For God and Country: A Handbook for the Statesman-Citizen
- ISBN-10
- 0997124202
- ISBN-13
- 9780997124200
- Series
- For God and Country
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016-02-22
- Author
- William J. Federer
Description
"History is to the nation as memory is to the individual," wrote Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Have you ever met an individual who has lost their memory, maybe from the tragic disease of Alzheimers. Well, America has lost its corporate memory. Here we are the freest and most prosperous nation, with more individual liberty and freedom than any other nation in the 6,000 years of recorded human history - and we forgot how we got here! This short volume is in a small way an effort to re-introduce the "memory" of our nation's past, particularly with regards to the role of religion. Included are excerpts from various original charters and founding documents of each of the 13 colonies, the 50 state constitutions, significant treaties and court decisions, and past presidents' inaugural addresses. It is hoped by refreshing our national memory, we can get a better understanding to help us with current questions and challenges. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., continued his New York Times op-ed "Folly's Antidote" (January 1, 2007), "As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future." If we do not regain our memory, we may face what President Calvin Coolidge warned when he laid the cornerstone of the Jewish Community Center in Washington, DC., May 3, 1925: "This biblical influence was strikingly impressive in all the New England colonies ... A people raised under such leadership, given to much study and contemplation of the Scriptures ... . They knew the Book. They were profoundly familiar with it ... We must think the thoughts which they thought ... We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp."
