WHY OUR CONTSTITUTION ISN'T WORKING

 

2020 has been a year for which millions of people would like to get a "do-over." Turn on the TV or radio news, read newspapers, examine the magazines and there’s civil upheaval. Riots. As of September 2020, estimates show the financial cost of the rioting in this one year is on its way to $2 billion, making it the most expensive in history. There have been riots in 140 U.S. cities in 20 states and Minneapolis could become the costliest civil disorder of all time in the United States. The destruction at the hands of rioting mobs has left business owners destitute, people injured, and some people dead. This is what accompanies anarchy.

A lament goes up to heaven that the destroyers are left unpunished, unjudged, and uncondemned by constituted authorities who seem to give their approval by their silence and inaction. To compound the problem, the academic world gives its sanction and the wealthy contribute to provide funds to get the few who are arrested back out on the streets to let loose their dogs of war once again.

In all of this, where is the United States Constitution, one of the greatest documents to come from the quill of man? Thomas E. Woods and Kevin R. C. Gutzman seek to answer that question in a book they wrote called, "Who Killed the Constitution?"

Many will jump to the conclusion (always a dangerous athletic event) by answering, "Those Democrats!" Wait a minute. The authors say, "No." The answer is, "The Republicans and the Democrats." Both are guilty, and, as they point out, their assault on the document began over a hundred years ago.

But let's view another answer concerning why our Constitution isn't working. This answer is one given by two men far wiser than you or I and they were there at the creation of the American Republic: John Adams and George Washington. Their answer has biblical roots so it goes beyond the answer of "Who Killed the Constitution?"

John Adams, that most prolific writer, stated the answer which has come down from the hallowed halls, fresh out of the Constitutional Convention: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion (read "Christianity"). Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (From: "John Adams to Massachusetts Militia," October 11, 1798).

George Washington agreed with Adams' assessment as pointed out by Susan Hanssen: "Adams, like George Washington, believed that no polity could eradicate the sinfulness of man, so any man who disparaged the place of morality and religion in public life was a traitor.

"In the twilight of his life, James Madison [the "Father of the Constitution] wrote,"Belief in a God all powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the World and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources." Only in a culture that 'bristles with hostility to all things religious' could such a common-sense view fall into controversy--or neglect." (Ibid.) [If anyone should know, it's he.]

"A culture that bristles with hostility to [Christianity]?" How's this for "bristle?" In Portland, Oregon, in August 2020, rioters burned a stack of Bibles.  In a report by Dan Dupee we learn that: "The entire California State University system stopped recognizing Christian fellowships on campus whose only fault is to insist that their leaders actually be Christians." Those are two big "bristles."

The basic reason that our Constitution has ceased to work is a spiritual, not a political, one: Ephesians 2:3: Men are by nature the children of wrath. The American Constitution "has no power capable of contending with human passions [the inherent sin nature] unbridled by morality and religion."