The U.S. Has a Rich English History | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Our nation was founded on several principles of government (see the section on "Our Founding Principles") and three basic fundamental freedoms - "Life, Liberty, and Property (ie, "the Pursuit of Happiness"). These are the three which form the foundation for all our protected freedoms and liberties. As Justice Sutherland (Supreme Court, 1921-38) explained: "The three great rights are bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty, but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave." Our Founding Patriots did not seek independence because of stifling taxation or any excessive restriction of liberty. Indeed, the tax burden on American colonists was not even close to the tax burden on subjects in England, and it was far less than our burden today. In 1776, taxes in the colonies were the lowest in the civilized world. Rather, as the British subjects they considered themselves to be, they believed they had a right to representation in the British Parliament. The English Bill of Rights 1689 had forbidden the imposition of taxes without the consent of Parliament and since the colonists had no representation in Parliament, the taxes that the King had continued to impose on the colonists violated their guaranteed rights as Englishmen. Hence, "No Taxation Without Representation" and the Boston Tea Party became the battle cry for independence. Our early colonists quickly and instinctly understood when their rights as Englishmen were violated. And they refused to tolerate the abuse. How many Americans would recognize abuses by our own federal government?

    A people who don't know their history and their foundations will not know when the Constitution ceases to restrain government and begins to restrain citizens. Thomas Jefferson said, ''Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.'' When they are not well-informed, then they cannot expect to keep their freedoms, for they will not know when the government is slowly taking them away. So, in fact, a people who are not educated properly in their nation's history and heritage, pose a great threat to individual liberty as we know it here in the United States.

    Perhaps Jefferson knew that we would fail to educate and fail to hold those American values given to us dear to our heart and mind and the government would s the gifts and responsibilities that make us uniquely "Americans." Perhaps that is why right up front, in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, he gave us this advice: "Whenever the government becomes destructive of the ends for which the Declaration of Independence was created and ratified, the people have the right to alter it or abolish it and to form a new government to properly and fairly secure their safety and pursuit of happiness."


    "If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation." James Madison, referred to as the "Father of the Constitution" and author of 28 of the 85 Federalist Papers, wrote this. Let us not forget that the Constitution was written for those in whose name it was cast: We the People. It is an agreement or contract - NOT between We the People and government (the government didn't sign the Constitution), but rather an agreement amongst the states on behalf of the people - setting out how much power would be transferred to the government. And it is also LAW. The legal framework set up in the Constitution, for the protection of individual rights, is the SUPREME LAW of the land (Article V). It is a short document - and remarkably straightforward. Our Founders intended it to be studied in American schools and to be read in the home. They envisioned a nation of people who knew their Constitution, their charter of freedom, and knew how their government worked and how it rested on the service of good, moral, educated, and ethical people. They expected people to understand all this and step up and serve their country... not as career politicians, but as a civic duty. They never intended that we would need judges and justices to interpret it for us. It wasn't required that we have law degrees to understand it. The onstitution was never supposed to come under the exclusive dominion of the Supreme Court who would ignore its simple common sense meaning and would fail to see the forest from the trees. It was meant for you and I to understand.

    The most important thing to remember about the Constitution is what Patrick Henry told us: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; It is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it comes to dominate our lives and interests."

    Our proud English history is a story of a human struggle, beginning over a 1000 years ago, to limit government and demand that certain rights are so fundamental to the existence of individuals that government must respect them. Our schools, and even learned citizens, do a great disservice to their students and fellow Americans by not teaching this. As we see the direct impact of the Magna Carta and English Bill of Rights in our founding documents, and as we appreciate the overwhelming passion our early colonists felt for the fundamental liberties that Englishmen enjoyed but which they felt were being denied, leading to our independence, we clearly understand that American history IS England's history. The story of America is a continuation of man's establishment of sovereign rights with respect to government and with respect to a tyrant. It is a continuation of man's determination to limit government and therefore to limit the intrusion on individual liberty. Perhaps Supreme Court Justice David Davis said it best, in Ex Parte Milligan [71 U.S. 2 (1866)]: "The founders of our government were familiar with the history of that struggle; and secured in a written constitution every right which the people had wrested from power during a contest of ages.....Time has proven the discernment of our ancestors; for even these provisions , expressed in such plain English words, that it would seem the ingenuity of man could not evade them, are now, after the lapse of more than seventy years, sought to be avoided. Those great and good men foresaw that troublous times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive under restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional liberty would be in peril unless established by irrepealable law. The history of the world had taught them that what was done in the past might be attempted in the future. The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times , and under all circumstances."

    Our children should be taught about how long and hard people fought for the freedom they enjoy today. Our children should be taught the historical context and events that led to the creation of our limited government with its checks and balances. They should learn how our founding documents define what the government can and cannot do, and why this is so. They should understand why they are blessed to live in a republic so soundly-designed and why the Rule of Law is so important. And they should appreciate why our Constitution so aggressively provides for the protection of life, liberty, and property, protects against unjust punishment and government confiscation, and encourages the rights of conscience and expression.


    As George Washington instructed: "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." Likewise, Thomas Jefferson advised: "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degrees." Andrew Klavan, of PJTV's "The Culture," told us: "Many people we trust with our government turn out to be just the sort of power-hungry, corrupt, low-lives from whom the Founding wig-wearers were trying to protect us. The freedom we enjoy today is the exception in history, not the rule. Grow complacent in its strength, ignorant of its foundation, or careless of the rules of its sustainment, and it will be lost to what James Madison called 'the gradual silent encroachment of those in power.' "

    The Constitutional Convention was an extraordinary undertaking. It was an attempt by our Founding Fathers to determine "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force." (Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers No. 1).


ttps://beaufortcountynow.com/uploads/article_images/diane_rufino/john_locke_1_630_pxlw.jpg     Likewise, this country is referred to as the great American "experiment." Why an experiment? Because we still don't know what kind of nation our unique "constitutional formula" will produce. Our nation continues to evolve. Yet sadly, it does so with a different breed of America citizen. It does so with a population who doesn't embrace and cherish liberty like our forefathers did. In short, we still don't know whether a nation so conceived in liberty will long endure.
When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met in that small, hot, stuffy room at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia (now known as "Independence Hall"), there was a chair that the president of the Convention sat in which had a carving of the sun and its rays centered at its top. Later, Benjamin Franklin would remark that during the Convention, he often wondered if the carving signified a sunrise or sunset for the new country. According to James Madison, Franklin finally figured it out. He told Madison: "Now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun." Would he say the same if he could see this country today?

    As we celebrate this Independence Day, let us do so in remembrance of the sacrifices and anticipations of a free nation. And while we were able to separate our allegiance to England, a nation that abused the rights of the early colonists, let us also remember the rich history we share with her. Let us remember again what it truly means to be an "American."

    "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed onto them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." --- Ronald Reagan

   Publisher's Note: Here concludes part one of the three part series yet to be published. Continue to check back in with us here at BCN and we will have the following installments. Thank-you Diane Rufino for your astute observation, and historical perspective, of the rich textured interpersonal human / political building blocks that built America's past, and made us who we should be today.

    Diane Rufino has her own blog For Love of God and Country. Come and visit her. She'd love your company.