Founding Legacy

233 years ago, 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of liberty and freedom. I wonder how many Americans today would be willing to do that? Most Americans don’t even realize the significance of the phrase lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. We’re so familiar with those words that we never think about what they really mean. It wasn’t just a superfluous way of signing a document. They were truly pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. And indeed, many of the signers lost their fortunes, some lost their lives or the lives of family members, but not one lost their most prized possession, their sacred honor.

Take for example the story of Abraham Clark, as told in a speech titled "The Americans Who Risked Everything", given by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr. (father of the political talk-show host Rush Limbaugh):

“Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact. And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark.

He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No."

Then there is Francis Lewis, signer of the Declaration from New York. His home was plundered and destroyed by British troops, his wife was taken captive and kept prisoner under horrible conditions. She was exchanged just a few months later, but her health had been so severely damaged during her imprisonment that she died shortly afterward.

One thing that stands out in the phrase lives, fortunes, and sacred honor is the fact that they listed their lives and their fortunes, but it was only their honor that they held to be sacred. Honor was a thing prized above fortune and life. Life and fortune are things that can be taken from you, but no one can take your honor.

In today's culture we have lost the concept of honor. Webster's 1828 dictionary defines honor as "Reputation; good name... True nobleness of mind; dignified respect for character..." I think this succinctly sums up what true honor really is. As Thomas Jefferson said,

"Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong."

To us, the founding generation, living in a society and culture that hardly resembles our own, may seem irrelevant to us. But many lessons can still be learned from their generation; from their successes and their failures, from their strengths and their shortcomings.

Not only can we hope to avoid their mistakes, we can also build upon great and noble things that they accomplished, both in their public and private lives. Sadly, most Americans have little or no knowledge of men like Patrick Henry, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. These are the men who used to be our heroes and role models, but instead, we look to Hollywood to find our heroes.

We are forgetting and forsaking the incredible legacy left to us by our Founding Fathers. It has been lied about, cast aside, and declared irrelevant. But we need to return to that legacy that that has given us the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy today. We cannot just stand by and watch as our country descends into the ash heap of history. I think what George Washington said to the Continental Army after the signing of the Declaration is just as applicable to us today as it was then:

"The fate of millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions -- The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from tyranny mediated against them."

Last week, while America discussed the death of Michael Jackson, Congress passed the biggest tax increase in American history. If we want our politicians to be responsible and stop this insanity of massive federal spending; if we want to see an end to the ever-increasing rate of government expansion; if we want to preserve for ourselves and our children and grandchildren the right to live our own lives without the ever-present nanny state 'protecting' us from ourselves, then we better get up off the couch and starting doing something about it.

Write your Senators and Representatives and tell them that you won't put up with any more big-government Republicans who are spending our country into bankruptcy, allow the continued killings of tens of thousands of babies every year, refuse to protect our borders, and are incessantly infringing our right to keep and bear arms. Those politicians, at the very least, stretch the Constitution far beyond the intent of the Founders. And when you start stretching the Constitution, it's bound to tear, then rip, and soon it's left in shreds.

Volunteer at a campaign for a true conservative, who will fight to defend the Constitution and will actually work to diminish the size of government, not slow it's expansion.

Whatever we get in our government we deserve, because we put them there and we fail to hold them responsible. We must begin to reclaim America by standing firm for truth, for as Edmund Burke so eloquently put it,

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Ronald Reagan declared in 1964 in his A Time for Choosing speech,

“We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."

If our generation does nothing to stop the erosion and destruction of our liberties and freedoms, we will plunge future generations into "a thousand years of darkness." We must not allow our liberties to be taken from us, for liberties once lost are not easily regained.

I’ll leave you with the ending stanza from the poem The Rising of 1776 by T.B. Read.

"Who dares?" -- This was the patriot preacher's cry,
As striding from the pulpit he came, --
"Come out with me, in Freedom's name,
For her to live, for her to die?"
A hundred hands flung up reply,
A hundred voices answered, "I!"

Recommended links:
A Time for Choosing (1964), by Ronald Reagan
The Americans Who Risked Everything, by Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr.
1776, by David McCullough