,000 casualties, almost equaling all other American wars combined.
But on December 2nd 1863, the Nation allowed itself a moment to exhale, for the war seemed to be drawing to a successful close. The Union seemed likely to remain unbroken. Poignantly, characteristic of the tumultuously evolving state of the Nation, which franticly sought to grasp the freedom that it once envisioned for all; a slave had proudly completed the foundry casting of the Statue of Freedom, because his Euro-American foreman went on strike for higher pay. The completed Statue of Freedom, a 19 foot, five thousand pound colossus, stood on display in 1862 until the United States Capital Building’s dome was completed. Then following the emancipation proclamation, which freed the African American slaves on January 1st 1863, freed slaves hoisted the Statue of Freedom on top of the United States Capital Building, to crown the newly built Capital Dome. Thirty five guns saluted the installation of the Statue of Freedom, with other guns firing from twelve fortifications surrounding Washington D.C., the Capital City.
The Statue of Freedom is a female character whose right hand holds and sheathed sword, while her left hand holds a wreath of victory as it clasp the shield of the United States. The Statue’s depicting a sheathed sword and an extended wreath is befitting of the United States Congress’ Capital Building because the statue characterizes a healthy democracy; where citizens who have different interests and convictions deliberate their interests peacefully for the better of all. As the Civil War drew to a close with the Nation remaining intact, modern democracy seemed to have survived its first great challenge of holding dissimilar people together though horrid levels of blood was shed.
The early Americans cautiously allowed a bit of optimism for the republic as they beheld the installation of the Statue of Freedom; however, even they would be amazed at the Nation’s current anxieties as we witness the return of factionalism, due to an ethnic and cultural divide. Now separating the Nation are different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and varying lifestyle choices often conflicting unlike ever before. Too, separating the Nation are different standards of living and access to education and healthcare. The American populace has become so dissimilar that representative bodies cannot effectively satisfy all; therefore, the people increasingly become disaffected by any government policy.
Though the American Civil War officially ended one hundred and fifty two years ago, the cultural incongruities that caused the war still remain for the government to resolve. In point of fact, we see in the streets people still fighting over Civil War icons, fearing that old prejudices still remain to oppress their lives. Bitterly, protestors have marched in the streets to tear down statues of General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870): the foremost Civil War protagonist. With ever growing fervor, the protestors answered violence from the defenders of the statue with violence.
Though we recognize that brief periods of violent demonstrations have generally succumbed to peace throughout our Nation’s history, we at thelandscapeoftruth.com have become alarmed at the current state of the Republic, because increasingly people are not accepting the results of free and fair elections: the very heart of democracy. Upon the 2008 election of President Barack Hussein Obama, many of his opponents stated that they will work to confound his administration, showing no effort to work with him for the betterment of the people. Likewise, upon the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump, many of his opponents regularly proclaim that he is not our President. We particularly find the public’s decreasing acceptance of election results alarming because widespread opposition to a presidential election outcome signaled the breakup of the Nation, immediately preceding the Civil War: when a vehemently anti-slavery, presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) won the November 6, 1860 presidential election, several Southern slave-states indicated that they would secede from the Union, months before Lincoln took office. In this way, the Confederate States of America arose.
As the widely opposed election of President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated, the lack of respect for election results spells the end of democracy and the beginning of public strife. In the spirit of avoiding public strife, let us attempt to find a common meeting ground for the opposing sides before the resorting to violence becomes common place. Let us take a landscape view to see the necessary cultural elements that made the American republic possible to begin with. Like so, we will endeavor to keep the Statue of Freedom’s sword sheathed, while we seek to extend a wreath of peace to all, even to those whom we disagree with.
The Statue of Freedom is a female character whose right hand holds and sheathed sword, while her left hand holds a wreath of victory as it clasp the shield of the United States. The Statue’s depicting a sheathed sword and an extended wreath is befitting of the United States Congress’ Capital Building because the statue characterizes a healthy democracy; where citizens who have different interests and convictions deliberate their interests peacefully for the better of all. As the Civil War drew to a close with the Nation remaining intact, modern democracy seemed to have survived its first great challenge of holding dissimilar people together though horrid levels of blood was shed.
The early Americans cautiously allowed a bit of optimism for the republic as they beheld the installation of the Statue of Freedom; however, even they would be amazed at the Nation’s current anxieties as we witness the return of factionalism, due to an ethnic and cultural divide. Now separating the Nation are different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and varying lifestyle choices often conflicting unlike ever before. Too, separating the Nation are different standards of living and access to education and healthcare. The American populace has become so dissimilar that representative bodies cannot effectively satisfy all; therefore, the people increasingly become disaffected by any government policy.
Though the American Civil War officially ended one hundred and fifty two years ago, the cultural incongruities that caused the war still remain for the government to resolve. In point of fact, we see in the streets people still fighting over Civil War icons, fearing that old prejudices still remain to oppress their lives. Bitterly, protestors have marched in the streets to tear down statues of General Robert E. Lee (1807-1870): the foremost Civil War protagonist. With ever growing fervor, the protestors answered violence from the defenders of the statue with violence.
Though we recognize that brief periods of violent demonstrations have generally succumbed to peace throughout our Nation’s history, we at thelandscapeoftruth.com have become alarmed at the current state of the Republic, because increasingly people are not accepting the results of free and fair elections: the very heart of democracy. Upon the 2008 election of President Barack Hussein Obama, many of his opponents stated that they will work to confound his administration, showing no effort to work with him for the betterment of the people. Likewise, upon the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump, many of his opponents regularly proclaim that he is not our President. We particularly find the public’s decreasing acceptance of election results alarming because widespread opposition to a presidential election outcome signaled the breakup of the Nation, immediately preceding the Civil War: when a vehemently anti-slavery, presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) won the November 6, 1860 presidential election, several Southern slave-states indicated that they would secede from the Union, months before Lincoln took office. In this way, the Confederate States of America arose.
As the widely opposed election of President Abraham Lincoln demonstrated, the lack of respect for election results spells the end of democracy and the beginning of public strife. In the spirit of avoiding public strife, let us attempt to find a common meeting ground for the opposing sides before the resorting to violence becomes common place. Let us take a landscape view to see the necessary cultural elements that made the American republic possible to begin with. Like so, we will endeavor to keep the Statue of Freedom’s sword sheathed, while we seek to extend a wreath of peace to all, even to those whom we disagree with.
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Since the 1776 founding of the United States of America, no American President has made greater efforts at preserving the American republic than President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Lincoln initiated a civil war in order to stop nearly half the American states from seceding from America’s representative federal government. The incredibly sagacious and prescient Lincoln perceived two factors that could destroy America’s republican government and thereby destroy the individual freedoms that the founders of America’s government had sought to ensure. Witnessing firsthand the unparalleled violence of America’s 1861 through 1865 Civil War, Lincoln understood that a cultural divide and the ensuing political factionalism threatened America’s union, first. Then witnessing how his government’s war machine stimulated integrating and proliferating industrial powers, which outpaced the government’s capacity to regulate them, Lincoln understood how capitalism’s commercial markets would unveil unseen ways for a minority of corrupt individuals to oppress the masses.
In 1838, two decades preceding America’s Civil War, the future President Abraham Lincoln addressed a Lyceum, a young men’s educational institute. In his address, Lincoln articulated the virtues of the American republic. But then as he decried the evils of slavery and the resulting political factions that the argument over slavery had brought about, Lincoln articulated the way in which factional infighting would be the only way a republic of a free people could fall. President Lincoln stated the following:
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? . . . . if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”
Under President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, the Northern Union states prevailed over the seceding Southern states to win America’s Civil War. As prescient as ever, President Lincoln marveled over the fact that his Union states did not prevail because of their military prowess. Indeed, Lincoln understood that the Southern Confederate generals, under their unequaled commander General Robert E. Lee, were superior fighters. Lincoln understood that the Northern Union forces prevailed because of the North’s industrial might. President Lincoln became so disconcerted over the untamed power of industrialization that he left off worrying over the inflaming passions of factionalism’s being a threat to the American Republic. Instead, he became profoundly concerned about the unforeseen ways that commercial power could be used to oppress the people. In fact, little did Lincoln know that future American Presidents would be called upon again to harness America’s industrial might to put down European tyrants who would arise to harness their industrial might and wage two World Wars, which resulted in unparalleled destruction. So even as he led the Union forces to a triumphant conclusion of America’s Civil War, President Lincoln foresaw the danger that ill-used commercial power posed; Lincoln wrote the following to one Col. William F. Elkins, in late November 1864:
“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruptions in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s witnessing the rise of industrialized commercial power gave him a keen insight into the danger that the power’s ill-usage posed. Though Lincoln had great discernment, the framers of the United States Government were also aware of the two greatest threats to the Republic, which Lincoln later articulated. The framers understood, well, the lethal threat that factionalism poses, as a consequence of ongoing cultural divides. They knew that the greatest cause of the cultural divides and ensuing political factions is the unequal distribution of wealth from the commercial economy. The Fourth President of the United States and drafter of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, James Madison (1751-1836), wrote the following concerning the origin of political factions:
“The greatest source of factions had always been the various and unequal distribution of property . . . . Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.”
So aware were they to the threats of political factions that the framers designed into the United States Federal Government the counterbalances of power between three major branches of government. Like so, the framers sought to check either the tyranny of a majority or the tyranny of a minority. Still, while the framers were aware of the economic origin of factionalism (even the political arrangements that primarily pursue the economic interests of single groups); the framers failed to appreciate the Protestant origin of the liberal culture that accepted a republican government, which seeks the liberty of the individual, despite the individual’s group-based religious belief, social background, kindred relation, and male or female sex. The framers themselves either observed the respective, primarily Protestant Christian denominations or held agnostic beliefs; therefore, they could not, as a body, appreciate the progressive-cultural effect, resulting from the Protestant Reformation against the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately, for the most part, the primarily Anglo-Saxon framers believed that other non-European cultures and peoples were merely inferior, being childlike and backward. This unfortunate attitude left the framers and subsequent American lawmakers ill-prepared to formulate domestic and foreign policies that ensure the Nation’s civil liberties for all; moreover, the framer’s inability to appreciate the liberal effect of the Protestant Reformation left them with misconceived expectations for the effect that their domestic and foreign policies would have on the non-Protestant cultures. In the end, the framers of the United States Federal Government could not effectively gauge the manner in which industrialized commercial powers would integrate society, leaving many without the ability to maintain living wages to extent that their economic and political standing were secure. Plus, the framers could not anticipate how non-Western cultures, with age-old group-based traditions, would not adapt Western liberties: they could not expect that the non-Western cultures would rather economically exploit their peoples for political gain and stability, on today’s global stage, than guarantee individual liberty and its accompanying economic and political instability.
As an aside, we must say that the United States Government’s inability to effect policy that deals with the inequitable rise of the global economy is of course why we created our website. As expressed in our overview, the general purpose for thelandscapeoftruth.com is to raise awareness of the fact that Christianity and particularly the Protestant Reformation are uniquely responsible for the rise of modern democracy. We respond to the fact that all sides of Western democracies’ social spectra fail to qualify theologically, philosophically, and politically the liberating power that infused early American culture with the capacity to overcome human history’s group-based social arrangements to establish a democratic government that ensures the liberty of the individual, while preserving the individual’s group-based political and social enfranchisement. As discussed in our overview, the resulting modern democratic state is the capacity of the constitutionally bound government to secure allegiances from the state’s individual citizens, despite the citizens’ kinship, religious, and sectarian allegiances. Our overview concludes that the modern state by definition is, therefore, an organization that ensures that individual citizens enjoy constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. It follows that the modern state’s law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than sectarian or religious doctrine, to the end that an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under social cast overlords, tribal directives, or religious orders.
Simply stated, thelandscapeoftruth.com qualifies the liberating power that infused early American culture with the capacity to accept the sovereignty of modern government as follows: we recognize that after centuries of religious strife early European Americans finally recognized that the foundational tenets of the New Testament consigns individual believers to adhere to their faith, while recognizing the full equality of others, even under a non-sectarian government. We recognize that the summary Christian doctrine that many Protestants approximated is that humanity can only temporally experience an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God as the prevalence of God’s right judgment and resulting Kingdom of Heaven over humanity’s imperfect judgments and resulting societies: that is, humanity can only experience an almighty God as the prevalence of his right judgment, even his righteousness, that his Logos expresses as the subsistence of a Christ, a savior to fulfill human personhood and the subsistence of a reconciling Holy Spirit to fulfill human community; both culminating in the Kingdom of Heaven, in which the beneficiaries of God’s Testament have the Testament freely written on their hearts, regardless of their self-aggrandizing religious works, kinship relations, social standing, and male or female sex. We, therefore, recognize that the direct consequence of early Protestant European Americans’ recognition of orthodox doctrine is that they began to accept that their faith is freely God given, regardless of their personal background, social standing, personal merit, and self-righteous religious works. As a consequence, we understand that Protestants became less prejudiced and judgmental of others (even family members) who did not personally share their faith. Like so, we understand that the Protestant cultures that arose in America and Europe became fertile ground for emerging democracies that stress the rights of individuals over the group-based arrangements of the past. Our overview recognizes how other religious sects do not have this individualism empowering quality, infusing their respective cultures.
