US Downfall Traced to Defeat of Christianity
June 23, 2015
"America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." - Alexis de Toqueville
by Richard Evans
(henrymakow.com)
Is America using immoral tactics to fight unjust wars? I found part of the answer in a remarkable interview with a former US drone operator, Brandon Bryant, on BBC's HARDtalk (above.)
I thought it would be the usual 'gung ho' pep talk about America's great weapons, but the young man impressed me with his honesty, courage and conviction. Brandon says drone warfare represented the most cowardly warfare ever devised. Although he took part in over 1600 kills, he felt sick about it because he could not be sure whether some were even enemy combatants.
He condemned the Presidential order to assassinate US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed by drone in 2011with another American who was purportedly editor of al-Qaeda's English-language web magazine, Inspire. Bryant felt these assassinations constituted a blatant violation of the US Constitution - which says that US citizens must have a fair trial by their peers even when the charge is treason. Obama simply ordered al-Awiaki and sidekick murdered by drone ten thousands miles away.
Bryant argued, "We're supposed to be the greatest nation in the world, and we do not live up to our own standards".
HOW DID AMERICA LOSE ITS MORAL GROUNDING?
To answer this question, we have to travel back to the 19th century when Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859) the French social philosopher visited America to discover the reasons for our incredible success. He published his observations in his classic two-volume work, Democracy in America (1838). He was especially impressed by America's religious character. Here are some startling excerpts from Tocqueville's great work:
Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.
In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. But in America I found they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country.
Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief.
I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion -- for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.
In the United States, the sovereign authority is religious...there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America, and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
In the United States, the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people...
Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent...
I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution.
Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.
America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge of freedom.
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts -- the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
Tocqueville gives this account of a court case in New York:
While I was in America, a witness, [in a court case], declared that he did not believe in the existence of God or in the immortality of the soul. The judge refused to admit his evidence, on the ground that the witness had destroyed beforehand all confidence of the court in what he was about to say. The newspapers related the fact without any further comment. The New York Spectator of August 23rd, 1831, relates the fact in the following terms:
"The court of common pleas of Chester county (New York), a few days since rejected a witness who declared his disbelief in the existence of God. The presiding judge remarked, that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God; that this belief constituted the sanction of all testimony in a court of justice: and that he knew of no case in a Christian country, where a witness had been permitted to testify without such belief."
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First Comment by Tony B
What is missing here is what was intended to be missed by the masons and odd ball deists who were the majority of the "founding fathers."
The U.S. Constitution is, through and through, a masonic, commercial document, never once mentioning God or even religion until the amendments, the first ten of which were grudgingly added to get the thing accepted by the somewhat suspicious people. Even then, the "religion" amendment only allows citizens to believe anything they wish, as the government was to butt out of religion. This insanity puts Christianity on a par with all other religions, including satanism and the religion of atheism (it is a religion), it does NOT make the nation Christian. As a matter of fact, this is exactly how the courts now interpret the amendment.
Always implied but never meant as the people expected, the word "liberty" in that document is heavy with the masonic meaning, which is liberty FROM God and his commandments, not liberty to worship and obey Him. It took a few hundred years for enough Americans to realize this while Christianity was constantly downgraded in the minds of the people until now this nation has the absolutely satanic concepts of mother murder of her unborn and same sex marriages encoded in exceptionally non-Christian law, forced upon any Christians still in existence.
Moreover, distinctly un-Christian government corruption is now the rule, not the exception and the people are treated as "subjects," that is, slaves, while government agents no longer see themselves as servants of the people but as lords or owners of the citizenry.
The U.S. never really was a Christian nation although originally the people in general held mostly Christian concepts, which was its early salvation in the great masonic experiment with republicanism, a humanistic form of governance which eventually leads to hell, as is now obvious to those who can see.
Dan said (June 25, 2015):
re. Tony's comment
The history of Christianity in America is a deep subject that really can't be covered in this article, so I said it's counterproductive to steer the conversation to a debate between whether American ethics were Christian or Freemasonic at the time de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America. Though I say that to say America was a Freemasonic country then is to give the Lodge boys far too much credit.
In the 1840's they actually got driven underground for a while due to the Captain Morgan scandal.