Happy Independence Day from the Georgia Republican Assembly!
It’s time to break out the fireworks and enjoy some tasty barbecue! Yes, it is good for our country to come together and celebrate days of remembrance.
But through all the fun, I hope that we make sure our children and grandchildren really know and understand why we are having all of these festivities. Because the battle-cry against tyranny that our founding fathers sounded in their generation is still the cry that we must sound today.
Our founders faced tyranny from the British King and Parliament. Today we face tyranny from global agencies, the White House, Congress, numerous federal agencies, sometimes the Gold Dome, and even our local county commission and board of election buildings!
Our founders gave their “lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” and we are standing on their shoulders. We may not yet be called upon to risk our lives or our fortunes, but surely we can give something to the cause of freedom. It may be an evening at a county commission or board of elections meeting, or a Saturday door-knocking for a strong candidate.
Even more significantly, it may mean taking the time to personally raise our children (and not just let the government schools or the T.V. do it for us!). It may mean regularly going to church, and giving charitably to replace government welfare. It may mean working a job faithfully and living within our means so that we and our families don’t become dependent slaves of the state.
Some of these things may not sound all that political, but they are all a part of building a culture that makes America great again! That culture is what the French author Alex de Tocqueville observed about Americans in 1835 when he wrote: “America is great because she is good.”
An America that has that kind of culture can withstand any attempted tyrannies from the state. A hero in office like Donald Trump needs a people with that kind of culture to back him up and spur him on to success.
So let’s work to rebuild the best aspects of the American culture that first made it “great.” Let’s return to those founding presuppositions of the founding generation — not all of which they personally lived up to, but which they fearlessly proclaimed as the nation’s aspiration!
Let’s get back to acknowledging, first, as our founders did in the Declaration of Independence, that we are “created” by God with a special human purpose. We did not randomly happen to rise out of the ooze without meaning. We are not the product of chance. Moreover, there is a Divine Authority over all human authorities that holds them in check.
That Creator “endowed us with certain unalienable rights.” These rights mean that God has placed jurisdictional limitations upon civil government. He did not give them a blank check. The state may not morally murder (or help murderers get away with it), and it may not steal — just to touch on a few of the tyrannies our modern civil government regularly practices today.
We must expect better from our elected officials.
We must be willing to work as hard as our founders.
We must, as our founders, trust in Divine Providence.
In 1775 when General George Washington was struggling to keep his army together in the war against Britain, the greatest empire on earth, he wrote:
“If I shall be able to rise superior to these and many other difficulties which might be enumerated, I shall most religiously believe that the finger of Providence is in it …”.
George Washington
We need to get down our knees and pray to God for help in our own battle against tyranny today. We need to acknowledge our sins, both personal and national, and turn from them. We need to ask God to forgive us and help us to overcome even as He helped the founding generation overcome in 1776.
We in the GRA are ready to lock arms with you in this endeavor. Reach out to us if we can help you in this on-going fight against tyranny!