Furthermore, thelandscapeoftruth.com understands that the problem that Western leaders have faced in their attempt to preserve true democratic government, since its 18th Century inception, is that they have not been able to identify, match, and safeguard the manner in which Protestant Christian culture has enabled individuals to overcome clanship and sectarian allegiances in order for all to benefit from the scientific development in government and economy that democracy’s free-commercial markets bring about. As we shall describe below, America’s bloody 19th Century Civil War and America’s resulting racial and cultural divide are direct consequences of American leadership’s inability to ensure amongst the general populace a universal sense of justice, welfare, and affinity that surpass an individual’s personal merit and the individual’s natural allegiances to faction, which compel the individual to show prejudice, during the pursuit of economic gain. The framers of the United States Government with subsequent American leadership have failed to appreciate how Protestant culture had initially gained for early Americans the sense of universal justice for the individual, no matter his or her station in life and moral capacity: the Protestants’ embrace of Apostolic Christian doctrines, which elevate the individual’s faith despite the individual’s social standing, had enabled Anglo-Saxon Europeans and Americans to overcome centuries of class and sectarian divides to embrace universal principles by way of democratic government. Furthermore, America and Europe’s struggle to preserve democracy and individual liberty, while the West seeks to establish fair global trade, is a direct consequence of Western leaders’ inability to recognize that non-Protestant global cultures entail group-based prejudices that withstand the need for Western governments to establish a universal sense of justice, welfare, and affinity that surpass an individual’s personal merit and the individual’s natural allegiances to faction, which again compel the individual to show prejudice, during the pursuit of economic gain.
Finally, our concern is that the alternative to Western leaders’ establishing a universal sense of justice, liberty, and enfranchisement, in the manner that the Protestant Reformation did for Europeans, is unspeakable. The modern commercial economy’s pursuit of profit incites the exploitation of the socially and politically vulnerable amongst world populations. Also, the burgeoning commercial economies require the increasing growth and centralization of governments to oversee the economy. Profound advances in the sciences have advanced industrial and governmental developments to the extent that the exploitation of the same can lead to the oppression of individuals to an extent that pre-industrialized societies have never seen. The industrialized World Wars I and II give evidence of the fact that the ill-usage of modernity’s governmental and economic power has dire consequences that human history has not seen.
Many framers of the United States Federal Government understood that their merely issuing a national constitution and accompanying laws could not guarantee that the general populace had the cultural sensibility to respect and appreciate the constitution over the populace’s group-based affiliations. In fact, as crowds gathered to hear the results of a closed-door United States Constitutional Convention (1787), a Mrs. Powel, amongst the crowd, asked one attendee and framer, Dr. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin swiftly replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? . . . . if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”
Under President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership, the Northern Union states prevailed over the seceding Southern states to win America’s Civil War. As prescient as ever, President Lincoln marveled over the fact that his Union states did not prevail because of their military prowess. Indeed, Lincoln understood that the Southern Confederate generals, under their unequaled commander General Robert E. Lee, were superior fighters. Lincoln understood that the Northern Union forces prevailed because of the North’s industrial might. President Lincoln became so disconcerted over the untamed power of industrialization that he left off worrying over the inflaming passions of factionalism’s being a threat to the American Republic. Instead, he became profoundly concerned about the unforeseen ways that commercial power could be used to oppress the people. In fact, little did Lincoln know that future American Presidents would be called upon again to harness America’s industrial might to put down European tyrants who would arise to harness their industrial might and wage two World Wars, which resulted in unparalleled destruction. So even as he led the Union forces to a triumphant conclusion of America’s Civil War, President Lincoln foresaw the danger that ill-used commercial power posed; Lincoln wrote the following to one Col. William F. Elkins, in late November 1864:
“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruptions in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
President Abraham Lincoln’s witnessing the rise of industrialized commercial power gave him a keen insight into the danger that the power’s ill-usage posed. Though Lincoln had great discernment, the framers of the United States Government were also aware of the two greatest threats to the Republic, which Lincoln later articulated. The framers understood, well, the lethal threat that factionalism poses, as a consequence of ongoing cultural divides. They knew that the greatest cause of the cultural divides and ensuing political factions is the unequal distribution of wealth from the commercial economy. The Fourth President of the United States and drafter of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, James Madison (1751-1836), wrote the following concerning the origin of political factions:
“The greatest source of factions had always been the various and unequal distribution of property . . . . Those who hold, and those who are without property, have ever formed distinct interests in society.”
So aware were they to the threats of political factions that the framers designed into the United States Federal Government the counterbalances of power between three major branches of government. Like so, the framers sought to check either the tyranny of a majority or the tyranny of a minority. Still, while the framers were aware of the economic origin of factionalism (even the political arrangements that primarily pursue the economic interests of single groups); the framers failed to appreciate the Protestant origin of the liberal culture that accepted a republican government, which seeks the liberty of the individual, despite the individual’s group-based religious belief, social background, kindred relation, and male or female sex. The framers themselves either observed the respective, primarily Protestant Christian denominations or held agnostic beliefs; therefore, they could not, as a body, appreciate the progressive-cultural effect, resulting from the Protestant Reformation against the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately, for the most part, the primarily Anglo-Saxon framers believed that other non-European cultures and peoples were merely inferior, being childlike and backward. This unfortunate attitude left the framers and subsequent American lawmakers ill-prepared to formulate domestic and foreign policies that ensure the Nation’s civil liberties for all; moreover, the framer’s inability to appreciate the liberal effect of the Protestant Reformation left them with misconceived expectations for the effect that their domestic and foreign policies would have on the non-Protestant cultures. In the end, the framers of the United States Federal Government could not effectively gauge the manner in which industrialized commercial powers would integrate society, leaving many without the ability to maintain living wages to extent that their economic and political standing were secure. Plus, the framers could not anticipate how non-Western cultures, with age-old group-based traditions, would not adapt Western liberties: they could not expect that the non-Western cultures would rather economically exploit their peoples for political gain and stability, on today’s global stage, than guarantee individual liberty and its accompanying economic and political instability.
As an aside, we must say that the United States Government’s inability to effect policy that deals with the inequitable rise of the global economy is of course why we created our website. As expressed in our overview, the general purpose for thelandscapeoftruth.com is to raise awareness of the fact that Christianity and particularly the Protestant Reformation are uniquely responsible for the rise of modern democracy. We respond to the fact that all sides of Western democracies’ social spectra fail to qualify theologically, philosophically, and politically the liberating power that infused early American culture with the capacity to overcome human history’s group-based social arrangements to establish a democratic government that ensures the liberty of the individual, while preserving the individual’s group-based political and social enfranchisement. As discussed in our overview, the resulting modern democratic state is the capacity of the constitutionally bound government to secure allegiances from the state’s individual citizens, despite the citizens’ kinship, religious, and sectarian allegiances. Our overview concludes that the modern state by definition is, therefore, an organization that ensures that individual citizens enjoy constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. It follows that the modern state’s law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than sectarian or religious doctrine, to the end that an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under social cast overlords, tribal directives, or religious orders.
Simply stated, thelandscapeoftruth.com qualifies the liberating power that infused early American culture with the capacity to accept the sovereignty of modern government as follows: we recognize that after centuries of religious strife early European Americans finally recognized that the foundational tenets of the New Testament consigns individual believers to adhere to their faith, while recognizing the full equality of others, even under a non-sectarian government. We recognize that the summary Christian doctrine that many Protestants approximated is that humanity can only temporally experience an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God as the prevalence of God’s right judgment and resulting Kingdom of Heaven over humanity’s imperfect judgments and resulting societies: that is, humanity can only experience an almighty God as the prevalence of his right judgment, even his righteousness, that his Logos expresses as the subsistence of a Christ, a savior to fulfill human personhood and the subsistence of a reconciling Holy Spirit to fulfill human community; both culminating in the Kingdom of Heaven, in which the beneficiaries of God’s Testament have the Testament freely written on their hearts, regardless of their self-aggrandizing religious works, kinship relations, social standing, and male or female sex. We, therefore, recognize that the direct consequence of early Protestant European Americans’ recognition of orthodox doctrine is that they began to accept that their faith is freely God given, regardless of their personal background, social standing, personal merit, and self-righteous religious works. As a consequence, we understand that Protestants became less prejudiced and judgmental of others (even family members) who did not personally share their faith. Like so, we understand that the Protestant cultures that arose in America and Europe became fertile ground for emerging democracies that stress the rights of individuals over the group-based arrangements of the past. Our overview recognizes how other religious sects do not have this individualism empowering quality, infusing their respective cultures.
Furthermore, thelandscapeoftruth.com understands that the problem that Western leaders have faced in their attempt to preserve true democratic government, since its 18th Century inception, is that they have not been able to identify, match, and safeguard the manner in which Protestant Christian culture has enabled individuals to overcome clanship and sectarian allegiances in order for all to benefit from the scientific development in government and economy that democracy’s free-commercial markets bring about. As we shall describe below, America’s bloody 19th Century Civil War and America’s resulting racial and cultural divide are direct consequences of American leadership’s inability to ensure amongst the general populace a universal sense of justice, welfare, and affinity that surpass an individual’s personal merit and the individual’s natural allegiances to faction, which compel the individual to show prejudice, during the pursuit of economic gain. The framers of the United States Government with subsequent American leadership have failed to appreciate how Protestant culture had initially gained for early Americans the sense of universal justice for the individual, no matter his or her station in life and moral capacity: the Protestants’ embrace of Apostolic Christian doctrines, which elevate the individual’s faith despite the individual’s social standing, had enabled Anglo-Saxon Europeans and Americans to overcome centuries of class and sectarian divides to embrace universal principles by way of democratic government. Furthermore, America and Europe’s struggle to preserve democracy and individual liberty, while the West seeks to establish fair global trade, is a direct consequence of Western leaders’ inability to recognize that non-Protestant global cultures entail group-based prejudices that withstand the need for Western governments to establish a universal sense of justice, welfare, and affinity that surpass an individual’s personal merit and the individual’s natural allegiances to faction, which again compel the individual to show prejudice, during the pursuit of economic gain.
Finally, our concern is that the alternative to Western leaders’ establishing a universal sense of justice, liberty, and enfranchisement, in the manner that the Protestant Reformation did for Europeans, is unspeakable. The modern commercial economy’s pursuit of profit incites the exploitation of the socially and politically vulnerable amongst world populations. Also, the burgeoning commercial economies require the increasing growth and centralization of governments to oversee the economy. Profound advances in the sciences have advanced industrial and governmental developments to the extent that the exploitation of the same can lead to the oppression of individuals to an extent that pre-industrialized societies have never seen. The industrialized World Wars I and II give evidence of the fact that the ill-usage of modernity’s governmental and economic power has dire consequences that human history has not seen.
Many framers of the United States Federal Government understood that their merely issuing a national constitution and accompanying laws could not guarantee that the general populace had the cultural sensibility to respect and appreciate the constitution over the populace’s group-based affiliations. In fact, as crowds gathered to hear the results of a closed-door United States Constitutional Convention (1787), a Mrs. Powel, amongst the crowd, asked one attendee and framer, Dr. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin swiftly replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
While the framers of the United States Federal government could not all appreciate how Protestant Christianity enabled Anglo-Saxon European Americans to overcome civilization’s group-based prejudices, many framers, both Christian and agnostic, had the Christian sensibility to know that a just Creator would visit the country to right the wrong of African American slavery, which the framers left in place at the Constitution’s signing. An agnostic President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the principal writer of America’s Declaration of Independence, anxiously predicted that the Creator would inevitably cause a revolution to free the slaves. In 1785, Jefferson stated the following:
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation . . . it may become probable by supernatural interference!”
President Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 prophecy concerning the Creator’s instigation of a revolution swiftly came true in the form of the United States’ Civil War (1861-1865). The war occurred at a critical period in U.S. history. The period marked the beginning of the Nation’s transition from being an agricultural economy to being an industrial economy. More importantly, the period gave the Nation the capacity to showcase before a mostly undemocratic world the individual liberties and free-market prosperity that Protestant Christian culture had instigated. Indeed, while slavery persisted throughout human history in places like the Greco-Roman world, Asia, India, and even Europe and England’s former American colonies; the Protestant progressive culture of the newly founded United States of America endured slavery just shy of 80 years: churches in the Northern non-slave States championed the abolitionist movement until the Nation began to divide over the question of whether newly organized States would became slave States or free.
The American Civil War would end slavery in the United States; however, the continuance of American leadership’s inability to appreciate the way the Protestant Reformation had cultivated the general public’s acceptance of individual liberties would stunt America’s capacity to secure libertarian cultures amongst the whole general populace at home and amongst the diverse peoples of the industrializing nations abroad. First, after the Civil War, the gross majority of the people would hold a common viewpoint that most still hold today: they would believe that all cultural backgrounds reconcile with the libertarian values of the modern democratic state. And like today, others would believe that the new republics were the happenstance outcome of European culture. Finally, an unfortunate perspective that had existed at the Nation’s founding and still remains today, amongst a vociferous minority, is the perspective that the new republics are not merely the happenstance outcome of European history; but are the consequence of European racial superiority.
Thus, not knowing how to duplicate the Anglo-Saxon and European cultural maturation (in which the general populace values individual rights over group-based affiliations); an increasing number of Western leaders and people would begin to pursue government sponsored social-programs that seek to inculcate an appreciation for Western lifestyles: that is, lifestyles that social policies govern by scientific investigation rather than sectarian or religious doctrine, to the extent that an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to social-cast overlords, tribal dictates, or religious orders.
We must say that employing science’s objectivity in the execution of government sponsored programs to secure healthful lifestyles and civil equity amongst the general population seems like a logical approach to ensure a vibrant democracy; however, as Doctor Benjamin Franklin and the other framers of the United States well knew, government policies cannot ensure that the people value liberty over their own selfish aims. Again, the framers discerned that factions arise during times of economic downturn, which cause people to seek their own advantage. The framers were well aware of how corruptible a government could become that wields the social programs that the general populace becomes dependent upon. The framers would not have been surprised at the rise of the highly socialist regimes of the German Nationalist Socialist Party (that is, the German Nazi Party) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (that is, the Soviet Union, the USSR). For this cause, the framers concentrated their greatest efforts upon limiting the size and scope of government, in order to preserve individual liberty.
