Professional Documents
Culture Documents
American History Rewritten 2009
American History Rewritten 2009
3 Henry R. Van Til, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, Philadelphia: The Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Company, 1972, p. 138.
4 Ibid., p. 139.
2
come to a land where the government did not rule over them in a
tyrannical way. They had a vision of a new order and a new life
that would be different than the one experience in Europe or
England. This new order would not be built on the traditional
power structures and politics of the old world. Just as some would
later come to believe with John Locke that children started out
with blank sheets of paper in their minds: These sheets could be
then filled by the parents and society with all that was good and
helpful. The new continent could be the equivalent of the blank
sheet of paper. The colonists would be free to fill this blank land
just as parents are able to mold their children.
They saw themselves as the Biblical city on a hill. They
would be a light to the whole world and shine forth as an example
of people who had taken the Bible and carved out a land with the
Bible as their guide. The historian Winthrop Hudson adds, AAs
part of God=s program of instruction, they were to provide the
nations with a working model of a godly society and by the
contagion of their example were to be God=s instruments in
effecting the release from bondage of all mankind.@5 It must
have been very exciting. It certainly motivated them to risk life
and wealth to pursue such a dream. These people were not part
of a college bull session but were involved in making history with
their actions. But they harbored within them the very things they
tried to leave behind. Any student who goes off to college
thinking he is leaving small town America behind, soon learns that
small town America is woven into the very fabric of his being. For
many this is a very discouraging thing. As humans, we really are
not capable, no matter how hard we may try, of cutting ourselves
off from our past. It continues on inside of us. This happened to
our early settlers.
They had a dream, a dream like very college freshman. They
wanted to leave the things of the past in England and start a new
world from scratch. In this they shared the vision that fills the
pages of the Bible. Scriptures are the stories of men who left all to
follow God in a new land, and who started a new order. The
Exodus account of Israel leaving Egypt is one of the most oft-
5 Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America, New York: Charles Scribner=s Sons,
1965, p. 20.
3
repeated stories in history: The Israelites left the tyranny of Egypt
to travel to a new land. In that land, there were pagans already
living, who must be defeated. The last must be cleansed of evil
and then a new order imposed upon the wilderness. This is the
message that was carried with the early settlers. They
incorporated the images of the Bible into their own lives. Today,
living in a secular age, we forget how the Bible was the language
creator of the English. Whether Christian or not, people were
educated in terms of the vocabulary of the Bible. They saw the
world through the definitions created from the Biblical view of
history.
The people of Israel considered themselves in bondage. This
is a new concept in history. Since when do individuals have the
right to tell the pharaoh what to do? He is their god. What gives
people the right to declare themselves independent? In the
history of the world there were rulers and there were servants.
The very concept of a free nation, of free and independent people,
was something unheard of up to this time. There is the tendency
to read back into history our modern concepts. We fail to see the
revolutionary acts in terms of what they really were. The vision of
freedom that Moses tried to impart to the people in bondage
seems so natural to us. The fact that it took forty years for the
people to accept the message of Moses is somehow lost. Even
when he led them out, we forget how they wanted to go back
because freedom was difficult.
The issues back then, have not changed. Freedom means
the loss of security. Freedom means the possibility of failure.
Freedom means adopting whole new patterns of behavior. The
journey from Egypt to the Promised Land was a total revolution in
thought and action. Moses brought a revolution in thought. He
established new laws. The people soon discovered that freedom
was more than they had expected. It meant forming armies and
fighting for land. It meant working new land with the possibility of
failure. The story of the Old Testament is the story of failure and
repeated attempts to achieve the new life. The whole story has
become part of Western Civilization. It is the story of individuals
and nations striving to create the Biblical idea of freedom and the
responsibility that this involves. Every new generation must
4
decide again between Biblical progress and a return to the
bondage of Egypt.
As one looks back over history, this story is repeated over
and over again. When people feel oppressed, there is the hope
that there is more to life than slavery. Without the vision of the
Bible, there is little hope that life has more to offer. This vision of
an ordered society, ruled by the Ten Commandments, and people
free to achieve a good life inside those boundaries, is the
backbone of Western Civilization. Take away the hope that the
Bible has to offer an oppressed people and there is only
resignation to the authorities and their experts. When the
founding fathers came to America, they had the visions of the
Bible firmly imprinted into their mind and bodies. The Biblical
message was part of their language. They came here from the
>pharaoh= of England and journeyed across the >desert= of the
Atlantic to enter the Promised Land of America. This faith became
part of America:
This mood of eager expectancy was to continue to be
characteristic
of American religious life. Having escaped in so many
ways the
limitations of a bounded existence, men and women
were easily
persuaded of the reality of unlimited possibilities. The
hope of
all things being made new, in the course of time, was
often subtly
secularized and frequently restated in political terms.6
One of the difficult aspects to understand in our culture is
the idea of pagan opposition to the free life. In an age when all
cultures are treated as equal, we have lost the idea that people
have a vision of what the good life is. We have lost the idea that
people will fight and die for a particular way of life. If all ways of
life are the same, then why fight? We look back and some would
suggest that the Pilgrim fathers and the Indians should have found
some common culture or found out ways to exist side by side. Our
6 Ibid., p. 21.
5
vision today is totally different from the Biblical view and the one
of Western Civilization. Differences have vanished and tolerance
of just about everything except Western Civilization is part of our
new culture. The language of the Bible has disappeared from our
vocabulary.
The Indian wars thus have the appearance of genocide from
the safety of the modern living room. First of all, we cannot
imagine a group of people leaving the safety of England for the
wilds of a continent. The journey in1620 by sailing boat was no
safer than booking passage for the moon today. Also, we have
left the spirit of adventure to the movie screen. To pack up one=s
family for a trip that has a good chance of ending in the deaths of
everyone is something beyond our comprehension. To be willing
to fight for what we might term purely psychic goals seems
impossible to imagine. Youths today might be drafted to fight a
war with great reluctance. But to volunteer one=s family for the
same war that we have volunteered to fight seems impossible to
imagine.
We look at the attempts of the Pilgrims to convert the Indians
to their new way of looking at the world seems to us as an act of
aggression. It is imperialistic. It is genocide in our view. That two
cultures with different views of reality can exist side by side is a
fantasy we all share. We are blind in one area. The only thing
that enables the multitude of cultures to co-exist today is the fact
there is a power that enforces a certain commonality. There is
something greater than any individual culture. There exists a
superior culture of the shepherd which mandates peace or else.
But for those coming to America, there was no super authority to
enforce a common super culture. In fact the visions of both the
Indians and the Pilgrims would not have accepted such a super
power anyway. The reason for coming to America was to escape
the commonality enforcer of England.
The wars between the Indians and the Pilgrims must be
understood as the war for a way of interpreting reality. Imagine
playing a baseball game where each side had a different set of
rules. It would not take long for the game to result in an all-out
brawl. A game cannot be played except a uniform set of rules
applies to all. That is so obvious in such a simple thing as a
6
baseball game. Why then, would two or more sets of rules work
in a complex social structure? Because the situation is so much
more complex, it is easier to hide the facts of what constitutes a
social order. But baseball and society require one set of rules for
all. The wars between the Indians and the founding fathers were
not squabbles over the strike zone, but they disagreed about what
constitutes a social order.
Take such a simple matter of determining ownership of a
piece of property. In Western Civilization property means the
fencing in of a given area and the ability in one way or another of
defending that parcel of land. The rule applies to nations and to
individuals. Spain or Portugal could claim ownership of large
chunks of land but without a navy to enforce such ownership,
there is no real ownership. When the Indian, with his unfenced
view of land and communal ownership, met this new view of
ownership, conflicts were inevitable. Also, the communal nature
of Indian ownership only extended to one=s own tribe. When
tribes moved as the land became exhausted in one area, wars
were fought with other tribes for the new communal lands.
