America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great (6 page)

At that time, Congress had no powers of direct taxation and was struggling to raise money to support the war. Congress requested money from the states, but these requests were mostly refused. So perilous was the status of the army that they often lived day-to-day. The only choice left to our government was to borrow funds.

Haym Salomon, who became a very successful currency broker, used his financial savvy to finance the Revolution. Salomon volunteered his own fortune of 600,000 pounds sterling to begin the American Revolution — which today would be several million dollars, an immense fortune.
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When the British Parliament authorized covert financial tricks to undermine the colonists, such as counterfeiting colonial paper money and discrediting American envoys in Holland and France, they were hoping to cause
Washington’s army to mutiny from lack of pay and necessities. But Salomon came through again with personal loans and brokered finance deals both in the New World and elsewhere around the world.

Salomon also proved his worth as a spy for George Washington as well as a finance man when he was captured by the British. When he noticed the British soldiers didn’t speak German, and the German mercenaries who had been hired by the Brits didn’t speak English, he informed the Brits of his knowledge of languages, without actually offering to translate. (He did not want to be seen as a Loyalist.) While interpreting, he then persuaded over five hundred Hessian soldiers from Germany to desert the British cause for the American side! Salomon also solicited every able-bodied Jewish man to fight in Washington’s army. After the war, he organized the first American veterans’ organization, “The Jewish War Veterans,” which is still active today.

Michael Feldberg writes, “Within five years of his arrival in Philadelphia, Salomon advanced from penniless fugitive to respected businessman, philanthropist, and defender of his people. He risked his fortune, pledged his good name and credit on behalf of the Revolution, and stood up for religious liberty. Despite financial setbacks at the end of his life, Salomon’s name is forever linked to the idealism and success of the American Revolution, and to the contributions Jews have made to the cause of American freedom.”
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It is clear that significant Judeo-Christian influences were involved in the founding of our nation, although being a nation of all peoples, coming from different backgrounds and cultures, Christian, Jewish, and others, did not hinder us. Although it is difficult to verify, many believe that a star of David on the back of the one dollar bill is a tribute to Haym Salomon and the many Jewish Americans who fought for our initial freedom.

Freedom of religion is one of the basic tenets of the founding of our nation, and while we are primarily a Judeo-Christian nation, we are a nation of faith that encompasses many religions and beliefs. We as a nation welcome all nonviolent people of every faith, and there was never any intention by our founders of excluding religion from our public or private lives. They did not want us to embrace a theocracy, but neither did they want us to eschew religious principles.

Our National Day of Prayer, for example, is a significant part of our heritage. In 1775, during a meeting of the Continental Congress, all of the
colonies were asked to pray for wisdom as the policies to govern the nation were being formed. During the Civil War, President Lincoln proclaimed a day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer,” and in 1952, President Truman signed a joint resolution from the Congress officially creating a National Day of Prayer.

Undoubtedly, there are some in our country who are very uncomfortable with the highest levels of our government recognizing and encouraging prayer, but as Mrs. Shirley Dobson, who was chairman of the National Day of Prayer, put it, “We have lost many of our freedoms in America because we have been asleep. I feel if we do not become involved and support the annual National Day of Prayer, we could end up forfeiting this freedom too.”
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However, in April 2010, US district judge Barbara Crabb in Wisconsin ruled that the government-sanctioned National Day of Prayer, established by Congress and supported with a proclamation from the president, is unconstitutional.

I believe the problem arises from misinterpretation of what our founders intended with respect to government and religion. Having lived in Europe’s Old World they were very familiar with the deleterious effects of state-sponsored religion. They never wanted to see the government endorse a specific religion, but neither did they want to see faith and religion suppressed. There is nothing at all in our founding documents forbidding or denigrating religious expression in public life. The judge in this case was responding to a lawsuit filed by a group of atheists and agnostics called the Freedom from Religion Foundation. They complained that the government did not have the right to tell them to pray, but perhaps they didn’t notice that prayer was not a requirement, but rather a suggestion. A government requirement would be something like paying your income taxes. If you owe taxes and refuse to pay them, you will quickly learn the difference between a suggestion and a requirement.