The following is crucial for our understanding of the successful establishment of American representative government: the framers of the United States Government were aware of the fact that the cultural sensibilities to appreciate individual liberty existed amongst the Protestant Christian population of the American colonies, long before the framers established a sovereign government that the people then accepted. It is no wonder that many held the belief that the Anglo-Saxon, European Americans were particularly well suited for modern democratic government above other non-European peoples.
Protestant Christians also initiated progressive, commercial societies in England and Germany, compelling many of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants to believe in their racial superiority. What distinguished American Protestants is that America’s large laypeople Church attendance fostered a culture of civic participation; therefore, America possessed a grassroots democratic culture that inhibited the autocratic extremes of socialism that Germany and other industrializing countries experienced. The significance of the American Civil War is that the Confederate South institutionalized the belief that Europeans evolved to be racially superior: the Confederates believed that Europeans were more intellectually capable of appreciating modern democracy’s abstract defense of individual liberty over the group-based orders that unsophisticated societies remain under.
Because Protestant nations are still the wealthiest, the Protestant Church must overcome the Anglo-Saxon’s distorted racist beliefs by demonstrating that the New Testament principles that liberate the faith and volition of the individual, without prejudice to others, is the source of Western liberties. The aftermath of Civil War, however, unfortunately colored the Protestant Church as being a European religion. Like so, the Civil War not only initiated today’s racial divide, but also initiated today’s cultural divide as a consequence of non-Protestant immigrants settling in the Northern and Western states, after the war. One may justly conclude, therefore, that America’s ongoing cultural war is an extension of the American Civil War: a never ending conflict that began because modern democracy still struggles to secure, universally, the libertarian culture that the Protestant Reformation initiated.
In the interest of preserving true democracy in today’s global era, we must hope that the Protestant Church demonstrates how its New Testament principles are chiefly responsible for the rise of modern democracy, regardless of the racial background that observed the principles. To further understand the challenge, let us roughly describe how the American Civil War set the context for our cultural divide, presently.
As the framers of the United States Government understood, the cultural divide that resulted in America’s Civil War was a consequence of the Nation’s inability to observe its liberty for all in the face economic considerations. The American South profited in the cotton industry, using cheap slave labor. As mentioned above, they soothed their consciences by believing that the African Americans were somehow an inferior people who needed overlords. The Confederate South esteemed themselves as a new European aristocracy, having slaves as peasant surfs.
President Thomas Jefferson’s 1785 prophecy concerning the Creator’s instigation of a revolution swiftly came true in the form of the United States’ Civil War (1861-1865). The war occurred at a critical period in U.S. history. The period marked the beginning of the Nation’s transition from being an agricultural economy to being an industrial economy. More importantly, the period gave the Nation the capacity to showcase before a mostly undemocratic world the individual liberties and free-market prosperity that Protestant Christian culture had instigated. Indeed, while slavery persisted throughout human history in places like the Greco-Roman world, Asia, India, and even Europe and England’s former American colonies; the Protestant progressive culture of the newly founded United States of America endured slavery just shy of 80 years: churches in the Northern non-slave States championed the abolitionist movement until the Nation began to divide over the question of whether newly organized States would became slave States or free.
The American Civil War would end slavery in the United States; however, the continuance of American leadership’s inability to appreciate the way the Protestant Reformation had cultivated the general public’s acceptance of individual liberties would stunt America’s capacity to secure libertarian cultures amongst the whole general populace at home and amongst the diverse peoples of the industrializing nations abroad. First, after the Civil War, the gross majority of the people would hold a common viewpoint that most still hold today: they would believe that all cultural backgrounds reconcile with the libertarian values of the modern democratic state. And like today, others would believe that the new republics were the happenstance outcome of European culture. Finally, an unfortunate perspective that had existed at the Nation’s founding and still remains today, amongst a vociferous minority, is the perspective that the new republics are not merely the happenstance outcome of European history; but are the consequence of European racial superiority.
Thus, not knowing how to duplicate the Anglo-Saxon and European cultural maturation (in which the general populace values individual rights over group-based affiliations); an increasing number of Western leaders and people would begin to pursue government sponsored social-programs that seek to inculcate an appreciation for Western lifestyles: that is, lifestyles that social policies govern by scientific investigation rather than sectarian or religious doctrine, to the extent that an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to social-cast overlords, tribal dictates, or religious orders.
We must say that employing science’s objectivity in the execution of government sponsored programs to secure healthful lifestyles and civil equity amongst the general population seems like a logical approach to ensure a vibrant democracy; however, as Doctor Benjamin Franklin and the other framers of the United States well knew, government policies cannot ensure that the people value liberty over their own selfish aims. Again, the framers discerned that factions arise during times of economic downturn, which cause people to seek their own advantage. The framers were well aware of how corruptible a government could become that wields the social programs that the general populace becomes dependent upon. The framers would not have been surprised at the rise of the highly socialist regimes of the German Nationalist Socialist Party (that is, the German Nazi Party) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (that is, the Soviet Union, the USSR). For this cause, the framers concentrated their greatest efforts upon limiting the size and scope of government, in order to preserve individual liberty.
The following is crucial for our understanding of the successful establishment of American representative government: the framers of the United States Government were aware of the fact that the cultural sensibilities to appreciate individual liberty existed amongst the Protestant Christian population of the American colonies, long before the framers established a sovereign government that the people then accepted. It is no wonder that many held the belief that the Anglo-Saxon, European Americans were particularly well suited for modern democratic government above other non-European peoples.
Protestant Christians also initiated progressive, commercial societies in England and Germany, compelling many of the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants to believe in their racial superiority. What distinguished American Protestants is that America’s large laypeople Church attendance fostered a culture of civic participation; therefore, America possessed a grassroots democratic culture that inhibited the autocratic extremes of socialism that Germany and other industrializing countries experienced. The significance of the American Civil War is that the Confederate South institutionalized the belief that Europeans evolved to be racially superior: the Confederates believed that Europeans were more intellectually capable of appreciating modern democracy’s abstract defense of individual liberty over the group-based orders that unsophisticated societies remain under.
Because Protestant nations are still the wealthiest, the Protestant Church must overcome the Anglo-Saxon’s distorted racist beliefs by demonstrating that the New Testament principles that liberate the faith and volition of the individual, without prejudice to others, is the source of Western liberties. The aftermath of Civil War, however, unfortunately colored the Protestant Church as being a European religion. Like so, the Civil War not only initiated today’s racial divide, but also initiated today’s cultural divide as a consequence of non-Protestant immigrants settling in the Northern and Western states, after the war. One may justly conclude, therefore, that America’s ongoing cultural war is an extension of the American Civil War: a never ending conflict that began because modern democracy still struggles to secure, universally, the libertarian culture that the Protestant Reformation initiated.
In the interest of preserving true democracy in today’s global era, we must hope that the Protestant Church demonstrates how its New Testament principles are chiefly responsible for the rise of modern democracy, regardless of the racial background that observed the principles. To further understand the challenge, let us roughly describe how the American Civil War set the context for our cultural divide, presently.
As the framers of the United States Government understood, the cultural divide that resulted in America’s Civil War was a consequence of the Nation’s inability to observe its liberty for all in the face economic considerations. The American South profited in the cotton industry, using cheap slave labor. As mentioned above, they soothed their consciences by believing that the African Americans were somehow an inferior people who needed overlords. The Confederate South esteemed themselves as a new European aristocracy, having slaves as peasant surfs.
We magnify General Robert E. Lee, as it were our foil for the greater subject matter of this editorial, because his character and motivation embodied the Confederate ideal like non other: General Lee was indeed the most famous and respected before his Confederate countrymen. Lee came from a reputable family: Lee’s father, Henry Lee III (1756-1818), was the ninth Governor of Virginia, who had served as a cavalry officer under General George Washington (1731-1799) in the American Revolution. General Robert E. Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy. Lee even successfully married Mary Anna Randolph Custis (1808-1873), the great granddaughter of Martha Washington, who of course was the wife of the country’s first President George Washington. Lee and his wife were prominent slave owners, possessing Arlington House, upon which lands became Arlington National Cemetery.
General Robert E. Lee gained almost mythical status before his confederate countrymen because of his highly successful military campaigns against the invading Northern Union army, whom the Confederates feared would destroy their aristocratic pride upon a Confederate defeat. Always outnumbered by Union forces, Lee defeated Union forces at every turn: he seemed to predict Union maneuvers and took dramatic risks, leaving carnage everywhere.
General Robert E. Lee’s men and the Confederate populace marked Lee’s success as evidence of Southern superiority; however, we spy a more sober cause for General Lee’s success: what particularly distinguished Lee from the Northern generals whom he defeated was the fact that the highly aristocratic natured Lee did not hesitate to commit his men to face certain death in order to ensure a victory. In point of fact, General Robert E. Lee was so personally responsible for the carnage among both Union and Confederate forces that the Federal Government confiscated Lee’s Arlington Virginia lands and turned them into a National Military Cemetery. In contrast to Lee’s willingness to put troops in harm’s way, the Northern commander, General George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885), routinely resisted chances to put his vastly superior numbers in harm’s way. General Lee’s good fortune famously came to an abrupt end, when Lee in all his proud madness risked his men to face a fortified Union army in an open and defenseless ground at Gettysburg Pennsylvania (July 1st through 3rd 1863). General Lee’s faithful commanders Lt. General James Longstreet (1821-1904) and Major General George Edward Pickett (1825-1875) ardently and passionately tried to persuade General Lee to abandon his plan to endanger the troops to certain doom. Proud Lee exclaimed that he had never left the field of battle, in such a manner. Lee’s commanders and men observed his orders without question because of the awe that they had for him. Then slaughter! The Confederate troops fell in massive numbers.
Later, the Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee met their ultimate demise when President Abraham Lincoln found a Northern general who would commit the Northern forces to peril. Lincoln’s general and future United States President, Ulysses S. Grant, committed Union forces to face General Lee’s wrath repeatedly until the Confederate forces under General Lee depleted. His pride finally humbled, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his sword and his Confederate army on April 9th 1865.
The racial and cultural divide that is the American Civil War’s aftermath began when the defeated Confederate forces organized against Northern government officials who sought to reconstruct the devastated South and politically integrate the freed African American slaves. In an effort to ensure that all American peoples enjoy the libertarian principles of United States Federal Constitution, which Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian Americans initially enjoyed, the U.S. Federal Government pasted the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution: within the five years following the end of the Civil War, in 1865, the Federal Government passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude; the 14th Amendment, addressing citizenship rights and equal protection under the law; and the 15th Amendment, ensuring that Federal and State governments grant all citizens the right to vote, regardless of race and social standing. The Confederate forces responded by appointing officials who would deny African Americans their post-War rights. Plus, the forces organized the notorious terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, which strategically used violence to harass African Americans who endeavored to enjoy their newfound rights.
Because many of the peoples of the former Confederate States retained racist beliefs, while they still hypocritically professed to be Protestant Christians; the Protestant Church lost some of its moral authority at a time when the country needed the moral guidance to buttress the excesses of industrialization. In Northern States, corporations encouraged the immigration of peoples from the non-Protestant lands of Europe, for cheap labor: Irish and Italian Catholics settled in Northern commercial cities like New York and Pittsburg. Also, many Jewish and Greek Orthodox immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe. The corporations then began the processes of horizontal and vertical integration as the commercial, industrial economy developed. In horizontal integration, powerful companies acquired small private businesses in the same industry. In vertical integration, powerful business conglomerates ensured that they controlled the whole process of production, from manufacturing to sales. The end result was that people became accustomed to depending on the impersonal and dubious integrity of national and international corporations, instead of depending on the trusted business actions of industrious peoples in small townships.
Furthermore, to check the growth of corporations, the Federal Government grew to meet business regulation objectives and social welfare. Unlike the existing Protestant population, the new non-Protestant immigrants coming from more group-based societies tended to vote for policies that encouraged a larger and more centralized Federal Government. So to counter the political imbalance that unchecked immigration caused, many unfortunately used the eugenics argument regarding evolved racial supremacy, in order to place either a quota or ban from immigrants arriving from non-Protestant lands. The Immigration Act of 1924 resulted, banning all Arab and Asian immigrants and limiting immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe. Moreover, the Church had some impact in limiting government overreach, by ensuring an active citizenry: to aid poor new immigrant populations, Christian groups established social welfare organizations like the Salvation Army and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). In fact, many social programs that Christian groups pioneered evolved into today’s government social programs.
In the other industrializing nations of Europe, stronger government interference into the free commercial economy to dictate social behavior remained mostly uninhibited. Strong socialist governments arose commanding all industrial facets to marshal powerful military forces. Eventually, two World Wars broke out as a result of European powers’ conflict over their colonial possessions, which entailed many exploited non-European group-based societies that the Europeans deemed inferior.
The two world wars revealed the unseen inability of the modern democratic states to guarantee the individual liberties and free commerce that the 18th Century social contracts, like the U.S. Constitution, had promised. The world wars demonstrated how lethal industrialized power could become in the hands of tyrannical regimes. Fortunately, the American democracy was strong enough to enter the world wars and preserve the European democracies without seeking imperial-like political leverage over Europe after the wars ended. Due to America’s industrial strength and manpower, the European democracies defeated the autocratic socialist powers Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan.