In one sense these were religious wars. The God of a system
is the one who decides what rules apply to each given social
order. The God of the Puritans provided them with the rules of
operating a total world view. The Bible provided for rules that
applied or could be applied to most problems encountered in
running the various governments of a society. When people
change gods, there are a corresponding change in laws and world
views. That is why, at first, there were attempts to win the Indians
over to the God of the Puritans. When these efforts failed for the
most war, wars were the only possible result. We find this hard to
believe today, but we find no problem with our position that the
United States and Nazi Germany could not share the same planet.
It was no different back then. New England could not tolerate two
competing gods or law systems, and today=s world cannot
tolerate two modern competing interpretations of laws.
So far we have the Exodus of the founding fathers from
England to America. We then have the wars to establish the
proper way of governing the new found land. This having been
accomplished, the next step of any social structure is the defense
7
of that order. Today, we lack an understanding of how the world
really works. We think that the laws of the universe do not apply
to modern America. No, the same laws apply and we still are
fighting the same wars that every age must fight. Having pushed
back the Indians and made room for their views of the new world,
many more came to join them in their heavenly experiment in
godly rule. While some came to support the new system, others
came to profit from the order already established without
subscribing to the Puritan world view.
Most of these pretended to support the Puritans in order to
be part of the new community. Others felt that they could not
subscribe to the strict rules of the zealous Puritans. They offered
an alternative view of reality. Those in charge saw this attack for
what it was: It was an attempt to change the God of the fathers
into another god. This was a new kind of warfare. While the
Indians were fought as an external enemy, the new enemies were
internal. Again, we are no different today. There are people in
prison whose crime is not against morality, but against the
government=s interpretation of reality. It is illegal to dispense
certain medicines, even if you give them away. It is illegal not to
participate in the Social Security program for self-employed
workers. I could go on and on. These crimes are no different than
the crimes of Anne Hutchinson or Roger Williams, who rebelled
against Puritan leadership. We just have a different law system,
so we judge them but not ourselves for defending the current
gods.
Have you ever asked why the deaths of nineteen people over
several hundred years ago in a little town outside Salem, called
Salem Village, is so important today? More people than that die
every weekend on the United States= highways. This is an
exception to history. Why is this exception repeated to every
school child in America over and over? It is made an example
Christians defending the system they believe in from attack. The
conclusion being, that if Christians have a system of though, they
kill their opponents. That is the message. Christians cannot be
trusted with leadership. When in power, they will do anything to
maintain that power, even to the point of having a real live witch
hunt. Fast forward to Joseph McCarthy and you have the same
8
message applied to conservatives.
Having thus defended the system against its opponents, it is
now necessary to teach the young the rules through a system of
education. Both the church and the government needed to teach
the next generation the beliefs that held their system together.
The school became the building block of the new American way of
living. Private education was the norm for all. Even private
schools were provided for those who had no money. Being able to
read, especially the bible, was vital. Also, the new generation
needed an understanding of what their parents had risked so
much and died, at times, to believe. One of the least understood
aspects of early America, is its foundation upon universal
education. The family, the church, and the school served as the
foundation stones of the new American culture.
As new immigrants arrived, and a new generation was born,
the church developed ways to keep itself pure. Unfortunately, in
their attempt to keep the enthusiasm of the originals, the church
developed unusually high standards. The children could not often
understand what their parents had endured to establish a new
culture. And parents being protective, often kept their children
from experiencing the hardships they had endured. Ways were
sought to keep only those with enthusiasm as church leaders.
Church standards were established. Sadly, these standards were
false and unrealistic. Many good Christians could not meet the
strict standards. The ensuing battle resulted in something called
the halfway covenant: Those who had not received some special
experience were excluded from church membershipBeven though
they accepted the total doctrinal statement of the church.
There was a similar attempt to educate their future leaders
through the establishment of colleges and universities modeled
after their European counterparts. Not having the understanding
of a Marshall McLuhan, they failed to realize that Athe medium is
the message.@
They imported a system that led to the destruction of the very
ideas they were trying to defend. By using the European method
of teaching, they imported the ideas that went with the method.
The centralized, bureaucratic, subject segregated, and elitist
system of the modern university changed the way people looked
9
upon knowledge. Learning became abstracted from the people
who actually do the work of preaching and running a government.
Classroom learning became the substitute for on-the-job training.
The degree became a substitute for the apprenticeship. The new
learning became isolated and impersonal. There was a total lack
of understanding when it came to the consequences of their
actions.
For example, an early doctor might see himself as working
with the total community in his efforts to heal. It was not just a
question of using a technique or dispensing a medicine, but of
working with the total person. A doctor worked with the minister,
or the family, or the community to restore health. In the same
way a teacher was viewed as a extension of the family, and still
under the control of the father of the child. Education was
involved in not just the imparting of facts, but the integration of a
child into the extended family, community, and social structure.
Even the government bureaucrat saw himself as merely one form
of local government, and his actions were only one aspect of a
world order. As a new education became patterned after the
European model, the foundation for a new view about reality was
established.
The founders of New England, successfully crossed the
Atlantic, established a colony against almost impossible odds, but
were unable to develop a system for the continuation of their
beliefs and enthusiasm for showing forth the Kingdom of God on
earth. While we can look back to men who were heroes who
showed courage beyond belief, it was not a golden age. It is not
an age we would wish to return, yet it is an age that we can learn
much. But it is also an example of AThe doctrine of the Golden
Calf.@ In the book of Exodus, the Israelites escaped from Egypt,
only to find that Egypt was still inside them. The beliefs of the old
religion learned in Egypt were still inside them. When times got
tough, the people quickly reverted back to the religion of their
youth.
The Puritan age thus represents the first stage in the
downfall of the Christian vision and the fall of Western Civilization.
The very start of a new life gave the founders a false confidence in
their ability to mold reality. This confidence, to turn the
10
wilderness into a paradise on earth, has been passed on down
from one generation to another. Americans have never lost their
belief that any problem can be conquered with a law and a
bureaucracy to enforce it. This is one of the first tragic ideas
imported from our European heritage. The vision of Hobbes and
his Leviathan have been incorporated into the very fabric of
American belief. The very idea of the Leviathan stills exists today
in our confidence in the new shepherd.
One of the first signs that the government was a lot different
than the one adopted by the people was displayed during the
Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. While many thought they were
fighting, during the Revolution, for local control over their affairs,
many in Pennsylvania were soon to discover that the new central
government had no qualms about sending a huge force of men
against its own people. While during the Revolution, George
Washington commanded a force of about seven to nine thousand,
he used between fourteen and seventeen thousand troops to send
a message to those who opposed the whiskey tax on the frontier.
While the war was largely symbolic with very few casualties, the
message was given about the new powers in the central
government. Force would be used to subdue the citizens of this
new nation founded on the principle that people had a right to
rebel against tyranny. It did not take long for some to think that
the people had rebelled against one tyranny only to be subjected
to another one closer to home.
This is a rather minor event but almost every American
history book includes the event. I have two multi-volume U.S.
49
History sets, and both include three pages on this event. I think
the reason it is repeated over and over is that this event
symbolizes more than the actual event itself.
Just as certain movies are watched over and over because they
strike a chord within ourselves, so this event strikes a chord in the
history of our government. Just as the five laws of civilization
confirm a new civilization, these same five laws apply to the
founding of a new government. The five laws were used in
ancient times to denote a peace treaty or a new covenant
relationship. It is interesting that one can find the five laws in the
suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion.
After the Constitution there was a time when people
disagreed as to its real meaning. There was immense
disagreement as to the original intent even from these early
times. The new government was able to use the Whiskey
Rebellion to establish a new covenant relationship between the
central government and its people. When the farmers on the
frontier rebelled against the new tax, this was a question of AWho
is the new King? The local versus national relationship had not yet
been established. Immediately, the new government established
the answer to the question. The central government is the new
king. The second question is one of establishing the proper
relationships. Are the local and central governments equal or is
there a hierarchy? Washington wanted everyone to know that the
central government rules over any local governments.
The third question is one of law. Who establishes the rules?
