A few minutes with Dennis Prager

In the YouTube clip below, Dennis Prager eloquently describes a problem I've repeatedly addressed in my blog and elsewhere: the voters are idiots. Over the past 100 years, progressivism (the movement toward big-government control over all aspects of life) has corrupted schools and churches. The consequence is a nation of spiritual, cultural, intellectual, moral, and civic illiterates and cowards. That is exactly what the elites want and need in order to micromanage the lives of us commoners.

In his final farewell address (1796), George Washington said:

Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle....Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens....Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government....A primary object...should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing...than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?...Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

Only when the people know, understand, and insist on the principles of a constitutionally-limited government that is beholden only to the people and when the people cherish and safeguard their God-given rights will they remain free. Progressivism in government, schools, and churches have steadily weaned us from those principles.

The individual liberty guaranteed by the Constitution is what enabled the United States to become the most prosperous and charitable nation in history and to share that charity and prosperity with the world. Because of horrid spiritual, cultural, intellectual, moral, and civic education, this nation is rapidly loosing its prosperity and its dedication to charity. The entire world is the loser. In an 1862 address to Congress, Abraham Lincoln said it best:

We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

Ezra Taft Benson, a member of the Eisenhower Cabinet and religious leader added,

[The Constitution] will not be saved in Washington. It will be saved by the citizens of this nation who love and cherish freedom...men and women who will subscribe to and abide the principles of the Constitution.

How are we doing on that?