So alarmed were the victorious American allies over the devastation that the tyrannical regimes’ bigotry had caused, the United States led the free nations to establish international organizations to handle both political and economic conflict, in the effort to evade another World War. To address political conflict, the United States led in the establishing of the United Nations: an intergovernmental organization that promotes international cooperation, especially to evade armed conflict. To address the economic disparities that often lead to conflict, the United States led in the establishing of the World Bank: an international financial organization that provides loans for reconstruction and development, in the interests of reducing poverty. Also, under the protective umbrella of American military strength, chiefly responsible for empowering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Western European nations established a common European market, the precursor to today’s European Union. Like so, the European nations sought to evade the political and armed conflict that their former competing colonial pursuits incited.
Nevertheless, because African Americans did not enjoy the civil rights that the United States Government championed abroad, the United States lost the moral authority to demand of non-Western nations their adherence to the modern democratic principles of equality, the right to vote, the freedom of speech and volition, and other such privileges that America, itself, failed to guarantee all its citizens. While American forces won freedom for Europeans abroad, the former Confederate States continued to deny African Americans their constitutional liberties at home.
To right the wrong of American Civil War inequality, a post-World War II generation came of age in the 1960s. They rebelled against the puritanical Protestant values that still held sway over much of the nation. The 1960s generation supported the African American Civil Rights Movement, which African American churches organized. Too, the 1960s generation elected the first non-Protestant President, an Irish Catholic named John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963).
General Robert E. Lee’s men and the Confederate populace marked Lee’s success as evidence of Southern superiority; however, we spy a more sober cause for General Lee’s success: what particularly distinguished Lee from the Northern generals whom he defeated was the fact that the highly aristocratic natured Lee did not hesitate to commit his men to face certain death in order to ensure a victory. In point of fact, General Robert E. Lee was so personally responsible for the carnage among both Union and Confederate forces that the Federal Government confiscated Lee’s Arlington Virginia lands and turned them into a National Military Cemetery. In contrast to Lee’s willingness to put troops in harm’s way, the Northern commander, General George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885), routinely resisted chances to put his vastly superior numbers in harm’s way. General Lee’s good fortune famously came to an abrupt end, when Lee in all his proud madness risked his men to face a fortified Union army in an open and defenseless ground at Gettysburg Pennsylvania (July 1st through 3rd 1863). General Lee’s faithful commanders Lt. General James Longstreet (1821-1904) and Major General George Edward Pickett (1825-1875) ardently and passionately tried to persuade General Lee to abandon his plan to endanger the troops to certain doom. Proud Lee exclaimed that he had never left the field of battle, in such a manner. Lee’s commanders and men observed his orders without question because of the awe that they had for him. Then slaughter! The Confederate troops fell in massive numbers.
Later, the Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee met their ultimate demise when President Abraham Lincoln found a Northern general who would commit the Northern forces to peril. Lincoln’s general and future United States President, Ulysses S. Grant, committed Union forces to face General Lee’s wrath repeatedly until the Confederate forces under General Lee depleted. His pride finally humbled, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his sword and his Confederate army on April 9th 1865.
The racial and cultural divide that is the American Civil War’s aftermath began when the defeated Confederate forces organized against Northern government officials who sought to reconstruct the devastated South and politically integrate the freed African American slaves. In an effort to ensure that all American peoples enjoy the libertarian principles of United States Federal Constitution, which Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian Americans initially enjoyed, the U.S. Federal Government pasted the Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution: within the five years following the end of the Civil War, in 1865, the Federal Government passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude; the 14th Amendment, addressing citizenship rights and equal protection under the law; and the 15th Amendment, ensuring that Federal and State governments grant all citizens the right to vote, regardless of race and social standing. The Confederate forces responded by appointing officials who would deny African Americans their post-War rights. Plus, the forces organized the notorious terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, which strategically used violence to harass African Americans who endeavored to enjoy their newfound rights.
Because many of the peoples of the former Confederate States retained racist beliefs, while they still hypocritically professed to be Protestant Christians; the Protestant Church lost some of its moral authority at a time when the country needed the moral guidance to buttress the excesses of industrialization. In Northern States, corporations encouraged the immigration of peoples from the non-Protestant lands of Europe, for cheap labor: Irish and Italian Catholics settled in Northern commercial cities like New York and Pittsburg. Also, many Jewish and Greek Orthodox immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe. The corporations then began the processes of horizontal and vertical integration as the commercial, industrial economy developed. In horizontal integration, powerful companies acquired small private businesses in the same industry. In vertical integration, powerful business conglomerates ensured that they controlled the whole process of production, from manufacturing to sales. The end result was that people became accustomed to depending on the impersonal and dubious integrity of national and international corporations, instead of depending on the trusted business actions of industrious peoples in small townships.
Furthermore, to check the growth of corporations, the Federal Government grew to meet business regulation objectives and social welfare. Unlike the existing Protestant population, the new non-Protestant immigrants coming from more group-based societies tended to vote for policies that encouraged a larger and more centralized Federal Government. So to counter the political imbalance that unchecked immigration caused, many unfortunately used the eugenics argument regarding evolved racial supremacy, in order to place either a quota or ban from immigrants arriving from non-Protestant lands. The Immigration Act of 1924 resulted, banning all Arab and Asian immigrants and limiting immigrants arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe. Moreover, the Church had some impact in limiting government overreach, by ensuring an active citizenry: to aid poor new immigrant populations, Christian groups established social welfare organizations like the Salvation Army and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). In fact, many social programs that Christian groups pioneered evolved into today’s government social programs.
In the other industrializing nations of Europe, stronger government interference into the free commercial economy to dictate social behavior remained mostly uninhibited. Strong socialist governments arose commanding all industrial facets to marshal powerful military forces. Eventually, two World Wars broke out as a result of European powers’ conflict over their colonial possessions, which entailed many exploited non-European group-based societies that the Europeans deemed inferior.
The two world wars revealed the unseen inability of the modern democratic states to guarantee the individual liberties and free commerce that the 18th Century social contracts, like the U.S. Constitution, had promised. The world wars demonstrated how lethal industrialized power could become in the hands of tyrannical regimes. Fortunately, the American democracy was strong enough to enter the world wars and preserve the European democracies without seeking imperial-like political leverage over Europe after the wars ended. Due to America’s industrial strength and manpower, the European democracies defeated the autocratic socialist powers Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan.
So alarmed were the victorious American allies over the devastation that the tyrannical regimes’ bigotry had caused, the United States led the free nations to establish international organizations to handle both political and economic conflict, in the effort to evade another World War. To address political conflict, the United States led in the establishing of the United Nations: an intergovernmental organization that promotes international cooperation, especially to evade armed conflict. To address the economic disparities that often lead to conflict, the United States led in the establishing of the World Bank: an international financial organization that provides loans for reconstruction and development, in the interests of reducing poverty. Also, under the protective umbrella of American military strength, chiefly responsible for empowering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Western European nations established a common European market, the precursor to today’s European Union. Like so, the European nations sought to evade the political and armed conflict that their former competing colonial pursuits incited.
Nevertheless, because African Americans did not enjoy the civil rights that the United States Government championed abroad, the United States lost the moral authority to demand of non-Western nations their adherence to the modern democratic principles of equality, the right to vote, the freedom of speech and volition, and other such privileges that America, itself, failed to guarantee all its citizens. While American forces won freedom for Europeans abroad, the former Confederate States continued to deny African Americans their constitutional liberties at home.
To right the wrong of American Civil War inequality, a post-World War II generation came of age in the 1960s. They rebelled against the puritanical Protestant values that still held sway over much of the nation. The 1960s generation supported the African American Civil Rights Movement, which African American churches organized. Too, the 1960s generation elected the first non-Protestant President, an Irish Catholic named John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963).
Yet, for all the efforts of the 1960s progressive youth, the Nation learned that the Civil War was not entirely over. President John F. Kennedy travelled to the Southern State of Texas to begin his reelection bid. Unbeknownst to the President, a conglomerate of Southern political leaders, businessmen, and clandestine forces organized an elaborate plot to assassinate the young progressive President. They sought to restore order to what they considered to be a rudderless country.
Some may rightly conclude that President John F. Kennedy, the Nation’s Commander and Chief, was the last Northern soldier to die in the American Civil War. But, whether some acknowledge Kennedy’s assassination as an extension of the North’s Civil War with the Old South or not, the significance of President John F. Kennedy’s death was not lost on his younger brother, Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy (1932-2009). Senator Kennedy used his political clout to champion the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the National Origins Formula that disallowed immigrants from certain parts of the world on the bases of their religion, economic standing, and race. When the congress voted on the Immigration Act, most of the no votes came from Southern States. But then Senator Kennedy assuaged the anxieties of the dissenters by stating, “Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually . . . . The ethnic mix of this country will not be upset (wink, wink).”
The passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 set the stage for the current iteration of America’s ongoing cultural conflict. Before 1965, roughly 65 percent of immigrants to the USA were European or Canadian, and the immigrant population constituted 11 percent of the population growth. Since the passage of the Act, roughly 48 percent of immigrants are Latin American, while 24 percent of immigrants are Asian, either deriving from Muslim countries or oriental nations. Presently, immigrants constitute 40 percent of the population growth. Furthermore, increased non-Western immigrants arrived in the mid-1990s as a consequence of the post-Cold War trade deals: after the fall of the Soviet Union, the last of the post-World War autocratic socialist nations, the United States and other Western Nations instigated free trade deals with non-Western and non-democratic nations, in the supposed interests of global peace. The deals began to break down trade barriers and nation-state boundaries, encouraging the free flow of poor laborers, whom instantly sought passage to wealthy Western nations.
The so-called millennial generation (that is, those who became adults around the year 2000) grew up in the post-Cold War, global and multicultural environment. To many millennials, the old prejudices are alien. So with the millennials, post-1965 immigrants to the United States of America seek to destroy the vestiges of past racial divides, as they seek to be fully affiliated with what is so far still the greatest Nation that the world has ever seen. Indeed, these are the people who are rapidly tearing down Confederate Soldier monuments, all under the Statue of Freedom with her sword yet sheathed.
We, thelandscapeoftruth.com, certainly do not mourn the demise of the Confederate South and the unjust values that the Confederate South stood for. Ironically, the majority of the Confederate populace professed to be devout Christians. We are guessing that they somehow overlooked what Lord Jesus declared to be the greatest commandment: He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
We, thelandscapeoftruth.com, empathize with the protestors who decry the ongoing reverence for the Confederate South. Rather than loving their African American neighbors, the Confederates thought it proper to enslave them for monetary gain. Even so, where we take issue with the protestors is over the following fact: while the protestors ferociously seek to blight out the well-known emblems of past hatred, they blind themselves to the same acts of injustice, manifesting in different but still lethal forms. As a consequence, the protestors are not showing the same fervor over the more immediate threats to our liberties: threats that globalism brings to our front doors, in the form of immigrants who derive from group-based cultures that do not value individual liberties. As well, the threat takes the form of our growing economic dependency upon regimes that enslave millions of people just like the Confederates enslaved African Americans for economic advantage.
All cannot agree upon the tearing down of statues that some deem offensive unless all agree upon the values that preserve the republic for all. As the great commandment suggests, those values are the capacity of citizens to value above all else the respect for one another’s person and life even though citizens often disagree. Protestant Christianity achieved diversified cultural sensibility for the Anglo-Saxons, enabling competing Protestant peoples to accept a secular republic; therefore, we must ask the Confederate sympathizers is it useful to the republic to celebrate people who deemed other races as inferior? At the same time, we must ask those who embrace multiculturalism is it useful to the republic to invite people whose religion teaches them that billions of people in alternate religions should be considered second class citizens or whose religion teaches them to subjugate women? Lastly, we must ask is it useful to the republic to engage in trade deals with autocratic regimes that do not endeavor to better the lives of hundreds of millions of people; for in trading with the regimes, our republic still countenances slavery.
Convincing people to walk away from something that they hold dear, because it reasonably offends their neighbors, often seems impossible. For this cause, we see many resorting to violence as they seek to either tear down the Confederate statues or preserve them. As we have seen with the Civil War, factional violence potentially spells the end of the Republic and the end of freedom for all. As our chief example, we observe that Lord Jesus did not conquer the Roman Empire by ordering his disciples to resort to violence: Lord Jesus conquered the world peacefully by dying for it.
By reflecting upon the ultimate demise of General Robert E. Lee, himself, whose values and reputation still invoke social division as evidenced by the strife over his statue; we take hope that we can make the staunchest minds reasonable by beseeching the heart. Profoundly heartbroken over the unnecessary loss of their men’s lives due to Lee’s pride, some of General Lee’s key generals forsook the esteem that they had for Lee. Near the end of his life, General George Edward Pickett (1825-1875) bitterly complained about Lee’s moral leadership: Pickett purportedly exclaimed, “That man destroyed my division.”
Other generals even fought for the rights of the newly freed African Americans. For example, a foremost Confederate General, James Longstreet (1821-1904), allied with Northern republicans to advance the Federal Government’s reconstruction efforts. Longstreet even fought alongside an African American militia to defend a state house against racist protestors.
The passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 set the stage for the current iteration of America’s ongoing cultural conflict. Before 1965, roughly 65 percent of immigrants to the USA were European or Canadian, and the immigrant population constituted 11 percent of the population growth. Since the passage of the Act, roughly 48 percent of immigrants are Latin American, while 24 percent of immigrants are Asian, either deriving from Muslim countries or oriental nations. Presently, immigrants constitute 40 percent of the population growth. Furthermore, increased non-Western immigrants arrived in the mid-1990s as a consequence of the post-Cold War trade deals: after the fall of the Soviet Union, the last of the post-World War autocratic socialist nations, the United States and other Western Nations instigated free trade deals with non-Western and non-democratic nations, in the supposed interests of global peace. The deals began to break down trade barriers and nation-state boundaries, encouraging the free flow of poor laborers, whom instantly sought passage to wealthy Western nations.