It is interesting that this issue is a tax on whisky as opposed to
tea. Very similar to the Boston Tea Party rebellion. The colonists
rebelled against the right of Parliament to tax the colonies
directly. The new rebellion was also about a direct tax on the
people, excluding intermediary powers of government. The new
government declared the right to set the laws and establish the
order of society. The fourth question asks, Who is going to make
me do it? This was quickly answered with an immense show of
force. A force commanded by the President, himself, George
Washington. And the final question asks, AWhy is this relationship
being established?@ It appears that George Washington is
claiming a continuity with the former powers shown by the British
50
and their rule over America. The new Constitution did not really
establish some new form of government, it merely transferred the
power from London to the Capitol of the United States. Blessings
that used to flow from England, now flowed from the government
of George Washington.
Was this a conscious act? That is hard to say. But it shows
how every government must answer the five questions. Into the
power vacuum of the post-revolutionary era, there was the
necessity to answer these questions. It took very little time for
the answers to be forthcoming. As we study government, it is
vital to remember these five questions and to see how each
government and each generation seeks to answer those
questions. These questions are rarely explicitly confronted, but
these are the questions the talking-heads of television should be
openly debating. When these questions are answered honestly,
then the people of a nation will understand what form of
government they really have. Throw out the labels of democracy
or dictatorship, and just answer these five questions.
12 Ibid. p. 33.
70
first attempts at both a centralized education and religion were
very crude and caused the expected opposition, but it was a start.
While the dominant churches in the North had either become
Unitarian or Methodist, the South had resisted these trends until
reconstruction. The Unitarian and Methodist Churches both had
adopted theologies more fitting for the new America being built.
The Unitarians were the intellectual ruling class. The Methodists
appealed to the uneducated, working class. The Methodist
services also provided an emotional escape from the rigors of
living in the new nation after the War.
The story of the occupation of the South often gets told with
all kinds of stories of political wrangling in Washington and passive
resistance from the South. It is treated as one great failure. The
Southerners, we are told, were not made into the image that the
North had sought. Their goal was the making of a new nation all
with the identical people as occupied the Northeast. The fact that
they failed to make the South into another New York or Boston
does not tell the whole story. The people had been broken by war.
The South which had contained the wealth of the nation had been
reduced to rubble. The leadership had been killed in war. An
angry army of blacks had been unleashed to carry out a fierce
revenge on the people. Farms and industry had been destroyed.
Money was not to be found in circulation. Many Northerners
moved South to buy up cheap lands and occupy the South.
Northern ministers and school teachers were imported. The white
southerner was reduced to a new under class. Even after the
armies withdrew, the South remained an occupied land.
The man chosen to head the South=s educational
rehabilitation was J .L. M. Curry. He has been called the Horace
Mann of the South. He was born and raised in the South, but sided
with the North in his belief that the South had to become a
different nation than it had been before the war. He believed that
A. . . the function of education was to enable its recipient to
develop his full powers and live abundantly.@ He believed
education could solve racial tensions, solve the friction between
management and labor, and it could rehabilitate the South and A. .
. to adjust it to the new civilization with which it must integrate
71
itself,@13 and further, AEvery individual . . . had a right to the most
complete education a state could give.@ 14
The revolution of the mind of the Southern got unexpected
help from the Department of Agriculture which was established in
1862. After the war the department tried to find new crops to
grow in the South as it thought the growing of cotton was part of
the Southern Culture. It had to be replaced with other crops. The
new Agricultural Department combined its energies with the
Bureau of Education founded in 1867. John Eaton who was the
head of Education used the Agricultural Department to do
experiments on animals to develop a new way of education. This
was a product of the new Darwinian view of life that determined
man was a higher form of animal life. Much could be gained by
studying animals to determine the nature and abilities of man
himself.
Animals were studied to determine what caused increased
brain activity. Materials for students were designed which
produced a higher heart rate or increased electrical activity in the
brain. Thus, a good book or lesson could be measured by the
increased rate of internal activity.
Previously, education might be based upon purpose, beliefs, or
training. But the North felt that one of the problems of the South
was their value-laden education. Therefore, a new form of
education was sought. This resulted in a changed way of teaching
students. Education that taught spiritual values or respect for
traditions was replaced by a curriculum that catered to the
interests of the students. Education became training. Teachers
became trained to be the scientists who run the new scientific
laboratories called schools. Again, while this whole philosophy
took time to permeate the entire nation, the seeds were planted in
the Reconstruction of the Southern Nation.
13 Merle Curti, The Social Ideas of American Educators, p. 267. Littlefield, Adams,
and Co. 1959.
14 Ibid. p. 268.
72
THE CIVIL WAR
Wars never leave things the way they found them. The
changes brought on during a war to defeat an enemy become the
new traditions of the nation after the war. Another thing about
wars is that it is harder to start one than most people realize.
From the reading of history it would seem that there are wars
every few years. Most are minor or of very short duration. What is
referred to as the Gulf War in previous times probably would not be
called a war. It would probably fall under the category of Aborder
dispute@ or Aconflict.@ The Civil War was a war in every sense of
the word. The question arises as why the war was started at all.
Would a tiny island off the coast of Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina
really be worth the starting of a war?
Wars are a revolution. Wars are fought because not only the
leaders want a war, but the common people doing the fighting see
some reason for giving their lives to a cause. Even if a leadership
instigates a war to their own liking, a reason has to be given that
will satisfy the volunteer. A contented citizen does not make very
good soldier. During times of stress and change, there arises inside
the ordinary citizen a call for change. A person may feel
something is wrong and not know just exactly what. They look to
their leadership to provide them with relief from their anxiety or
malaise. A good leader is one who knows where the people are
going so he can lead them there, is an old joke, but there is some
truth to that. Lincoln came into a situation where he knew that the
people were restless. They needed solutions to the problems they
were encountering in their everyday lives.
One of the myths that the American Revolution spawned is
that freedom from England would solve our problems. After the
war there was a sense of failure. The nation was free and there
were just as many problems as ever. In fact maybe more
problems, as the people could no longer blame something exterior
to themselves for their problems. This provided a shock. The
Constitution provided the framework for a government, but
provided no purposes. It was like a snapshot. It was frozen in
time. It had no vision of the future. It provided a system of
governing, but really did not establish any purpose. Our
73
relationship for good or bad with England and the problems that
this involved had provided the framework of everyday life. Freed
from the restraints of a foreign power, Americans were now able to
chart their own course.
With Christianity in decline, and at the time of the Revolution
only about eight per cent of the population attended some kind of
church, there was a void in most people=s lives. Something had to
move in to occupy the place left in the absence of some religious
direction. For some, the Declaration of Independence provided a
few phrases which implied a direction for America and its people to
take. During the years after the war, there were many attempts to
instill a new faith that would fill the void and unite Americans in
some common cause. Many new faiths arose during this period.
Secret societies and fraternal orders became an option for some.
There was a secular attempt to repeat the First Great Awakening,
but the results were at times comical. When man attempts to
imitate the acts that God does and only God can do, it is comical.
People laying on the ground jerking in a form of spiritual orgasm,
or others barking like dogs as the spirit moved them, were called
spiritual acts.
During difficult times many look for ways to escape from the
times of trouble. The particular form this escape takes will vary
with the culture that one lives. In our age drugs are a popular way
of escaping reality. During the post Revolutionary era, Whiskey
and a religious experience topped the things that soothed the
troubled heart. An intense religious experience was sought at
during the revivals, or an escape was sought in the belief that the
end of the world was to happen at any moment. Every age that is
going through trials can be gauged by the intensity of its millennial
longings. Starting in England in about 1830 and moving to
America quickly, the desire for some cataclysmic end to the world
was longed for by fundamentalist Christians.
The whiskey problem was countered by many temperance
societies and demands for prohibition of alcohol. The frustration of
dates being set for the end of the world and no end in sight but
only more problems, led to the further erosion of Christianity. In
this age of false Christianity, false solutions were sought. As
German scholarship starting leaving its mark on American thought,
74
a genuine Biblical solution to the nation=s problems seemed
remote. Christianity became modified over and over as people
tried to deal with life=s problems. Abstinence is not a Biblical
solution to alcoholic consumption. Setting dates for some end of
time is not a Biblical solution to the frustration with everyday life.