Speaking on the separation of church and state, Joel Oster, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, added, “The National Day of Prayer provides an opportunity for all Americans to pray voluntarily according to their own faith — it does not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.”
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Not only have polls shown that most Americans feel positive about a national day of prayer, but interestingly a Rasmussen report from February 2010 showed that 65 percent of Americans prefer having prayer in schools! Unfortunately, the very vocal minority trying to suppress religious expression in America has been successful in getting this issue to the top of the political correctness list. Even though most Americans believe in God and many have a strong personal faith, political correctness decries public
declarations of that faith. Yet even both houses of Congress begin each session with public prayer. Because I do a lot of public speaking, people regularly thank me for being bold about my belief in God. If most people believe in God and yet we are afraid to speak of that belief in public, what does that say about the freedoms that our ancestors fought and died for?

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin, who was eighty-one years old, gave the following address on June 28 when hostilities and bitterness threatened to totally disrupt the convention:

The speech apparently had such a profound effect on all present that the assembly voted to begin every session with prayer, a tradition that has continued until this day. I love to drag this passage out when so-called intellectuals claim that Benjamin Franklin was an atheist. Many people like to rewrite history or delete portions to bolster their arguments before gullible audiences. But I am so grateful for people such as former congressional candidate William Federer, who has done extraordinary research to uncover documents revealing the true sentiments and beliefs of our founders. Only through the careful study of historical documents can we prevent the distortion of where we came from and who we are as a nation.

Freedom to worship or not worship as one pleases would not be an issue were it not for the extreme intolerance of antireligion groups. In many cases, these are the very same people who brand anyone who disagrees with their agenda as bigoted and intolerant. Their extreme hypocrisy is almost comical, were it not so sad.

I have also frequently heard people question the faith of Thomas Jefferson. However, in his 1781 notes on the state of Virginia, he wrote, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

This passage and many others like it leave no doubt about Jefferson’s beliefs. There are many more convincing statements by other founding leaders such as George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, Thomas Paine, John Locke, James Madison, and others that make it clear there was never any intention of removing God from the public sphere of our nation.
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Remember all the controversy in 2003 surrounding the order given by a United States district judge to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama State judicial building? A similar thing
then happened in the courthouse in Jackson County, Kentucky, where the Ten Commandments had to be removed in response to a lawsuit. Statues, nativity scenes, and other religious objects have also been removed by zealous opponents of anything that has to do with God. Somehow the people initiating these lawsuits believe that making these objects visible to the public violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which says the legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion. They conveniently forget about that part of the amendment that follows saying that the government should not prohibit the free exercise of religion. The infamous lawsuit instigated by Michael Newdow in Sacramento sought to remove the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, but if these kinds of activities don’t constitute the prohibition of free exercise of religion, then what does? Until the antireligion zealots learn the meaning of the word
tolerance
, we will continue to experience unnecessary strife.

What message are we sending the next generation when a student is not allowed to express himself freely? In the Morgan v. Plano Independent School District case, also known as the “candy cane” case, several students were denied their free speech rights and discriminated against because their speech was religious in nature. A young boy was singled out and banned from handing out candy cane pens with a religious message at his class “winter” party. This case also includes a little girl who was threatened for handing out tickets after school to a religious play, and an entire class of kids was forbidden from writing “Merry Christmas” on holiday cards to American troops serving overseas. The government officials who appealed the ruling are now arguing that elementary students are too young to have First Amendment rights.
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If anyone is still skeptical about our roots as a nation of faith, consider the fourth stanza of our national anthem:

Is it any wonder that God has blessed America to such a great extent? We acknowledge him in our founding document, the Declaration of
Independence, in our Pledge of Allegiance, in our courtrooms, in our national anthem, and on our money, to name a few things. In return, he has blessed us above all nations just as he said he would. Before we throw away those blessings, remember what George Washington said: “The man must be bad indeed who can look upon the events of the American Revolution without feeling the warmest gratitude toward the great Author of the Universe whose divine interposition was so frequently manifested in our behalf. And it is my earnest prayer that we may so conduct ourselves as to merit a continuance of those blessings with which we have hitherto been favored.”
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