The so-called millennial generation (that is, those who became adults around the year 2000) grew up in the post-Cold War, global and multicultural environment. To many millennials, the old prejudices are alien. So with the millennials, post-1965 immigrants to the United States of America seek to destroy the vestiges of past racial divides, as they seek to be fully affiliated with what is so far still the greatest Nation that the world has ever seen. Indeed, these are the people who are rapidly tearing down Confederate Soldier monuments, all under the Statue of Freedom with her sword yet sheathed.
We, thelandscapeoftruth.com, certainly do not mourn the demise of the Confederate South and the unjust values that the Confederate South stood for. Ironically, the majority of the Confederate populace professed to be devout Christians. We are guessing that they somehow overlooked what Lord Jesus declared to be the greatest commandment: He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
We, thelandscapeoftruth.com, empathize with the protestors who decry the ongoing reverence for the Confederate South. Rather than loving their African American neighbors, the Confederates thought it proper to enslave them for monetary gain. Even so, where we take issue with the protestors is over the following fact: while the protestors ferociously seek to blight out the well-known emblems of past hatred, they blind themselves to the same acts of injustice, manifesting in different but still lethal forms. As a consequence, the protestors are not showing the same fervor over the more immediate threats to our liberties: threats that globalism brings to our front doors, in the form of immigrants who derive from group-based cultures that do not value individual liberties. As well, the threat takes the form of our growing economic dependency upon regimes that enslave millions of people just like the Confederates enslaved African Americans for economic advantage.
All cannot agree upon the tearing down of statues that some deem offensive unless all agree upon the values that preserve the republic for all. As the great commandment suggests, those values are the capacity of citizens to value above all else the respect for one another’s person and life even though citizens often disagree. Protestant Christianity achieved diversified cultural sensibility for the Anglo-Saxons, enabling competing Protestant peoples to accept a secular republic; therefore, we must ask the Confederate sympathizers is it useful to the republic to celebrate people who deemed other races as inferior? At the same time, we must ask those who embrace multiculturalism is it useful to the republic to invite people whose religion teaches them that billions of people in alternate religions should be considered second class citizens or whose religion teaches them to subjugate women? Lastly, we must ask is it useful to the republic to engage in trade deals with autocratic regimes that do not endeavor to better the lives of hundreds of millions of people; for in trading with the regimes, our republic still countenances slavery.
Convincing people to walk away from something that they hold dear, because it reasonably offends their neighbors, often seems impossible. For this cause, we see many resorting to violence as they seek to either tear down the Confederate statues or preserve them. As we have seen with the Civil War, factional violence potentially spells the end of the Republic and the end of freedom for all. As our chief example, we observe that Lord Jesus did not conquer the Roman Empire by ordering his disciples to resort to violence: Lord Jesus conquered the world peacefully by dying for it.
By reflecting upon the ultimate demise of General Robert E. Lee, himself, whose values and reputation still invoke social division as evidenced by the strife over his statue; we take hope that we can make the staunchest minds reasonable by beseeching the heart. Profoundly heartbroken over the unnecessary loss of their men’s lives due to Lee’s pride, some of General Lee’s key generals forsook the esteem that they had for Lee. Near the end of his life, General George Edward Pickett (1825-1875) bitterly complained about Lee’s moral leadership: Pickett purportedly exclaimed, “That man destroyed my division.”
Other generals even fought for the rights of the newly freed African Americans. For example, a foremost Confederate General, James Longstreet (1821-1904), allied with Northern republicans to advance the Federal Government’s reconstruction efforts. Longstreet even fought alongside an African American militia to defend a state house against racist protestors.
We find the profoundest efforts of reconciliation in the great lengths that General Robert E. Lee’s township, Lexington, Virginia, took to bury General Lee with honor, while respecting the Nation’s peace that closed the Civil War. As though by an act of God, Lexington officials endured what seemed like ignominious circumstances in which to bury General Lee; however, the circumstances commanded the much needed expression of forbearance for the sake of the Nation’s peace.
An unusual amount of rain caused unseen flooding in Lexington immediately preceding General Lee’s death. The flooding damaged many facilities and made many roads impassable. The flooding struck the funeral facility, washing away the caskets. And so, two young boys managed to retrieve a casket, though it was too short for General Lee’s body, to the extent that they had to bury the General with his shoes off. To show restraint, in the interest of the reconstruction efforts that the Federal Government made, the township officials followed General Lee’s previous behavior, during reconstruction; therefore, they conducted the funeral without pageantry. Former Confederate soldiers did not wear their Confederate uniforms, nor did they unfurl the Confederate flag. Quietly and with reverence, they laid their hero to rest, and in doing so, they preserved the Nation’s rest as a whole.
What greater example do we have? If the proud Confederates could accept their loss and reconcile with the North in the interest of peace, surely all sides of today’s culture war can come to terms with others for the sake of peace. As the early Protestant Christian Americans achieved, we must hold dear our faith and convictions, without forsaking the love of our neighbors, though we often disagree. The republic only stands when its citizens sheath their swords and extend their laurel wreaths of peace to discuss their differences peacefully with their neighbors, while respecting the democratic process.
What greater example do we have? If the proud Confederates could accept their loss and reconcile with the North in the interest of peace, surely all sides of today’s culture war can come to terms with others for the sake of peace. As the early Protestant Christian Americans achieved, we must hold dear our faith and convictions, without forsaking the love of our neighbors, though we often disagree. The republic only stands when its citizens sheath their swords and extend their laurel wreaths of peace to discuss their differences peacefully with their neighbors, while respecting the democratic process.
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Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891) was a prominent Confederate general, in charge of a great portion of the Confederate army near the end of the American Civil War. After General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, a grieving General Johnston surrendered to the formidable Union General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891). The Union General Sherman was so kind to General Johnston by feeding and caring for Johnston’s starved and wounded soldiers that a thankful Johnston articulated that Sherman’s courteous expressions of peace reconciled him to what he had previously regarded as the misfortune of his life. General Johnston never forgot General Sherman act of kindness. The two became dear friends after the war, often corresponding. Some report that General Johnston caught pneumonia on the cold day of General Sherman’s funeral. Johnston refused to put his hat on out of respect saying, “If I were in his place and he standing here in mine he would not put on his hat.”
Two former adversaries died with the utmost respect and love for one another. Both would have never thought that their future friendship were possible as they faced one another on opposing sides of a vicious battle field.
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The first and greatest challenge of modern representative government is to weigh the interests of diverse people, demonstrating an equitable and objective sensibility to all. The increasing appeal to objectivity when deliberating and responding to the needs of people increasingly have a contrary effect, as government policy increasingly appears insensitive. For instance, recent policy suggestions to scale back healthcare to the aging, because their demise is inescapable, is an example of how policy objectivity does not reconcile with the individual needs of a particular segment of the population. When objective policy positively affects portions of society while negatively affecting others, people resort to group-based relationships in the face of a disaffected government. The republic as a whole slowly weakens.
As many of the framers of the United States Government recognized and articulated, the people’s Christian faith preserved the fair execution of government policy, which cannot at all times meet the particular needs of all. Sincere and robust faith enables individuals to endure hardship for the reward and comfort of a greater purpose and existence, even if that rewarding existence is only in the afterlife. We distinguish the Christian, and particularly the Protestant Christian, faith because it entails the understanding that religious works and the discrimination against others cannot grasp the eternal justice that the faith promises. Other faiths entail the discriminating characteristics of religious works.
What remains is the preservation of both science’s objectivity and Apostolic Christianity’s non-discriminating doctrine of grace, in order to preserve democracy. For this sole purpose, we thelandscapeoftruth.com champion what we call Immanuel’s Law, which our doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth entails as its third chapter. In more detail, we have summarized the content of Immanuel’s Law in a previous editorial, addressing the need for “A Revolution in Our Approach to Science.” In brief, Immanuel’s Law establishes an objective and falsifiable proof for the existence of God, the human soul, and the means to establish biblical orthodoxy, concerning the Holy Bible’s theological description of God and his three persons. Immanuel’s Law consists of three a priori, synthetic judgments, which are objective statements that unite dissimilar things as a functional operative that makes scientific predictions. The first statement, for instance, describes the emergent world as a truth-functional expression by uniting scientific descriptions of the universe preceding the so-called Big Bang, with energy’s emission as quanta, with the appearing macroscopic solid-state world. The second statement then closes the mind-matter gap by reimagining the brain and the central nervous system, by the manner in which they ascertain the functional expression, as the brain apprehends a “normalized” macroscopic world. The third statement finally summarizes how the brain’s workings apprehend a process that antecedes any possible evolutionary process, a priori. With many other examples, the whole work establishes the needed objective proof for the Holy Bible’s theological description of God.
As many of the framers of the United States Government recognized and articulated, the people’s Christian faith preserved the fair execution of government policy, which cannot at all times meet the particular needs of all. Sincere and robust faith enables individuals to endure hardship for the reward and comfort of a greater purpose and existence, even if that rewarding existence is only in the afterlife. We distinguish the Christian, and particularly the Protestant Christian, faith because it entails the understanding that religious works and the discrimination against others cannot grasp the eternal justice that the faith promises. Other faiths entail the discriminating characteristics of religious works.
What remains is the preservation of both science’s objectivity and Apostolic Christianity’s non-discriminating doctrine of grace, in order to preserve democracy. For this sole purpose, we thelandscapeoftruth.com champion what we call Immanuel’s Law, which our doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth entails as its third chapter. In more detail, we have summarized the content of Immanuel’s Law in a previous editorial, addressing the need for “A Revolution in Our Approach to Science.” In brief, Immanuel’s Law establishes an objective and falsifiable proof for the existence of God, the human soul, and the means to establish biblical orthodoxy, concerning the Holy Bible’s theological description of God and his three persons. Immanuel’s Law consists of three a priori, synthetic judgments, which are objective statements that unite dissimilar things as a functional operative that makes scientific predictions. The first statement, for instance, describes the emergent world as a truth-functional expression by uniting scientific descriptions of the universe preceding the so-called Big Bang, with energy’s emission as quanta, with the appearing macroscopic solid-state world. The second statement then closes the mind-matter gap by reimagining the brain and the central nervous system, by the manner in which they ascertain the functional expression, as the brain apprehends a “normalized” macroscopic world. The third statement finally summarizes how the brain’s workings apprehend a process that antecedes any possible evolutionary process, a priori. With many other examples, the whole work establishes the needed objective proof for the Holy Bible’s theological description of God.
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Our doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, particularly details how the New Testament, in the sense of a forensic, legal action overcomes the human prejudices that separate society. The Landscape of Truth captures a systematic understanding of the biblical Testaments. The work first provides objective, falsifiable evidence for not only the existence of God, but also the human soul and spirit. Then the work proceeds to detail the rise of human civilization, in terms of advancing governments, economies, and philosophies. Finally, the work demonstrates how the Protestant’s recapturing of the forensic nature of the New Testament (in terms of the Testament’s free election by grace, despite religious works) empowered the libertarian culture that initiated modern democracy.
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Though our current political climate seems threatening, we remain optimistic. Our republic remains strong enough to provide forums like our website, enabling cooler heads to broadcast voices of reason. As our readership grows, we here at thelandscapeoftruth.com will be vigilant to empower our readers to be those voices. We will effectually proclaim the Lord Jesus’ gospel of peace that has overcome the world through his sacrifice and love. In future editorials and articles, we will detail how the Protestant Church must systematically demonstrate how the New Testament doctrines of election by grace through faith alone has cultivated the liberal climate that modern Western democracies have thrived in.
Immigration - Globalism's Population Displacement (Part 1): Who is American? What does it mean to be an American?
Published August 31, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
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Penned in a time of national peril when the United States of America was scarcely 25 years old, the amateur poet Francis Scott Key wrote what came to be known as the Star Spangled Banner, America’s national anthem. Francis Scott Key’s poem expresses Key’s relief to see Baltimore City’s Fort McHenry survive a fierce bombardment from British war ships, during the War of 1812. After the bombardment, Francis Scott Key literally wondered whether he would see the star spangled banner that is the American flag hoisted at dawn’s early light. The American dream of government for and by the people stood in question. When Francis Scott Key viewed the large banner flying, he knew that the dream survived.
Often we find that African Americans, like the famed vocalist Whitney Houston (1963-2012), render more suitable performances that grasp the National Anthem’s character. African American singers’ ability to capture the spirit of the Anthem derives from African Americans’ long history of singing odes and hymns of prayer for deliverance from their slave masters. Little did their slave masters know that the songs and harmonic moans echoing across the plantation fields had more to do with the slaves’ communicating the slaves’ aspirations to rebel from their oppressors. One may be certain that the Civil Rights movement, in which Dr. Martin Luther King articulated an inclusive American dream for all races, began with the anthems of the slaves. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Whitney Houston delivered one of the most celebrated performances of the Star Spangled Banner at Super Bowl XXV. Effortlessly, the singer lifted the song to its paramount heights.
Not standing in the shadow of other racial groups’ rendering of America’s song is the musical contribution of the world renowned Italian American singer Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). Sinatra’s star was even too big to fit on the Star Spangled Banner. Sinatra rather performed a personalized song that spoke to what America means to him: as wealthy and famous as he was, Sinatra always sung the song from his heart in recognition of his parents’ immigrating to the country in which he achieved great success.
We know that Frank Sinatra’s ballad “The House I live In (That’s America to Me)” cannot compare to the significance of Star Spangled Banner; however, when we consider that Frank Sinatra represents a group of Americans that were once denounced as not being fully American because of their racial background, we may marvel that in less than a century, Italian Americans would thrive under the American dream, giving inspiration to Sinatra’s song. We must grasp the true meaning of the American dream that all seek to share in, especially as an unparalleled wave of new immigrants press in the door.