Emotional revivals are not substitutes for the ordering of one=s
life around the principles of the Bible. And even abolition is not a
Biblical solution to the problem of slavery.
The Bible was no longer seen as the guidebook that it had
been during the pre-Revolutionary days. Calvinism sought
solutions to everyday and national problems through a study of the
Word of God. This was seen as no longer possible. Popularized
with Thomas Paine and continuing on with others, the Bible was
increasingly seen as a Book that no longer belonged in an
enlightened age and with the problems of the Industrial
Revolution. Christianity, particularly in the Northern states,
underwent a transformation. Calvinism was replaced by
Unitarianism or Deism, and this evolved into something called
Transcendentalism. While Transcendentalism is an American
movement associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson, it has its roots in
Europe. Here again it is important to remember that the events in
America did not happen in isolation. One of the myths of the
Revolution is that America was now separated from Europe and we
were now on our own trail of destiny. Ideas and people flowed
freely across the Atlantic. While our movies pictured the
uneducated Irishman coming to America, many others came who
knew of Europe and many Americans traveled to Europe to study
the latest trends. America was still and always has been part of
the rest of the world.
There was a religious revival in America that preceded the
Civil War. This revival occurred in the Northern states, but left the
South largely untouched. Transcendentalists saw a god-like spirit
in every man. It was well suited to the new democracy growing
out of the Jacksonian era. The objective truths of Calvinism were
eliminated, and these were replaced by the natural intuition of the
divine which resided within each man. The moral man was good
and noble. He was also perfectible. There was also the belief that
man by himself was free. He needed none of the various social
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institutions that had so occupied early America. Organizations
merely restricted the freedom of man. The only legitimate
organization was the state. All other aspects of life were to be
under the directing authority of mankind and through the ruling
agency of the state.
All religious faiths are evangelistic and imperialistic.
Transcendentalism was no exception. The South needed
conversion to the new faith. This system believed in a strong state
to solve problems and it is very conscious of the many needs for
which society must seek a solution. The South must be converted.
In one sense the Civil War could be called the Third Great
Awakening. The First was Calvinistic, the second Arminian or
humanistic, and the third was Transcendental. Darwinism and
Transcendentalism combined in their view that history is the story
of progress and it is man=s destiny now to direct evolution. Man
was not the sinner who needed regeneration, but man was the
peak of the evolutionary pyramid who could direct the goals of
history to the improvement of mankind.
This new faith created a new environment of meaning.
Societies are created by the men and their beliefs. When men
create the world, they become molded by the society which they
have created. In a way it is a circular process. Historical
circumstances are constantly changing. Men react to those
changes. If the changes are drastic enough, a new way of thinking
becomes necessary. As men adapt to the new thoughts, those
thoughts change the way they act or think. And the whole
process starts over again. It is not a gradual process. Men hold
onto an old belief until it does not work in the changed
circumstances. Then they begin a search, not always consciously,
for a new philosophy. A good leader recognizes the frustrations in
people first and is the first to offer a new way of thinking.
The Civil War was one of those moments in history similar to
the French and Russian Revolutions, or the Reformation in the
sixteenth century. The eighty-four years between 1776 and 1860
were transition years from America=s Calvinistic Colonial past to
the new secular age of industry and government. So many of the
uncertainties and conflicts during this period were the result of
new people living in an old period. The Bible would call it trying to
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put new wine into old wineskins. It cannot be done. The new
society directs, controls, sanctions, and punishes those who live
within the order. This order is accepted by people as reality.15
Since the Civil War there has been an emerging order that was
created during this time, and has ruled our views of reality since
that age. People have accepted it as the only possible order.
(Although right now it is showing signs of age.)
Therefore, after the Civil War a new world was in existence
from the one that people had lived in prior to the war. There was a
freedom from the old restrictions. Wars are often the final straw
that breaks the old order. Also, the South was fighting in the name
of the old order and it had lost the war. This created a post war
world where no one would even think about saying something
good about the old order which the South represented. The efforts
to reconstruct the South into the new world views of the North also
tended to establish in people=s minds the victorious nature of the
new revolution. Transcendentalism emerged victorious also from
the War. Its philosophy of social change, reform, and the power of
a central government to change society for the better, became
firmly established in American politics.
It was during this time, with the passing to the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, that human rights became
the object of society. The old order being founded upon property
rights had passed away with the defeat of the property oriented
Southerners. With transcendentalists the age of sin was
destroyed. People were regarded as good in themselves, with only
the environment to corrupt them. This led the transcendentalists
to trust the common man and democracy. The Aristocracy was
seen as representing the old order and Southerners were
contaminated by their association with that order. The age after
the Civil War, became the age of the common man and his power
to change to the world. There were all kinds of communal groups
formed as a totally new environment was sought to display the
perfectibility of man.
In this revolutionary environment, the Industrial Revolution
was able to prosper during the War and to mold the nation in the
15 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of
Religion, p. 11. A Doubleday Anchor Book. New York, 1969.
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direction needed for industrial expansion. The emergency of the
war created new attitudes. A rural nation entered the war, an
urban nation resulted from the need for the centralized
manufacture of war materials. The age after the war has been
called A. . . the most rapid and striking transformation of a major
social order in the history of mankind.@16 By the 1870's non-farm
employment exceeded farm employment for the first time.
Between 1850 and 1871 more than 130 million acres of land was
given to the railroads. From 1860 to 1890 the miles of track went
form 30,000 miles to about 170,000 miles. The nation became
tied together as one nation and one market. The telegraph also
united the nation. The nation became one in terms of
communication and transportation.
This created a new business environment. Markets became
national. A national business was needed to replace the local,
limited economies. Those who could see the trends saw great
opportunities. The war had created huge businesses.
Transcendentalism had displaced Christianity as the glue that held
society together. The individual became detached from his local
community and its restrictions. He was also freed from religious
restrictions. What people saw was that America had become the
Garden of Eden, except that now man was in charge and not some
mythical god. America was free to design a world from the chaos
that followed the war. This was very liberating and very exciting.
Government, education, business, philosophy, and finance all
combined to create a vision for the new future that was being
birthed during this time.
This was the world of the North at the close of the war: There
were conflicts in every area of society. The central government
was in chaos as the government fought over the reunification of
the nation. The treatment of the former citizens of the
confederacy required a policy to satisfy those who wanted
revenge, those who wanted immediate freedom of the former
slaves, and a policy had to be developed to satisfy those who
wanted access to cheap Southern land. The railroads were
expanding their influence in government as they sought to gain
16 E. Barry Asmus and Donald B. Billings, Crossroads: The Great American
Experiment, p. 54. University Press of America, New York. 1984.
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access to the best routes and markets in the nation. An army of
returning soldiers had to be cared for and a new system of finance
was needed to restore some order to financial markets. During
this time universities were in the midst of transforming
themselves from theological schools designed for the preparation
of ministers to great schools of learning to serve the interests of
the new society being born. A new religion of national philosophy
was needed to justify the changes in a coherent manner.
And each area of society wanted to be the leader of the other
areas of society. Even if there were agreed upon goals, each area
wanted to be the new institutional church of the new world order
being developed. Power, money, prestige and leadership were all
up for grabs. You can imagine the impact upon the common
citizen. They were left out of the loop and were left to their own to
fill the void left by the chaos of the war. Many formed communes,
but most went to the revival services of D. L. Moody. He provided
the common man with some sense of divine control and order in
the confusion that permeated every area of life during the post
war period. And while the common man huddled in his local
church and went to conferences on the end of the world, the world
was changed into something he would no longer be able to call his
own. It was during this age that society became conscious of
mental conflicts that seemed to be inflicting mankind as never
before. Minds seemed to snap as there was no haven in a
heartless world.
