Vote, It's Your Duty As A Citizen

One of the most inspiring things we have done this summer is take a course on the Constitution. It is being given through our church and is entitled Biblical Citizenship in Modern America.

So, the first question you are going to ask is, “Isn’t there a separation of church and state? Doesn’t it say that in the Constitution?”

The answer is “no” that phrase is nowhere in the Constitution. Next question: “How many times do the Annals of Congress record the phrase, separation of church and state during the debates drafting the First Amendment? The answer is none.

The five fundamental freedoms in the First Amendment are: religion, speech, press, right to assemble, and petition. The only time “separation of church and state” was used was when Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that the government would not infringe on their freedom of religion. Jefferson was in Europe when the Constitution was signed.

James Madison said the intent of religion in the First Amendment was to prevent a single national denomination or religion like the Church of England.

The constitution was written around moral law. Those members of congress pondered for weeks and weeks over each word, paragraph, and sentence as to what might make the Constitution and our government as we know it, last.

Seventeen years is the longest any other constitution has survived. America can brag that ours is now more than 250 years old and, even though it is tramped on, not understood even by those elected to the offices which swear to uphold it, still survives. It should be a course in all schools and certainly anyone taking office, even a local office, should be aware of its content.

In order to get good men and women into office who not only vow to uphold the Constitution but also do it, we must vote. Voting should be number one on every American citizen’s list. No, it is not a right that should be given to the incarcerated, or non-citizens. I will always scratch my head as to why so many politicians fight voter ID. I have to show an ID to check into a hotel and a passport to fly on a plane even within the United States.

That being said, educate yourself as to why you will vote that way you choose. Don’t pick a leader just because they are good looking, know how to dance, or went to a specific university. Do pick them because they stand for what you believe and make certain you know what they believe.

Sadly enough 66 percent of the voting population chose our current president and that was a much higher turnout than usual. 2.9 percent of those eligible to vote chose the mayor of Los Angeles and 6 percent chose the mayor of Houston.

Statistics show that one of three vote for president and one out of four vote for other offices. When it comes to local offices such as the school board or even county commissioner it could be three to six percent. You think one vote isn’t important?

The Declaration of Independence was adopted because of one vote, and it came from Pennsylvania. John Dickenson did not want the Declaration of Independence, but James Wilson and Ben Franklin overruled him.

When I vote this year, I will certainly be looking at the national debt which is somewhere around 37 trillion dollars. Did you know that if you started counting today saying 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. etc., it would take you six days to get to one million? When the Constitution was written it was noted that to leave debt for future generations was a crime. So why are we allowing this to happen? In 1999, Congress was within ONE vote of adding a constitutional amendment saying they must balance the budget. See how important just one vote can be?

Most of us thought George W. Bush was elected in the electoral college by the state of Florida. Not necessarily true as West Virginia prior to that election was assumed to go Democrat. That year, its four electoral college votes went for Bush.

And why do we have an electoral college? It was to prevent tyranny by the masses. The founders did not want the highly populated cities to always rule. In fact, Benjamin Rush wrote to Thomas Jefferson saying the following: God made the country; man made cities. I consider them in the same light that I do abscesses on the human body—as reservoirs of all the impurities of a community.

We are not a Democracy, but rather a Constitutional Republic.

The course we are taking and most of the information in this column was written by David Barton of the WallBuilders Museum in Texas. If you look WallBuilders up on You Tube, you see it is an organization dedicated to presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built.

We were surprised in the very beginning of the course to learn that America was not the slave-loving country so many like to assume. Yes, we did have slaves, but we were willing to go to war over the wrongness of it. For the most part the north never did like the idea. We were actually the second country in the world to abolish slavery.

There were many black people in the country who did outstanding historical things. For instance, it was a black man who fired the first shot in the Revolutionary War and a black man who fired the last shot in the Revolutionary War. There are many facts such as these available in the WallBuilders Museum. Why have they been taken from our history books?

It was President Woodrow Wilson, a racist above all racists who demanded that such credit to the black population be abolished from the school history books.

These are just a sampling of the facts we have gleaned from this extremely informational course. Each session is two hours and those 120 minutes seem like five minutes.

Next month, I hope to provide more information on the Constitution and its contents. Meanwhile, if you have not registered to vote, please do so. Then vote, but only once.