We know that Frank Sinatra’s ballad “The House I live In (That’s America to Me)” cannot compare to the significance of Star Spangled Banner; however, when we consider that Frank Sinatra represents a group of Americans that were once denounced as not being fully American because of their racial background, we may marvel that in less than a century, Italian Americans would thrive under the American dream, giving inspiration to Sinatra’s song. We must grasp the true meaning of the American dream that all seek to share in, especially as an unparalleled wave of new immigrants press in the door.
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The Latin phrase on the Great Seal of the United States reflects the meaning and significance of the United States’ rise. The Latin phrase Novus ordo seclorum describes the American republic as the “New order of the ages.”
The novelty that the United States introduced to human civilization is the advent of modern government in which (as described in the Landscape of Truth) “the general populace enjoys constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. The American government officially began an era in which “law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than religious doctrine.” Under the modern era, which the United States inaugurated, “an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under a rapacious overlord or clergyman.”
The most important achievement of the American government is that the American government achieved the sovereignty of a government’s social contract with an assenting people, under which the public’s allegiance to and recognition of the sovereignty of the government transcends the people’s allegiance to their immediate kindred groups and social class affiliations. Until the founding of the American republic, no other Western government was able to transcend class, privilege, and kindred association to establish a government that guarantees the equal liberty of all.
The French sought to copy the United States’ success by establishing a French Republic; however, the French Revolution was not as successful in reconciling social classes. The French Revolution persisted in various violent epics throughout the 19th Century.
The cause of the American Revolution’s success, unlike the French Revolution’s failure, results from the fact that the British American colonialists long enjoyed a Protestant religious tradition that held all people as equals under God. British citizens, in fact, planted the American colonies in order to practice their reformed Protestant theology, which undermined ecclesiastical elitism; held all under the equality of the law; understood that not all people are to be elect Christians; and therefore reconciled the Church with a secular government that observed religious freedom.
Though the United States successfully overcame the centuries old feudal class order, the U.S. failed to overcome racial animosity and prejudice. Because the British American colonialists were so successful above other countries, cultures, religions, and races, the native Protestant British Americans reluctantly extended the full privilege of citizenship to African Americans, Native Americans, non-Protestant Europeans, and Asian immigrants until the 1960s.
In light of the United States’ struggle with racism, the full realization of the American dream depends upon a positive answer to the subsequent question: can non-Protestant and non-Western cultures uphold a government for the people and by the people, which government entails the securing the people’s constitutional liberties under a government that is accountable to the people?
The ongoing trend of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants’ support for an increasingly centralized government indicates that America’s multicultural experience is the American Republic’s undoing. As the Federal Government grows stronger and unaccountable, the people’s civil liberties erode.
As they seek to equate the Protestants’ success in securing liberty alongside an accountable modern, secular government; the challenge that non-Protestant European immigrants and non-Western immigrants face is to secure the ethical and moral norms of a self-governing democratic people who retain justice where government falls short: continuously individuals commit unjust acts that the authorities would criminalize if the government had the forensic capacity to adjudicate the unjust acts. Because of their forensic shortcomings, courts often imprison innocent people. At the same time, a host of individuals remain free even though they have committed acts that have psychologically or physically ruined other people’s lives. Only the ethical and moral norms of a unified people can restrain the unjust acts that unscrupulous people commit. Without a universal sense of right and wrong, democracy is impossible: in the midst of a morally ambivalent people, an autocratic and arbitrary government arises to make decisions, only in accordance to the government’s interests.
Protestant Christianity provided the ethical and moral norms of the British American colonies. The British Protestants that established America benefited from liberal biblical values: many Protestants understood the legitimate role of secular government, as the Protestants adhered to Lord Jesus’ injunction to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Many Protestants also gleaned other liberal understandings from New Testament principles like the scriptural saying that salvation is by grace and not by religious works and that God desires all (types) of people to be saved. From these principles, the Protestants defied ecclesiastical elitism, their holding true to New Testament values rather than religious rituals. Like so, the Protestants defied classism: many understood that a repentant prostitute or thief is of equal worth as a pastor and priest.
The liberal and ethical culture that the American Protestant engendered fostered America’s industrial revolution, similar to the manner in which the Victorian era Christians secured the cultural norms that enabled Great Britain to pioneer the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization arose upon Protestant culture’s upward social mobility that achieved innovation upon the free exchange of ideas.
The challenge of maintaining the Protestant’s success is for non-Protestant and non-Western people to secure a liberal self-governing culture that overcomes the natural challenges of today’s industrial and commercial society: because of its standardization of products, production methods, and banking methods, the commercial society has an integrative and centralizing effect that often undermines the people’s liberty, as business entities seek to exploit workers for monetary gain.
Thus far, non-Protestant European immigrants and non-Western immigrants have not entirely demonstrated that their respective cultures are up to the challenge of regulating government and large commercial industries. Since the 19th Century unto the present, immigrant populations have overwhelmingly supported a stronger centralized government, chiefly because the immigrants fear being second-class citizens to native Protestant Americans. Also, many immigrants have simply embraced employment opportunities and popular culture, without their seeing the need to forsake their cultural elements that undermine the liberal society’s upward social mobility. For instance, many immigrants maintain religious practices that demand allegiance to foreign priesthoods like the Catholic Church in Rome. Other immigrants derive from nations that tolerate political corruption and the subjugation of religious and ethnical minorities. Finally, some immigrant populations hold patriarchic traditions that approve of the subjugation and exploitation of women. Simply put, one must not suppose that an immigrant’s stepping across the border or an immigrant’s stepping off a ship or airplane makes an immigrant an heir to America’s liberal success.
America’s struggle to assimilate new immigrants, while maintaining the balance between the free people, the Church, and government; began after the American Civil War: a War that left the Federal Government stronger and more centralized. The centralized power of the Federal Government began as the northern states sought to finance the Civil War against southern secessionist states. In 1862, the income tax came into being as well as the printing of a national currency.
After the civil war, congress ratified the 14th amendment extending citizenship to all races and the 15th amendment granting voting rights to all citizens. After the war, America started incorporating its western territories. The federal government sought to Christianize Native Americans: in 1890, President Grant invited East Coast Churches to staff the reservations.
The west was diversified as mining towns grew, enlisting the cheap labor of foreign laborers. Rail road companies, for instance, employed 10,000 Chinese workers to build railways. Between 1870 and 1900 six percent of the American population moved west: most of the people who made the move were immigrants whom the railroad companies enticed with the promise of uncultivated land.
Industrialization in America first appeared in Northern states; where minerals and other natural resources needed to be processed. Southern states were slow to industrialize. The southern states remained dependent upon an agricultural economy that denied African Americans upward mobility. The industrial cities of the North like Chicago grew with large immigrant populations whom the factories used for cheap labors. Protestant Christian groups arranged organizations like the Red Cross and the YMCA to overcome the deplorable conditions in which the new immigrants lived.
We observe racial animosity’s appearance as some immigrants like Irish Catholics resisted assimilation into Protestant society. The Irish Catholics built Catholic schools throughout the north to maintain their Catholic identities. The Pope even encouraged a Catholic school to be built in every parish.
Protestant Americans became adverse to East European Slavic and Italian immigrants. The Slavic immigrants upheld an Eastern Orthodox religion, while the Italian immigrants upheld their Catholic faith and kindred relationships. Many bigoted Protestants even went so far as to consider many Italians and Eastern Slavs as not fully white. For example, in 1920, an African American male was charged with having intercourse with an Italian woman. Yet, the case was thrown out, because the woman was not considered to be fully white.
American racial animosity remained mostly unchallenged until the end of World War II. The horrors of the Nazi concentration camps gave lawmakers a new sensitivity to the evils of persecuting people simply because of racial difference. After the middle and working class children of World War II veterans gained access to affordable colleges in the 1960s, socialist movements arose upon college campuses; moreover, the Civil Rights movement for racial equality pioneered the way for the Federal Government to remove its racial quota that resisted the immigration of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants. Since the 1960s, the majority of new immigrants are non-European and non-Christian.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has increased the number of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants to America as new free trade zone deals have immerged, encouraging immigration for cheap labor forces. Since the United States’ 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, Mexican illegal immigration to the United States has soared, numbering above 40 million illegal immigrants. The vast majorities of the Mexican and other Latin immigrants are Catholic, deriving from corrupt nations where people do not enjoy America’s libertarian traditions. The immigration population has been so swift that the new immigrants have not been assimilated. Overall, the immigrants support stronger centralized government and stronger welfare policies, despite the depleted treasuries of the U.S. federal government.
Because of the explosion of immigration (due to an unchecked socially progressive Federal Government and unchecked cheap labor exploiting capitalists), the delicate balance between a free people, a free Church, and an accountable government hangs upon a thread. Unless the people recapture the moral and ethical norms that Protestant culture once captured and unless the Federal government measures immigration, representational democracy stands at risk.
The novelty that the United States introduced to human civilization is the advent of modern government in which (as described in the Landscape of Truth) “the general populace enjoys constitutional rights of private property and protection from the arbitrary seizure of property or the arbitrary seizure of one’s person for forced labor. The American government officially began an era in which “law enforcement, health care, economy, and social policy stand upon scientific investigation rather than religious doctrine.” Under the modern era, which the United States inaugurated, “an individual’s welfare depends upon the individual’s execution of the individual’s contractual rights of employment rather than the individual’s being subject to a lifetime of vassalage under a rapacious overlord or clergyman.”
The most important achievement of the American government is that the American government achieved the sovereignty of a government’s social contract with an assenting people, under which the public’s allegiance to and recognition of the sovereignty of the government transcends the people’s allegiance to their immediate kindred groups and social class affiliations. Until the founding of the American republic, no other Western government was able to transcend class, privilege, and kindred association to establish a government that guarantees the equal liberty of all.
The French sought to copy the United States’ success by establishing a French Republic; however, the French Revolution was not as successful in reconciling social classes. The French Revolution persisted in various violent epics throughout the 19th Century.
The cause of the American Revolution’s success, unlike the French Revolution’s failure, results from the fact that the British American colonialists long enjoyed a Protestant religious tradition that held all people as equals under God. British citizens, in fact, planted the American colonies in order to practice their reformed Protestant theology, which undermined ecclesiastical elitism; held all under the equality of the law; understood that not all people are to be elect Christians; and therefore reconciled the Church with a secular government that observed religious freedom.
Though the United States successfully overcame the centuries old feudal class order, the U.S. failed to overcome racial animosity and prejudice. Because the British American colonialists were so successful above other countries, cultures, religions, and races, the native Protestant British Americans reluctantly extended the full privilege of citizenship to African Americans, Native Americans, non-Protestant Europeans, and Asian immigrants until the 1960s.
In light of the United States’ struggle with racism, the full realization of the American dream depends upon a positive answer to the subsequent question: can non-Protestant and non-Western cultures uphold a government for the people and by the people, which government entails the securing the people’s constitutional liberties under a government that is accountable to the people?
The ongoing trend of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants’ support for an increasingly centralized government indicates that America’s multicultural experience is the American Republic’s undoing. As the Federal Government grows stronger and unaccountable, the people’s civil liberties erode.
As they seek to equate the Protestants’ success in securing liberty alongside an accountable modern, secular government; the challenge that non-Protestant European immigrants and non-Western immigrants face is to secure the ethical and moral norms of a self-governing democratic people who retain justice where government falls short: continuously individuals commit unjust acts that the authorities would criminalize if the government had the forensic capacity to adjudicate the unjust acts. Because of their forensic shortcomings, courts often imprison innocent people. At the same time, a host of individuals remain free even though they have committed acts that have psychologically or physically ruined other people’s lives. Only the ethical and moral norms of a unified people can restrain the unjust acts that unscrupulous people commit. Without a universal sense of right and wrong, democracy is impossible: in the midst of a morally ambivalent people, an autocratic and arbitrary government arises to make decisions, only in accordance to the government’s interests.
Protestant Christianity provided the ethical and moral norms of the British American colonies. The British Protestants that established America benefited from liberal biblical values: many Protestants understood the legitimate role of secular government, as the Protestants adhered to Lord Jesus’ injunction to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Many Protestants also gleaned other liberal understandings from New Testament principles like the scriptural saying that salvation is by grace and not by religious works and that God desires all (types) of people to be saved. From these principles, the Protestants defied ecclesiastical elitism, their holding true to New Testament values rather than religious rituals. Like so, the Protestants defied classism: many understood that a repentant prostitute or thief is of equal worth as a pastor and priest.
The liberal and ethical culture that the American Protestant engendered fostered America’s industrial revolution, similar to the manner in which the Victorian era Christians secured the cultural norms that enabled Great Britain to pioneer the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization arose upon Protestant culture’s upward social mobility that achieved innovation upon the free exchange of ideas.
The challenge of maintaining the Protestant’s success is for non-Protestant and non-Western people to secure a liberal self-governing culture that overcomes the natural challenges of today’s industrial and commercial society: because of its standardization of products, production methods, and banking methods, the commercial society has an integrative and centralizing effect that often undermines the people’s liberty, as business entities seek to exploit workers for monetary gain.