The old ways had been destroyed. The gates to the Eden of
the 1950's idea of life had been blocked by government edict. Just
as God had bared Adam and Eve from returning to the promised
land of Eden after their revolution against Godly standards, so the
people of the seventies were bared from trying to return to any
memories they might have of the fifties. With the central
government gaining control of just about every aspect of life, there
was no way a person could legally try to restore any semblance of
the utopian memories still locked inside of one=s mental
upbringing. New values had been imported into everyone=s life.
The seventies became the age of democratic principles being
applied to every area of life. Family life and the inheritance that
families pass onto their children became socially unacceptable.
Patriotism, that brought of memories of the nation bonding together
to fight Hitler, was dead.
The liberation of the individual from all restraints had been
achieved. Many of these restraints in the past were seen as the
duty of every community to establish. The individual was freed not
only from these restraints but from just about every other
restraining influence except the central government. The goal that
had seemed so important in the sixties resulted in many individuals
feeling totally alone. If one did not live for one=s neighbor or one=s
family, then what did one live for in this life? If one did not work to
pass on the physical and financial achievements that one had
worked so hard for, then what did one work for? The individual was
now seen as something that was formed at birth with all the
necessary traits already inside the person. Traditionally, families
and communities had seen it as their duty to build the personality of
the child into the form that the local community would applaud. The
personality was not something born into a person, but something
that everyone that came in contact with the child helped build.
With the traditional approach restricted, people started looking
inward for the personality with which they were born. Problems
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arose. Those who had been raised without the traditional network
of supports felt empty inside. The personality that was supposed to
reside within each individual was either hiding or non existent. The
seventies became a decade of wanderings. People were on the
move both physically and spiritually. It was a decade with no place
to call home. The decade ended with the election of Ronald
Reagan. Between the Kent State shootings and Reagan=s election
was a decade of best symbolized by Nixon, Ford, and Carter: Three
Presidents who are best remembered for their failures, not their
successes.
Several aspects of the seventies have become permanent
parts of our culture. While the hippies of the sixties participated in
various psychological therapies, it was somewhat of a joke in the
general culture. By the seventies many were attending various
seminars and therapy sessions designed to replace the family,
church, and community. It is particularly American to believe that
something that has existed for thousands of years as part of
people=s makeup can be replaced by going through some therapy.
Partly, it is that American belief that resulted from our being people
on the move. Many left Europe and their heritage to start over in
America. Many left the security of the eastern seaboard to settle in
the West. Those who traveled then had to travel light.
Somehow, the exception of moving once in a lifetime, moving
became part of the Americans way of living. The idea that people
could travel light not only physically, but socially and
psychologically, became accepted fare. The individual became
associated with the individual atom that wanders about until it
comes into contact with a compatible atom and a molecule is
formed. That is how persons viewed themselves in the new scheme
of things. The individual may have been born into a family, but that
was just the accident of birth. And besides, that is just how nature
produces individuals. Other associations were just ways individuals
sought to get their way in this life. I join groups because I need
something and that group does supply that need. Each association
in life is just a way for the individual to get something and then
move onto other groups.
It is not only true on an individual basis, but seen for society as
a whole. The central government looks upon society as so many
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individuals and the object of government is to keep order so that
the government can achieve its objectives. It looks upon society as
something that can be manipulated at will. One institution, such as
the family, can be eliminated, and replaced with another oneBa
mutual temporary association--with no loss. Whatever lawmakers
decide can be molded into the social fabric without causing any
damage. All pieces to the social puzzle are interchangeable. As
long as the individual atom is not damaged, everything else can be
designed for the best social efficiency. The individual has rights, but
not the family, church, or community. Those are merely pieces to
the puzzle that have been used in the past, but other pieces can be
designed to better fit into the world of today=s technological
society.
In the search for a reconstructed individual, Americans also
faced a nation that needed to be reconstructed. Despite the spin
that might be put on the Vietnam War, it was a war America lost.
The Seven-Year Revolution was also marked by a seven-year losing
war: 1965-1972. The United State, a nation that had served to be a
light to the nations of the world was no more. Of course, this was
not talked about in those terms, but the nation now entered the
decade of one crisis after another. There were the gasoline crisis,
the environmental crisis, and the famous hostage crisis to end the
decade. Each crisis was a molehill made into a mountainBthe
elephants were stampeding to escape the mouse. This nation that
had totally lost confidence in itself. The people were no longer the
strong individual atoms that they had set out to become. Tiny third-
world nations such as North Vietnam and Iran were able to bring us
to our knees.
Into this vacuum of the seventies, a new religion was needed
to replace the old. A new family was needed to replace the old, and
some kind of community was needed. The decade of the >Me
Generation= was a total failure. Group therapy does not provide for
family and friends. The seventies were also the decade that
brought television evangelists to center of national attention. They
quickly became a national joke similar to the jokes about all of the
crazy therapies developed for lonely people looking for some
connection to the living. A carry over from the sixties was a total
distrust of institutions, and their ability to solve problems or provide
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any kind of meaningful solution to the problems plaguing people.
This was a decade described as a malaise. The past had been
destroyed. Individuals were all alone. No personal solutions to any
problem seemed possible. Our nation was caught up in a world that
no longer was afraid of American power. The best that can be said
is that these were sad times.
This age was marked by both a personal loss of confidence and
a national sense of impotence. Little third rate nations could bring
our economy to a halt. And a little island in the Pacific that we
totally destroyed during World War II was out producing us and
building better products. The power of Iran to frustrate our vast
military was compounded by the nation of Japan making cars better
than those of Ford or General Motors. These two corporations
symbolized American greatness and our right to hold power over the
world. When Japan entered the car market with better cars that
even looked better than their American counterparts, it was a
devastating blow. Many blamed the auto giants for just about
everything wrong in America. As other Japanese products such as
stereos, televisions, and cameras replaced American-made products
the nation lost all of its national confidence.
This loss of confidence in our national ability was combined
with our loss of historical roots. Each individual felt empty inside.
Something was wrong. The sixties were said to be an age that set
us free of the past and its restrictions. Yet, somehow, no one felt
better after being liberated. Few wanted to go back to the fifties,
but there was some longing for the America of twenty years earlier.
The movie, American Graffiti, with its recreation of the teenager in
the fifties was a great success and fostered a top-rated television
series. The youth of the seventies, who wanted to be modern, were
singing the songs their parents sang. A nation without a future
often seeks solace and answers in the past. But nostalgia is an
escape, not a way of living. Mankind cannot live without hope, and
hope, by its very nature, is about tomorrow.
The destruction of class consciousness during the sixties had
freed Americans from the idea that their past controlled their future.
Everyone was said to have an open future. Just because a child had
a blue collar father, did not mean he could not aspire to greatness in
some field such as medicine. This new freedom created two more
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problems. Children no longer were proud of fathers who were less
than successful. They were told in schools that they could be better
than their father. Of course, by better it was always inferred that if
you had a job that commanded the most respect, you had a better
job. Or if you made more money, then you were more successful.
Children were cut off from their family traditions. It was no longer
acceptable to follow in one=s father=s footsteps. Fathers felt
ashamed of their once decent jobs, and children were ashamed of
their lower or middle class family positions.
Another result of the new freedom, was a new sense of failure.
Many children liberated from the traditions of their fathers, found
the world of opportunity promised to them was a lie. No one
bothered to tell them that maybe their father had certain talents
that fit in with his current position. No one bothered to tell him that
many talents are passed on to the children. A father who repairs
cars may not have the genetic material to produce a surgeon, he
may in fact produce a child that is good at fixing cars. This created
a generation who felt guilty and inadequate. In times past there
was no sense of guilt in following in one=s father=s footsteps. That
is what children did. Now children were told they could do anything
with their lives. But a society will always need a few surgeons and a
whole lot of mechanics and repairmen. The result will be that most
will feel like their lives were a failure. Something had gone terribly
wrong.
