[Magdalen] 239th year since the birth of the United States of America as a nation

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Actually, one might better say we should be setting off those fireworks at
the end of May.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/dates-of-ratification-of-the-constitution/

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 9:16 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <
oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I'm not sure I'd say our birthday is tomorrow, but everyone thinks
> the Declaration of Independence represents our birth, so that ship (of
> state) has sailed. The Constitution is really the mark of our birth. The
> Confederation was not what we might call successful, but After Jimmy
> Madison and company rebooted us as the USA, it was a different story.
>
> I like, in general, the Four Marks of the Nation (ahem) that this Murray
> puts out. I think we all see these things a bit differently. I think all
> the geographical facts are exactly right. I would add, however, that it
> took a certain level of risk to leave one's home to come to this strange
> new world, so that selects for risk-takers.  Folks coming to our fair
> shores were not just hard-working: they were willing to venture much for
> the riches they hoped later on to enjoy (sorry about the horrible
> paraphrase).  So while the whole Eastern seaboard is filling up with these
> risk-takers, there were a bunch for whom the Eastern country was too darn
> crowded. I know a bit about this, since my direct ancestor, James (Jamie)
> Smith, decided to leave the predictable peaceful eastern Pennsylvania
> farmland to move to Kentucky, where he was a part of that territory
> becoming a state.
>
> I'd say we started out as a nation of risk-takers.  Risk-takers would tend
> to be willing to be solitary, to deal with difficulties without asking for
> help unless absolutely necessary.  You know, this explains a bit of how we
> got to be a nation of gun-abusers.
>
>
>
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2015 at 7:48 AM, Zephonites--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Folk
>>
>> Interesting article on this matter
>>
>> Any one agree with any/all of it?
>>
>> Blessings
>> Martin
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ---
>> America celebrates her 239th birthday tomorrow.  According to a  recent
>> survey, nearly two in three Americans say God has granted our nation  an
>> exceptional role in human history.  Is this true?
>>
>> Charles  Murray earned a BA in history from Harvard and a PhD in political
>> science from  MIT.  In American Exceptionism: An Experiment in History, he
>> states  categorically: "American exceptionalism is a fact of America's
>> past,
>> not  something you can choose whether to 'believe in' any more than you
>> can
>> choose  whether to 'believe in' the battle of Gettysburg."  In its early
>> years, the  United States was considered to be "exceptional" by foreign
>> observers as much as  by Americans.
>>
>> According to Murray, four factors contributed to the  nation's uniqueness:
>> 1. Our  geography: rich soil for farming, a frontier to encourage
>> immigration, and the  Atlantic Ocean to separate us from European
>> conflict.
>> 2. Our people:  hardworking pioneers who formed close-knit families.
>> 3. Our ideology: the  belief that humans possess innate rights which the
>> state cannot bestow or  withhold.
>> 4. Our religiosity: by separating church and state, we formed
>> congregations composed of people committed to their faith, not just those
>> born  into it.
>>  John Adams was blunt: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral  and
>> religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any
>> other."
>>
>> Do these factors mean that our founders  were all Christians?  We
>> sometimes
>> hear that 52 of the 55 signers of the  Declaration of Independence were
>> "orthodox" Christians, and that 24 held  seminary degrees.  But their
>> personal
>> spiritual commitments are actually  hard to determine.  We can
>> characterize
>> only about 20—half were biblical  Christians, while the rest were deists
>> or
>> non-orthodox.
>>
>> While America's founders were not all committed  Christians, they were
>> clearly committed to a Judeo-Christian moral  standard.  Even Thomas
>> Jefferson,
>> himself a deist, insisted: "Injustice in  government undermines the
>> foundations of a society.  A nation, therefore,  must take measures to
>> encourage its
>> members along the paths of justice and  morality."
>>
>> How can we take such "measures" today?
>>
>> Abraham  Lincoln warned, "America will never be destroyed from the
>> outside.
>>  If  we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed
>> ourselves."  Spiritual renewal is critical to the future of our
>> democracy.  Our
>> greatest need today is not to make America a Christian  nation, but to
>> help
>> America be a nation of Christians (Matthew 28:18-20).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>