Thus far, non-Protestant European immigrants and non-Western immigrants have not entirely demonstrated that their respective cultures are up to the challenge of regulating government and large commercial industries. Since the 19th Century unto the present, immigrant populations have overwhelmingly supported a stronger centralized government, chiefly because the immigrants fear being second-class citizens to native Protestant Americans. Also, many immigrants have simply embraced employment opportunities and popular culture, without their seeing the need to forsake their cultural elements that undermine the liberal society’s upward social mobility. For instance, many immigrants maintain religious practices that demand allegiance to foreign priesthoods like the Catholic Church in Rome. Other immigrants derive from nations that tolerate political corruption and the subjugation of religious and ethnical minorities. Finally, some immigrant populations hold patriarchic traditions that approve of the subjugation and exploitation of women. Simply put, one must not suppose that an immigrant’s stepping across the border or an immigrant’s stepping off a ship or airplane makes an immigrant an heir to America’s liberal success.
America’s struggle to assimilate new immigrants, while maintaining the balance between the free people, the Church, and government; began after the American Civil War: a War that left the Federal Government stronger and more centralized. The centralized power of the Federal Government began as the northern states sought to finance the Civil War against southern secessionist states. In 1862, the income tax came into being as well as the printing of a national currency.
After the civil war, congress ratified the 14th amendment extending citizenship to all races and the 15th amendment granting voting rights to all citizens. After the war, America started incorporating its western territories. The federal government sought to Christianize Native Americans: in 1890, President Grant invited East Coast Churches to staff the reservations.
The west was diversified as mining towns grew, enlisting the cheap labor of foreign laborers. Rail road companies, for instance, employed 10,000 Chinese workers to build railways. Between 1870 and 1900 six percent of the American population moved west: most of the people who made the move were immigrants whom the railroad companies enticed with the promise of uncultivated land.
Industrialization in America first appeared in Northern states; where minerals and other natural resources needed to be processed. Southern states were slow to industrialize. The southern states remained dependent upon an agricultural economy that denied African Americans upward mobility. The industrial cities of the North like Chicago grew with large immigrant populations whom the factories used for cheap labors. Protestant Christian groups arranged organizations like the Red Cross and the YMCA to overcome the deplorable conditions in which the new immigrants lived.
We observe racial animosity’s appearance as some immigrants like Irish Catholics resisted assimilation into Protestant society. The Irish Catholics built Catholic schools throughout the north to maintain their Catholic identities. The Pope even encouraged a Catholic school to be built in every parish.
Protestant Americans became adverse to East European Slavic and Italian immigrants. The Slavic immigrants upheld an Eastern Orthodox religion, while the Italian immigrants upheld their Catholic faith and kindred relationships. Many bigoted Protestants even went so far as to consider many Italians and Eastern Slavs as not fully white. For example, in 1920, an African American male was charged with having intercourse with an Italian woman. Yet, the case was thrown out, because the woman was not considered to be fully white.
American racial animosity remained mostly unchallenged until the end of World War II. The horrors of the Nazi concentration camps gave lawmakers a new sensitivity to the evils of persecuting people simply because of racial difference. After the middle and working class children of World War II veterans gained access to affordable colleges in the 1960s, socialist movements arose upon college campuses; moreover, the Civil Rights movement for racial equality pioneered the way for the Federal Government to remove its racial quota that resisted the immigration of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants. Since the 1960s, the majority of new immigrants are non-European and non-Christian.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has increased the number of non-Protestant and non-Western immigrants to America as new free trade zone deals have immerged, encouraging immigration for cheap labor forces. Since the United States’ 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, Mexican illegal immigration to the United States has soared, numbering above 40 million illegal immigrants. The vast majorities of the Mexican and other Latin immigrants are Catholic, deriving from corrupt nations where people do not enjoy America’s libertarian traditions. The immigration population has been so swift that the new immigrants have not been assimilated. Overall, the immigrants support stronger centralized government and stronger welfare policies, despite the depleted treasuries of the U.S. federal government.
Because of the explosion of immigration (due to an unchecked socially progressive Federal Government and unchecked cheap labor exploiting capitalists), the delicate balance between a free people, a free Church, and an accountable government hangs upon a thread. Unless the people recapture the moral and ethical norms that Protestant culture once captured and unless the Federal government measures immigration, representational democracy stands at risk.
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Throughout his presidential campaign, Senator John F. Kennedy struggled to address public concern over whether Kennedy’s Roman Catholic faith would consign Kennedy’s presidential policies to be in line with the wishes of the Pope in Rome. If elected, then presidential candidate John F. Kennedy would become the first Roman Catholic to serve as President.
Today, Americans feel that the concerns of the people in Kennedy’s era were ridiculous; however, Kennedy lived in a Cold War era, when faith remained influential over the sciences. The Pope in Rome was still very influential.
Today, Americans feel that the concerns of the people in Kennedy’s era were ridiculous; however, Kennedy lived in a Cold War era, when faith remained influential over the sciences. The Pope in Rome was still very influential.
On September 12, 1960, Senator Kennedy spoke to association of Protestant ministers to allay their concerns. Kennedy’s speech was profound and enticing; however, he spoke vehemently about the separation of Church and State; where people’s private belief systems did not matter. Though we agree with Kennedy’s sentiment that Church and State must remain separate; however, we recognize that Kennedy unknowingly overlooked the contributions of the Protestant faith that united the people, despite the shortfall of government; even as Kennedy embraced the ancient prejudices of non-Protestant belief systems that undermine the upward mobility of all. Candidate Kennedy said the following: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote . . . . I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish . . .”
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Pope Francis, the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, has delved into the heated debate over illegal immigration into the United States. Pope Francis has encouraged Americans to accept the immigrants as impoverished people looking for hope and a better way of life.
The illegal immigrants are predominately Roman Catholic. Traditional American Catholics have a rough history with the Roman Church, because the American Catholics have adapted the American libertarian way of life, which resists centralize authority. American Catholics are more likely to rebel against Church teachings, as the American Catholics maintain liberal policies and lifestyles, such as the support of contraception and abortion, against Church teachings. A new influx of immigrant Roman Catholics would therefore increase Rome’s influence over the American Catholic Church.
The illegal immigrants are predominately Roman Catholic. Traditional American Catholics have a rough history with the Roman Church, because the American Catholics have adapted the American libertarian way of life, which resists centralize authority. American Catholics are more likely to rebel against Church teachings, as the American Catholics maintain liberal policies and lifestyles, such as the support of contraception and abortion, against Church teachings. A new influx of immigrant Roman Catholics would therefore increase Rome’s influence over the American Catholic Church.
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Self-government over one’s person and the seeking of the welfare of a stranger as though one is seeking the welfare of oneself is the heart and health of any government, even the fulfilling of the law of conscience. The doctrinal treatise, the Landscape of Truth, demonstrates how Lord Jesus fulfills the law of conscience and imparts this fulfillment freely to his Church in such a way that fulfills human government in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Landscape is a systematic theology that introduces the reader to the epic of human government, that is, the evolution of science, philosophy, and political science. Like so, the Landscape of Truth empowers the reader and the laypeople Church to foster a healthy culture and social environment, upon which Western civilization has attained its heights.
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Without the strengthening of laypeople based Churches to engage new immigrant populations, social unrest will increase. Unfortunately, old prejudices will reemerge, drawing deeper divisions between different peoples.
The Case against Hip Hop: the Cultural Suicide of African Americans
Published July 20, 2015 – thelandscapeoftruth.com
In 2012, Gov. Martin O’Malley chose Karla N. Smith to become Montgomery County Maryland’s first female black district court judge. In 2015, the honorable Judge Karla N. Smith advanced to a circuit court seat. Before becoming a judge, Karla Smith had spent above 12 years as assistant state’s attorney in Montgomery County, particularly handling a family violence division. In January 2009, attorney Smith hurriedly counseled a grieving Chon Lee, mother of the slain Ahmad Antony Terry (December 1980-May 2001), about appearing to testify against the early release of her son’s murderer. Smith expressed concern that the retiring Judge Michael S. Pincus seemed inclined to release the offender because of the offender’s good behavior. Attorney Smith had a particular affinity with the grieving Lee, for Smith grew up in the same Montgomery County neighborhood as Mrs. Lee and even attended the same high school that Lee’s brother had attended.
Not having the strength to testify on her son’s behalf, Mrs. Lee appeared at the January 2009 hearing, with her family members and friends, including her brother and uncle to Ms. Lee’s deceased son. Before a stern and seemingly unmovable Judge Pincus, one by one the family members testified on Ahmad Terry’s behalf. Judge Pincus even argued with the victim’s father Mark Terry, as the father asserted that the defendant deserved a harsher sentence than the one initially given. After all the family members testified, a frustrated attorney Smith looked over her shoulder to her former school mate, the uncle of Ahmad, and said to the judge, “We have one more witness.”
The loss of his nephew still fresh in his mind, the uncle begged for the patience of the judge to consider that the potential leniency of the court is grossly unequal to address the crime committed because the crime was not an isolated incident, but rather the crime was the outcome of a deficient culture that glorifies criminal behavior. The uncle argued that if the judge released the defendant prematurely, the judge’s leniency would rather have the effect of encouraging others to commit the same crime in the pursuit of a sick badge of honor.
The uncle principally filled his argument to the judge by recounting the irony of Ahmad’s demise. The uncle recounted how Ahmad had been an honors student who, like many other over-achieving African American youths, had to explain why he liked his scholastic studies to his young black peers who foolishly deemed educated blacks as white wannabes. The uncle then recounted the last conversation that he had with Ahmad: the uncle said that Ahmad could not wait to tell him that he had switched his major to law. Knowing of Ahmad’s brilliant mind and the in-depth philosophical conversations that they had often shared, the uncle said that he had purchased for Ahmad a copy of Plato’s Republic. The uncle then said that he wanted to further discover with Ahmad how the basic theme of Plato’s Republic underscores the reality of the impossibility for any government to secure a respect for justice in the hearts of every citizen. The uncle further said that even the Christ does not establish justice in the hearts of Church goers: the Christ only confers the justice of his person upon their faith in him. With his argument, the uncle denounced the effectiveness of the state’s rehabilitation program as a deterrent to violence. The uncle said that the defendant, who grew up in a good family and in a wealthy county, had plenty of chances to gain an education before he committed the crime. For this cause, the only recourse of the courts, said the uncle, is to uphold harsh sentences as a deterrent for those who engage in criminal behavior.
A fondness for the uncle’s argument then twinkled in Judge Pincus’ eye. The Judge soon reclined in his chair with a look of satisfaction. After speaking to the defendant affirming the serious nature of the crime, the Judge denied the defendant’s probation.
The loss of his nephew still fresh in his mind, the uncle begged for the patience of the judge to consider that the potential leniency of the court is grossly unequal to address the crime committed because the crime was not an isolated incident, but rather the crime was the outcome of a deficient culture that glorifies criminal behavior. The uncle argued that if the judge released the defendant prematurely, the judge’s leniency would rather have the effect of encouraging others to commit the same crime in the pursuit of a sick badge of honor.
The uncle principally filled his argument to the judge by recounting the irony of Ahmad’s demise. The uncle recounted how Ahmad had been an honors student who, like many other over-achieving African American youths, had to explain why he liked his scholastic studies to his young black peers who foolishly deemed educated blacks as white wannabes. The uncle then recounted the last conversation that he had with Ahmad: the uncle said that Ahmad could not wait to tell him that he had switched his major to law. Knowing of Ahmad’s brilliant mind and the in-depth philosophical conversations that they had often shared, the uncle said that he had purchased for Ahmad a copy of Plato’s Republic. The uncle then said that he wanted to further discover with Ahmad how the basic theme of Plato’s Republic underscores the reality of the impossibility for any government to secure a respect for justice in the hearts of every citizen. The uncle further said that even the Christ does not establish justice in the hearts of Church goers: the Christ only confers the justice of his person upon their faith in him. With his argument, the uncle denounced the effectiveness of the state’s rehabilitation program as a deterrent to violence. The uncle said that the defendant, who grew up in a good family and in a wealthy county, had plenty of chances to gain an education before he committed the crime. For this cause, the only recourse of the courts, said the uncle, is to uphold harsh sentences as a deterrent for those who engage in criminal behavior.
A fondness for the uncle’s argument then twinkled in Judge Pincus’ eye. The Judge soon reclined in his chair with a look of satisfaction. After speaking to the defendant affirming the serious nature of the crime, the Judge denied the defendant’s probation.
Though thankful for the Judge’s decision, the matter was only slight comfort to the perennially grieving Mrs. Lee. Back in the summer of 2000, Ahmad Terry’s uncle had a horrible premonition that Ahmad’s girlfriend would lead Ahmad into a grave situation. The uncle pleaded with Ahmad saying, “Ahmad, you are so young, brilliant, and handsome. You can have any girl! So walk away from her and anyone that she knows.”
Ahmad answered saying, “No uncle. I love her. Don’t worry! I will honor the Lord by marrying her.”
The uncle’s horrific nightmare came true, on Mother’s Day 2001. Ahmad’s mother Mrs. Lee was called to the hospital to find that her son had been murdered earlier that morning. Ahmad had got off his night time job to pick up his girlfriend at a party, where the defendant and several youths picked a fight with Ahmad. Ahmad’s uncle, seeing the knife wounds and seeing that Ahmad had the exact same clothes on that the uncle had seen in his premonition, started to collapse upon the body. As the hospital attendants restrained him, Mrs. Lee sat emotionlessly as she listened to her brother’s wails and sobs echoing through the hospital corridors.
The uncle’s horrific nightmare came true, on Mother’s Day 2001. Ahmad’s mother Mrs. Lee was called to the hospital to find that her son had been murdered earlier that morning. Ahmad had got off his night time job to pick up his girlfriend at a party, where the defendant and several youths picked a fight with Ahmad. Ahmad’s uncle, seeing the knife wounds and seeing that Ahmad had the exact same clothes on that the uncle had seen in his premonition, started to collapse upon the body. As the hospital attendants restrained him, Mrs. Lee sat emotionlessly as she listened to her brother’s wails and sobs echoing through the hospital corridors.