Who was to blame for one=s failure? Most tended to blame
themselves for what in the past had been considered just a natural
process. They were taught to be great and they ended up as just
average. What could they have done so wrong? Books on self-help
started to become best sellers. The teaching audio cassette tapes
became a fad. One could listen while driving to work and learn the
proper techniques of achieving one=s dream. This renewed sense
of guilt also open the door to a new religious movement called AThe
Charismatic.@ This movement promised a new sense of personal
power. If a person failed in his career, he could still be a success as
a spiritual success. All one had to do to achieve a renewed sense of
importance was to seek a new spiritual experience and learn to pray
in a new language.
The new inadequate American produced other results also.
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Advertisers more and more aligned their products with personal and
sexual power. The famous exercise machine of the seventies, The
Soloflex, through its advertising promised not only a new powerful
body, but implied a vastly improved sexual power. Their ads would
air brush onto their models men who possessed what looked like
two-foot long erections. That was the kind of power that men were
looking for, when they felt so inadequate on the inside. This
became the new American standard of promotion. Weak individuals
are susceptible to being manipulated. People without a personal
heritage, can be sold one through a >Victorian Christmas=
experience, or an >Exotic Caribbean Cruise.= Incomplete persons
became good for business. The weaker the person the less sales
resistance he possessed.
It did not take long for the government to jump onto the band
wagon. While welfare in the sixties was to be a war on poverty, the
new welfare that the government offered would be for every
individual who felt powerless. This included just about everyone.
There were programs for families, for students, the temporarily
unemployed, businesses, schools, and just about every group in
society. All became dependent and thus subject to the central
government in many ways. There were paper trails left by everyone
as the application forms and compliance forms became part of
everyone=s life. Privacy was something for another generation.
The more control by the central government, the more information
was needed to exert that control. No part of life became private.
Students in government schools were even encouraged to fill out
reports on the lives of their parents and family.
By the end of the seventies, a new person had been born into
what had been called at one time, >the land of the free.= Freedom
was confined to those areas that were outside the control of the
government. This became more and more a narrow area. Even the
so-called privacy of the bedroom fell under various laws and
regulations. It became perfectly natural for everyone to organize
their lives around the regulations that had become part of American
life. The steadily rising crime rate of the seventies made everyone
feel insecure. There were no safe places. More and more
governmental controls were called for to stem the rising tide of
crime. The various crises of the seventies made everyone feel
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totally helpless. Even the new epidemic of mental illness made
everyone feel threatened by the stress of daily living. Holding a job
became something that depended upon government policies
designed for full employment. The rugged individual of American
mythology gave way to the ant who lived in the government-
controlled ant hill.
From the end of the Gulf War to the Y2K panic marked seven
years of plenty. There was prosperity of such that many became
rich and an age of permanent wealth seemed to be within
everyone=s reach. From the inauguration of Bill Clinton to the start
of the fear of the next apocalypse because of massive computer
failures, marked an age of seven years of peace and prosperity.
Ages of prosperity are not marked by great changes. Everybody is
holding on to their new found wealth and any change is resisted.
These seven years of plenty were, in fact, a time of consolidation.
Because culture had been totally remade from the last stable era of
the 1950's, there needed to be a time of consolidation. The nineties
were such a time. All of the changes that had occurred became
locked into people=s thinking.
The limits of the changes were also tested during these times.
There needs to be information about what the people will now
accept and what they will still resist. President Clinton and his wife,
Hilary, were appointed for a purpose. They were not quite the
buffoons that they appeared at times. Bill Clinton tested the new
morality in action. He seemed to totally disregard accepted
morality. As long as prosperity continued, the nation seemed
unconcerned with his lack of personal ethics. His wife acted as a
political lightening rod to check out the limits of new social
programs. Her national health program with its national
identification card showed that people were not ready for the total
takeover of American medicine. It also showed the people=s
resistance to having their medical history and identity contained on
card which contained their medical histories.
The program was not abandoned. It only showed how far the
government had come to total control over everyone=s life. The
program will return after another national crisis in which the nation
will accept a national health card along with a national identification
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system. Other areas in which the limits would be tested were in the
closer step toward some form of union with both Canada and
Mexico. While the American people would have little resistance in
uniting with Canada, the unification with Mexico would at this time
meet with stiff resistance. The opposition to increased trade with
Mexico and the calls for the reduction of illegal immigration across
the U.S.-Mexican border, displayed increased work was needed in
this area. There will eventually be some sort of North America
Union. It will start out as an economic union and evolve into a
political union. It will be patterned after the European Union. The
global corporation requires such a union.
As stated above, the nineties were a different kind of decade.
Not much happened in people=s minds because there were no
dramatic changes. It is like trying to remember the great events of
the 1950's. The first thing that comes to people=s memories when
they think of the fifties is probably the invasion of the television into
the American home. The biggest event of the nineties marked a
similar invasion. The internet became part of many homes. Each
home became linked in new ways to the entire world. And the
information that invaded the home was unlimited. While parents
sought some control over the content, it was pointless. Kids could
figure our ways to circumvent the system installed by wary parents.
On-line sex became a substitute for actual sex for many, not just
teenagers. With video cameras, both movies and still photos could
be shared with just about anyone in the world. It all could be done
under the cover of encryption and the anonymity of internet.
The internet was more than just a way to have cheap,
anonymous sex. It was a cheap link to the entire world. The
nineties became the age of the global link up. People became
accustomed to world trade, a world stock market, and worldwide
personal communication. The world was becoming one. Those who
have tried to resist this movement are only like those in the past
who have sought to resist the steam engine, or the steam-powered
spinning wheel. A new generation is being born that, through the
internet, now has friends and contacts all over the world. English is
becoming the one world language of the internet as people in every
nation want to talk to those who reside in English-speaking nations.
Tiny villages in Africa can find out the latest information from others
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around the world. We have one world, it is only a question of time
before the world becomes united. The only question is, what form
will this world uniting take? That is the question that should be
debated. Those who resist world order are already on the losing
side.
The path taken toward world government has been a simple
step by step operation. Basically, early government in America was
county government. Problems were handled locally. Each county
even had their own gallows. In time some problem would be too big
for one county to deal with on its own. Either it was too expensive
or the problem might involve another county. The solution to each
successive problem was a loss of control. Two or three counties
might unite to solve a problem, but in time another bigger problem
would arise which required a solution than the counties together
could solve. Each problem over time represented a loss of control to
each local unit. In time, the nation was confronted with problems
for which it could not solve alone. It needed to surrender some of its
sovereignty to some other group in order to solve the problem. As
the world has progressed under free trade and multi-national
corporations, each problem has become bigger and bigger.
What may have started out over a hundred years ago to solve
small problems, has become the trend that has been repeated over
and over again. The person and local governing body have always
been pictured as powerless unless they surrender power to another
body. The image presented to the average person is that
everything is out of control and you are helpless to do anything
about it. The questions are presented in such a way that there
really is only one solution. The cliché used over and over is this: You
cannot turn back the clock. The analogy being that progress is
always toward a more complex world that requires more and more
surrendered sovereignty in order for the problem to be solved.
There are no alternative solutions. The biggest reason is that the
global economy, as it is structured today, needs a world wide
uniformity of laws and practices in order to be most efficient. No
single problem can go against this trend. It would be like trying to
change just one piece of a puzzle with a piece from another puzzle.
The parts are now interchangeable. The global economy is one
puzzle. This means that those who oppose this solution here or this
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solution there, will always be pictured as someone who is opposing
progress.
One of the beliefs that attained a status of becoming totally
accepted during this decade was a new view of man. Man has
finally been totally separated from his Biblical image and from the
philosophy of those who came to America. The new man was the
product of millions of years of evolution. This meant, first of all, that
man had no permanent human nature. Not only was man evolving,
but his mind and beliefs were evolving with him. Any views which
sought to return to a view of man as created by God with a stable
nature was viewed as authoritarian, and of course, trying to turn the
clock backwards. The image of the clock is used over and over as a
symbol of the progress that evolution is making. Time marches in
only one direction and so it is with evolution. Neither can be
resisted.
The media and educational institutions work together to
picture man as an animal with a basic nature that is irrational. If
reasoning is merely a facade, then basic appeals to man must be
based upon his emotions, feelings, and desires. This is the man who
must be appealed to during elections. This is also the man who
must be motivated to vote for a particular candidate. When man
lacks reason, there is also no final authority in regards to truth,
wisdom, or ethics. If a certain goal has been decided upon, then
any technique that influences man in the direction of the goal can
be seen as good and profitable. If man has the nature that the Bible
describes, then goals that are contrary to that goal would be wrong.
If man is the rational person the Bible pictures, then the use of
emotion to stir him to desired ends would also be wrong.
We have the picture, then, of basically a material being who
has certain psychological, physical, and social needs. The goals of
government then are to the fulfilling of these needs to the
maximum possible. Democracy is a way to balance the needs of
one person against the needs of another. The voters are seen as
the arbitrators of whose needs should be met and to what extent.
The best possible way to achieve this balance is the democratic
nation-state. As voters may do things that are not in the long term
good or healthy for everyone, some thing or power must be there to
move the people in the proper direction. The state intervenes when
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the people show too much irrationality in their voting. The state is
seen as the only rational arbitrator. The myth, that the central state
can achieve something that no one individual can do, or small
community can do, is the foundation block of the modern world
order.
The new purpose of the school is to teach the young the world
into which they will be entering. It is not the world of the Biblical
rational being who must serve God and relate to others through the
means of covenants. It is not the world of some revealed authority
which demands obedience in ethical matters. This life is all that
there is. There is no judgment after this life. All decisions are
decisions which must please the animal nature of man. The only
limits on these decisions are the restrictions placed on one by the
government, other persons, and the laws of nature. Within each
person=s personal power sphere he is the new god on the planet.
Each animal is to seek to maximize its animal pleasures. One of the
purposes of the new education is to prepare the young for a lifetime
of maximum enjoyment of this life.
The national school system is a giant corporation. The student
learns to reside and prosper within this giant bureaucracy. The laws
that apply to the school system prepare the student to move onto
other bureaucracies. A student that adjusts to the system can move
onto the corporate world of the modern university. The student is to
be passive in this system. He is not there just to learn a vocation,
but to absorb a world view of man and his roll in this universe. This
system is designed to supply future leaders for the system. Those
who do not adjust and believe in the world- wide corporate
establishment are weeded out. The method that is used is an
indirect one. A student, that finds the system intolerable, will for
the most part not achieve the necessary grades and support to
move up to higher level of responsibility. Because the blame for the
failure falls upon the student, he is not aware of the larger sorting
process that is going on behind his back.
We now come to the final goal for mankind. What is the
purpose of the whole world order that has been established upon
this world? This is the one fact that is not taught or discussed in the
bureaucratic school system. There must be world trade. There
must be multi-national corporations to supply the products we all
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desire. There must be armies to defend this system. Taxes must
be paid to support the whole structure. Within this system
individuals are allowed to maximize their personal pleasures. But
no pleasure is to interfere with the overall corporate world. Some
may wonder about the so-called rat race, but this is to be dismissed
as the grumbling of a loser in the quest for more and more pleasure.
He is the drop out from the living quest which is part of life. To
question the quest is seen again as someone who desires >to turn
the clock back= to rural life and rural values.
The world order is constantly pictured as having the best
interests of everyone in mind. The quest for one world will bring an
end to national armies. The quest for one spiritual understanding of
man will mean the end of religious conflicts and religious wars. The
idea of the brotherhood of mankind will result in everyone in the
whole world being treated equally. No one nation or individual
within that nation must be allowed to monopolize the pleasures of
this life. The world has a limited supply of pleasures. For someone
to have too many means that he is stealing pleasures from others
on the planet. This is the vision which controls the people who live
in the closing decade of the twentieth century. The Victorians
claimed that they lived in the best of all possible worlds. The
modern claims he lives in the only possible world. Evolution has
resulted in this world, and Mother-nature did not make mistakes.
The final consolidation of the whole world into one world view
started with the initial threat of total terror with the fear generated
by the panic surrounding the Y2K crisis. For motivation there is
nothing quite like fear. You can bribe the elite into doing the proper
thing. The masses must be scared into submission. The final stage
in obtaining the new world order will be an age of terror and fear.
This stage could be like nothing the modern world has ever seen.
The ground floor of the new order has been formed. Christianity has
been eliminated as factor in the world order. It might appear that
the Muslims are a religion of resistance, but they are more of a tool
in the formation of the world order than they are an area of
resistance. Only Christianity has an organized and philosophical
theology of opposition to the modern Tower of Babel.
The twenty-first century will be known in time as the final
battle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Babel. This
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battle has been the driving engine of history. It has been fought
behind the scenes. Often the battles we see on the surface are
nothing but the current manifestations of this battle that has been
raging for over six thousand years. The failure to understand the
nature of this battle has blinded many to the meanings of the
events that they experience in their daily lives. Every utopian
dream has been an expression of the Babel dream of founding a
permanent city who builder and maker are men. Is man capable of
founding a civilization without relying upon the revealed laws of
God? The Bible says Ano.@ Mankind says that he can build a
civilization based upon his own ideas of right and wrong that are not
founded on the Biblical revelation of God.
If man were to choose to walk through one of two doors,
marked Apleasure@ or Aabsence of fear,@ which door would he
pick? Political psychology says that man desires to avoid fear more
than he desires pleasure. After all, if pleasure is surrounded in fear,
what good is it? But if man can live in a state of fearlessness, then
everything else would take care of itself. Thus, this age of the battle
of the Kingdoms will be an age of fear. The door to the new world
order will have over it the sign that reads, Aabsence of fear.@ In
order to get the masses to enter into this door, tremendous
amounts of fear must be generated and inflicted upon mankind.
That is why the Bible talks about the end of the age being marked
by many whom hearts would fail them because of the fear that
surrounds every aspect of lifeBto the point of desiring death as an
alternative to fear.
Any political leader who intends to lead a nation must
understand fear. It is not a topic taught in the textbooks, but it is
the foundational stone of all leadership. Take fear away from a
leader=s tools and he will lose his ability to lead. It is not one of
those topics you will hear discussed on the political talk shows. Yet,
it is the foundation upon which almost every newscast is structured.
If you analyze a typical news show and classify the stories on their
level of fear, you will find a pattern. After watching thirty minutes of
news, the average person should have an unconscious sense of fear.
There will be a sense of dread whose source is quite unknown. A
quick survey of recent events will show a trend toward increasing
amounts of fear. The trend is toward a fear that cannot be escaped.
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In the past, fear could be escaped in some fairly easy manner.
There were zones where one could feel safe. The escalation of fear
over the past thirty years has eliminated zones of comfort and
safety. The trend has been to elevate fear to something that
surrounds everyone in a total atmosphere of fear. Behind every
good moment there is an underlying sense that the current
happiness has been built on a foundation of fear. Behind every
good moment is the realization that it is temporary. There are no
more Afairy tales@ where it can be said, and Athey all lived happily
ever after.@ The inability to totally escape except in some mindless
activity or stimulant induced coma, has resulted in a world where
the pursuit of acceptable forms of escape has become a national
pastime.
There have been several progressions of the level of fear over
the pass several decades. In the seventies there was the Swine Flu
scare. That scare was a total bust. Masses lined up at the malls to
get inoculations. More died from the injections than got sick from
the flu. During the eighties, AIDS became part of America=s
everyday life and the hot topic of discussion. There were minor
fears during this decade such as the mass outbreak of Herpes, but
the masses were still left untouched. With the age of panic, the fear
of Anthrax or small pox now progressed to a fear that occupied
everyone=s life. With the fear of infected mail, every home became
a possible target. Because no home is without some mail, there was
no place, no matter how far out in the country, that was safe from
possible infection.