No one loved Ahmad Terry more than his mother Mrs. Lee. In utter shock, she sat their coming to terms with the reality of her own premonition that she had had some years before. She once saw herself standing with a multitude of saints gathering to behold the Lord’s glorious appearing. In the vision, she saw that she was distracted as she sensed her son’s presence: for an instance, her wanting to be reunited with her son competed with her wanting to see the Lord. Until that day becomes a reality, Mrs. Lee knew that she would mourn for the rest of her life.
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Social scientists reduce Ahmad Terry’s murder to a statistical factor, reflecting the excessive murder rates committed by African American men against other African American men. The competing conservative and liberal ideologies of America have historically maintained political stances that both seek to explain the reasons and the remedies for the African American excessive murder rates; however, thelandscapeoftruth.com seeks to draw attention to the manner in which globalization presents an entirely new dynamic that causes the collapse of African American culture to be all the more dire.
Amongst other fiscal reasons, the conservative groups blame the depletion of African American society, following the Civil Rights era, on the mismanaged and bloated welfare system that grew exponentially in the 1960s. Conservatives charge that the welfare system broke apart African American families, since the system encouraged single parenthood by giving out handouts to African American mothers who raised children without the presence of the fathers. Seeing that the welfare system has contributed to the nation’s debt and seeing that many working and middle class European Americans face economic and social obstacles in the light an increasingly competitive global economy; many conservative groups are presently throwing up their hands: conservative groups point to the economic distresses that European American communities are experiencing. Conservative groups also point to the manner in which a few unscrupulous civil rights leaders exploit racial tensions for personal gain. Plus, they point to the increasing instances of black on white crime.
Liberal groups, including African American institutes, blame the dejected African American society solely upon African Americans’ long endurance of a history of oppression in America: liberal groups first point to the manner in which African Americans lost their African identities because Europeans devastated African kindred groups, when the Europeans colonialized and exploited the African content. African American scholars point to the manner in which slavers further undermined African American family links as the slavers sold individual family members to different plantations. Next, African American scholars note how southerners deprived freed slaves of lands, public facilities, and voting rights: all of which compelled many African Americans to seek refuge in cities, where they gained employment as low skilled workers. Lastly, liberal and African American scholars observe how the mid-20th Century Federal Government handouts in housing loans and educational grants went only to European American working and middle class peoples. The scholars note that the result of African Americans’ not obtaining of like funds led European Americans and commercial industry to abandon many urban centers, to reside in predominately European American suburbs. For this cause, African American leaders see the incessant black on black violence as an effect of economic depravity. In addition, African American leaders point to continued instances of racism like the recent cases of police violence committed against African American males.
Both conservative and liberal groups have diagnosed most of the contributing factors to the plight of African American society. Even so, in the light of economic global competition challenging both African and European Americans, we draw attention to the manner in which the Hip Hop culture robs the African American community of realizing a post-Civil Rights era resolution.
Many Asian and Hispanic peoples that are currently joining the global economy readily adapt Western society, maintaining families and securing higher education. Immigrant crime rates equal the relatively low rates of European Americans; moreover, Asian Americans’ college admission rates in some instances surpass European Americans. There are two key reasons why non-African immigrants reconcile with Western life in a way that African Americans fail to do: most non-African immigrants come from countries in which their cultural heritage remains somewhat intact; therefore, they are able to objectify their Western cultural experience of upward social mobility by referencing similar aspects of their origin culture. Secondly, African Americans find it hard to adapt the culture of their former oppressors:
European culture, itself, is a consequence of the Christianization of the Germanic tribes, which then adapted Greco-Roman jurisprudence to model their governments. Unlike the ancient Roman conquerors of Germanic Europe, Christianity civilized the German hordes with such notions as piety, brotherly love, selflessness, honor, and charity. Upon the Christian general civility arose European commerce and government. By dismissing European achievements entirely, African Americans often fail to adapt the underlining roots of European prosperity.
Vanquished to deprived urban centers, the Hip Hop culture arose to give voice to the outrage of young African American youths. Through lyrical expression, Hip Hop artists developed a signature style that seeks to reclaim African Americans’ self-esteem, while remaining defiant to their oppressors. Many divisions of the Hip Hop style have arisen, from aggressive gang styles to the flamboyant styles that showcase sexual undertones and worldly indulgence.
At first, in the early 1980s, Hip Hop was a minor genre of African American music, barely standing beside rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel music. Presently, however, Hip Hop has risen to the height of being a way of life for many black youths, even countenancing a pseudo religion. Many Europeans, Asians, and Hispanic peoples enjoy the music style of Hip Hop, but they enjoy Hip Hop, merely as an entertainment outlet. Non blacks have the ability to express other aspects of their life through their native cultures; whereas many African American youths have no culture to fall back on.
One cannot distinguish the detrimental effect of the Hip Hop culture in a certain rhythm or lyrical style. The ill effect stands solely upon Hip Hop’s exploiting of the carnal human instinct to give oneself over to the abandonment of good conscience, in defiance to all the redeeming virtues that any true civilization stands upon. For instance, instead of encouraging brotherly love and humility, Hip Hop encourages young African Americans to find strength in displaying aggression and egotism. Instead of encouraging fidelity and commitment, Hip Hop encourages sexual promiscuity and the sexual objectification of females. Instead of encouraging literacy and a hard work ethic, Hip Hop encourages broken speech patterns and get-rich easy schemes. Lastly, instead of encouraging respect for human life, like the life of the murdered Ahmad Terry, Hip Hop celebrates murder, violence, and the serving of prison time.
Until African Americans Churches denounce the Hip Hop culture and discourage their offspring from participating in it, African American society will never recover. African Americans’ economic disadvantage is real; however, the community’s unwillingness to address Hip Hop’s glorification of violence and sexual promiscuity (which contribute greatly to African Americans’ economic disadvantage) discourages others who may be willing to lend a helping hand.
Amongst other fiscal reasons, the conservative groups blame the depletion of African American society, following the Civil Rights era, on the mismanaged and bloated welfare system that grew exponentially in the 1960s. Conservatives charge that the welfare system broke apart African American families, since the system encouraged single parenthood by giving out handouts to African American mothers who raised children without the presence of the fathers. Seeing that the welfare system has contributed to the nation’s debt and seeing that many working and middle class European Americans face economic and social obstacles in the light an increasingly competitive global economy; many conservative groups are presently throwing up their hands: conservative groups point to the economic distresses that European American communities are experiencing. Conservative groups also point to the manner in which a few unscrupulous civil rights leaders exploit racial tensions for personal gain. Plus, they point to the increasing instances of black on white crime.
Liberal groups, including African American institutes, blame the dejected African American society solely upon African Americans’ long endurance of a history of oppression in America: liberal groups first point to the manner in which African Americans lost their African identities because Europeans devastated African kindred groups, when the Europeans colonialized and exploited the African content. African American scholars point to the manner in which slavers further undermined African American family links as the slavers sold individual family members to different plantations. Next, African American scholars note how southerners deprived freed slaves of lands, public facilities, and voting rights: all of which compelled many African Americans to seek refuge in cities, where they gained employment as low skilled workers. Lastly, liberal and African American scholars observe how the mid-20th Century Federal Government handouts in housing loans and educational grants went only to European American working and middle class peoples. The scholars note that the result of African Americans’ not obtaining of like funds led European Americans and commercial industry to abandon many urban centers, to reside in predominately European American suburbs. For this cause, African American leaders see the incessant black on black violence as an effect of economic depravity. In addition, African American leaders point to continued instances of racism like the recent cases of police violence committed against African American males.
Both conservative and liberal groups have diagnosed most of the contributing factors to the plight of African American society. Even so, in the light of economic global competition challenging both African and European Americans, we draw attention to the manner in which the Hip Hop culture robs the African American community of realizing a post-Civil Rights era resolution.
Many Asian and Hispanic peoples that are currently joining the global economy readily adapt Western society, maintaining families and securing higher education. Immigrant crime rates equal the relatively low rates of European Americans; moreover, Asian Americans’ college admission rates in some instances surpass European Americans. There are two key reasons why non-African immigrants reconcile with Western life in a way that African Americans fail to do: most non-African immigrants come from countries in which their cultural heritage remains somewhat intact; therefore, they are able to objectify their Western cultural experience of upward social mobility by referencing similar aspects of their origin culture. Secondly, African Americans find it hard to adapt the culture of their former oppressors:
European culture, itself, is a consequence of the Christianization of the Germanic tribes, which then adapted Greco-Roman jurisprudence to model their governments. Unlike the ancient Roman conquerors of Germanic Europe, Christianity civilized the German hordes with such notions as piety, brotherly love, selflessness, honor, and charity. Upon the Christian general civility arose European commerce and government. By dismissing European achievements entirely, African Americans often fail to adapt the underlining roots of European prosperity.
Vanquished to deprived urban centers, the Hip Hop culture arose to give voice to the outrage of young African American youths. Through lyrical expression, Hip Hop artists developed a signature style that seeks to reclaim African Americans’ self-esteem, while remaining defiant to their oppressors. Many divisions of the Hip Hop style have arisen, from aggressive gang styles to the flamboyant styles that showcase sexual undertones and worldly indulgence.
At first, in the early 1980s, Hip Hop was a minor genre of African American music, barely standing beside rhythm and blues, jazz, and gospel music. Presently, however, Hip Hop has risen to the height of being a way of life for many black youths, even countenancing a pseudo religion. Many Europeans, Asians, and Hispanic peoples enjoy the music style of Hip Hop, but they enjoy Hip Hop, merely as an entertainment outlet. Non blacks have the ability to express other aspects of their life through their native cultures; whereas many African American youths have no culture to fall back on.
One cannot distinguish the detrimental effect of the Hip Hop culture in a certain rhythm or lyrical style. The ill effect stands solely upon Hip Hop’s exploiting of the carnal human instinct to give oneself over to the abandonment of good conscience, in defiance to all the redeeming virtues that any true civilization stands upon. For instance, instead of encouraging brotherly love and humility, Hip Hop encourages young African Americans to find strength in displaying aggression and egotism. Instead of encouraging fidelity and commitment, Hip Hop encourages sexual promiscuity and the sexual objectification of females. Instead of encouraging literacy and a hard work ethic, Hip Hop encourages broken speech patterns and get-rich easy schemes. Lastly, instead of encouraging respect for human life, like the life of the murdered Ahmad Terry, Hip Hop celebrates murder, violence, and the serving of prison time.
Until African Americans Churches denounce the Hip Hop culture and discourage their offspring from participating in it, African American society will never recover. African Americans’ economic disadvantage is real; however, the community’s unwillingness to address Hip Hop’s glorification of violence and sexual promiscuity (which contribute greatly to African Americans’ economic disadvantage) discourages others who may be willing to lend a helping hand.
After the American Civil War, during the 1860s Reconstruction period, African American society experienced a brief awakening in which the nation witnessed former slaves, demonstrating that they were equally capable of being contributors to Western Civilization. African American men in the southern states gained the right to vote and hold political offices. African Americans worked hard to find lost family members to solidify their families. Also, African Americans rushed to get their children enrolled in the public school systems. African American gains were so swift that many racist southerners organized to deprive African Americans of their newly gained civil rights until the 1960s.
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Around 75 percent of African American children are born in a single parent household, whereas around 14 percent of African American children were born to single a parent in the mid-twentieth century. African Americans make up approximately 13 percent of the population, but they commit around 50 percent of the nation’s violent crimes: approximately, 1 out of every 15 African American men will serve jail time; whereas approximately 1 of every 100 European American men will serve a jail sentence. In 2013, the median household wealth for European Americans was 13 times higher than that of African Americans.
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The doctrinal treatise the Landscape of Truth recognizes the universality of the gospel’s conferment of social prosperity upon cultures that significantly adapt the cultural fruits of the New Testament doctrines. The Landscape traces the evolution of civilization and the disenfranchisement and enfranchisement of peoples as civilizations advanced. The Landscape notes particularly how the Germanic tribes’ adoption of the gospel, eventually led to the enfranchisement of the lower classes: an enfranchisement that has never occurred before and an enfranchisement that still undergirds modern civilization.
In regards to the struggle of African American people, the Landscape suggests that African American people are fully capable of adapting lessons-learned from the European experience of the gospel to rebuild a reinvigorated African American cultural ethos. The Landscape’s chapter 7 briefly records the schema that traces how the once barbarian Greek tribal groups adapted Egyptians cultural attributes to build Greek civilization; how the once backward Roman tribal group adopted Greek cultural attributes to build Roman civilization; and how the once barbarous Germanic tribes adapted Greco-Roman civilization and Christianity to build the modern West. Essentially, the Landscape records how many struggling civilizations blossom unto cultural brilliance.
In regards to the struggle of African American people, the Landscape suggests that African American people are fully capable of adapting lessons-learned from the European experience of the gospel to rebuild a reinvigorated African American cultural ethos. The Landscape’s chapter 7 briefly records the schema that traces how the once barbarian Greek tribal groups adapted Egyptians cultural attributes to build Greek civilization; how the once backward Roman tribal group adopted Greek cultural attributes to build Roman civilization; and how the once barbarous Germanic tribes adapted Greco-Roman civilization and Christianity to build the modern West. Essentially, the Landscape records how many struggling civilizations blossom unto cultural brilliance.
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Despite the cultural plight of African Americans, as well as the ongoing social distress of Americans in general, the advancement of the Christ’s justice is sure. The effect of Lord Jesus’ justice is eternal serenity. Those who have faith in his justice, the Lord will redeem, and they will stand in his serene outshining. There Mrs. Lee will finally reunite with her son. Her strength is in her hope, which looks ahead.