The level of bombs also escalated over the past several
decades. In the sixties, students used pipe bombs to protest their
hatred of the Vietnam War. In time, car bombs were used against
American citizens. The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma
City escalated the fear level to a new height. Finally, with the
destruction of the World Trade Centers, anyone that lived or worked
in a large building could become a possible target. Everyone was a
target. When you add the various work place shootings, there
seemed to be the possible threat of death no matter where one
lived or worked. While the forty to sixty thousand deaths each year
in automobiles has been going on for decades, the random deaths
by attack seemed to elevate terror and fear to new levels in
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America in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
In connection with the escalation of fear, has been a de-
escalation of possible alternatives to fear. In times past, heaven
became the hope of all, especially those who have lost hope of any
rewards in this life. Fear became manageable because there was
more to life than just the present age. In time, with the Gospel of
Prosperity, heavenly rewards came down to earth. Christians
expected to be rewarded in this life. In time, the rewards became
more immanent. Not only was one expected to find rewards in this
life, although it might involve much tribulation, it was now expected
that rewards would become an everyday part of life. As the pursuit
daily pleasures became the norm, there developed the fear of losing
one=s daily pleasures.
Christians now became motivated to achieve a life of continual
pleasure. The avoidance of all pain was the corollary of this. The
life of the Christian went from seeking Christ in all tribulations to the
avoidance of trials and tribulations. This now was the goal. As
heaven became part of the earthly expectation, hell now became an
earthly reality also. The whole world was becoming one city. But it
was not the city of the utopian dream, but the city dominated by the
ghetto. The whole world was seemingly engaged in a new kind of
war. The global village had been turned into the global ghetto.
Every business and every community seemed to be a continual
competition. The competition was cut-throat. There are no safe
suburbs in this new reality as symbolized in the school shootings in
prosperous enclaves.
The whole world was struggling for a new unity to restore the
metropolis of utopian dreams. With increased interaction between
peoples of all faiths and political beliefs, life seemed to be now lived
in a state of continuous conflict. With fear and terror invading every
area of life, even the popular escape into the local church seemed
pointless. The church was no longer a place to enter into the
presence of God, but was a place to escape from the conflicts of the
global community. The church went from being a worship center to
an entertainment center. The church went from emphasizing
eternal pleasures to a place that promised to deliver immediate
pleasures. As the world became a world of terror, the church could
no longer deliver on its promises. The age of terror had finally
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exposed the nakedness of the church. The last safe refuge had
died.
The marks a new stage in history. The transition has been slow
and the direction has appeared to be irreversible. Various authors
have described this age as the end of history. In one sense it is. It
is the end of Western Civilization. In fact, its passing has, for the
most part, gone unnoticed. The major reason being that with the
defeat of the South during the Civil War, the last defender of
Western Civilization was defeated. There have been isolated
stragglers, but no nation has wanted to defend the traditions that
produced the modern nation-state. Even with the defeat of the
South, traditions die slowly. It has taken one hundred and fifty
years to finally declare that Western Civilization is dead. There was
no funeral because no one cared. If there was a funeral no one
attended and Western Civilization=s final fall was like the tree that
falls in the forest with no one to witness it. Is there a noise? That
silence was the end of a great empire.
The terror that opened this age did not kill the old age. It was
already teetering into a pre-dug grave. What terror has done, is to
point in the direction that the new Whole World Civilization will take.
There is no doubt that democracy is the reigning form of
government approved by the masses. It does give them a
semblance of the choices that once loomed important in civilizations
past. The new choices more resemble the choice of deodorant
brands. There are choices, and the fact that people show loyalty to
their brand should tell you something, but how important is that
choice in the overall frame of life? It is important to many and that
is the amazing fact. Consumer-freedom is the new democracy. Our
choices at the polls are no longer the choices of free people, but of
people who are allowed to choose politicians, who resemble
different cans of deodorant.
Western civilization required choices be made that reflected the
great needs of people who are freely pursuing their God-given rights
to have dominion over the face of the earth. The choices were
mostly made on local levels. The main purpose of a democracy was
to keep the powers of government from interfering with the local
freedoms that each community treasured. Emergencies did arise
when more power could be granted for a temporary period of time.
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At the end of the emergency the power was restored to the local
communities and organizations that treasured their independence
from governments. The new freedom is the right of each individual
to vote on what particular service he wants the central government
to perform. The citizens of Western Civilization would be totally
dumb founded over such choices.
Thus, the end of history is really the beginning of a new form of
history. The age of terror has resulted in the citizens of the world
voting for more and more security. Freedom has been redefined to
mean the freedom to be safe from the terrors of life. Every terror
that has entered into public consciousness over the last hundred
years has now become the new >freedom from.= Men want to be
free from crime, free from disease, free from terror, and free from
fear. That is a tall order for even a church to fulfill, yet alone a
government bureaucracy. While the church in the past may have
tried to fulfill some of these needs, there was the realization that
most of one=s needs would only be fulfilled in heaven.
As religion has faded away, government has moved into the
vacuum. The needs addressed by Christianity have now been put on
the auction block of a democratic election. The new politician is the
new priest of the New World Civilization. The big difference between
the old faith and the new faith is this: The old faith taught the
limitations of earthly existence. The new faith sees no limitations.
For every need there must be some bureaucratic solution. Every
failing in life means that someone has failed to recognize a need and
provide for its fulfillment. The general prosperity and the
technological innovations over the last hundred years, has created
the illusion that government has brought all of this about. It has
taken credit for the past, and now offers equally grandiose plans for
the future.
The past is pictured as one of scarcity. The new age will be one
of abundance. It will be a different kind of prosperity. It will not be
anything like the different ages in the past that considered them
prosperous. The new age will have prosperity in a very narrow band.
Prosperity now means having things and having sensual pleasures.
That is why many have talked about the end of history. The idea of
continual progress which so many lived and died for is no longer a
reality. Men sought enjoyment in pitting themselves against an
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earth that only gave up its riches through much hard work and
mental ingenuity. From the highest in society to the lowest, there
was this common purpose that served as a common bond. All were
working together, though in different roles, to hold back the chaos
that was only one generation away.
The New World Civilization sees a world bonded together in a
different kind of purpose. It is the common desire to be a consumer
of the plethora of gadgets that technology has produced. It is to be
able to travel to one of the many centers of pleasure designed for
people of all ages: The centers range from ball parks to amusement
parks. It even includes the new phantasy theme parks to create an
experience of living in some totally different world or lifestyle. The
New World Civilization offers a world without war as everyone will be
satisfied with their level of pleasure. Even the poorer persons in
society will be able to enjoy the riches of sensual pleasure and be
able to enjoy the world that in time=s past only the very rich could
afford to experience.
The utopian dream of the New World Civilization is based on the
idea that man is basically an animal. To keep the animal content is
the object of life. The new view of man differs little from the old
Carnation Milk slogan that their milk came from contented cows.
The New World Civilization promises that its product will come from
contented workers. The workplace will be free of conflict. It will
provide a financial living sufficient that all will be able to own
gadgets and experience sensual pleasures. The workplace will offer
every other service to keep the worker contented and able to enjoy
his time away from work. With medical and child care covered, the
worker will be free to pursue pleasure just like everyone else in
society.
The civilization envisioned will be one in which the whole
world will be managed in a similar way that businesses have been
run in the past. All of the workers and their families will be
regulated. The family will be licensed and the number of children
will be limited. In order to maintain a semblance of freedom, a
couple will be able to sell all or par of their licensed quota to
someone else who desires a larger family. Wages will be regulated
to ensure that every job that society deems proper will proper a
minimal opportunity for personal enjoyment. With population growth
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stabilized, the stress on the planet will be eliminated and the New
World Civilization will offer all men the promise of longer and longer
life on this planet as resources can be switched from making war
materials to making improvements in health care.
The questions we have to ask, is this new age the final result of
the evolution of mankind into something entirely new and exciting,
or is it the rebellion of mankind against the image of God that was
created into our species? And if we destroy that image, what are we
to become?
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