Civics
Civics 101
Welcome Families
Civics 101 Lesson 1-The Spirit of America
Each summer my children and I choose a new subject to study together. So in addition to spending time at the pool we might read about birds, composers, baseball players or whatever strikes our fancy.
This summer we are taking a civics class using the textbook _The Land of Fair Play_.
Today we learned that even though our country is not perfect, our America seeks to give every American, man or woman, boy or girl, rich or poor, an equal chance. There is more ambition in America than any other country in the world because we all have the opportunity to make something of ourselves. There is no place for a king, for nobility, or favored group in this country as every person is a good as his brains and character makes him.
America is affluent today because of the system we have used for the past five generations. How is it that six percent of the world’s population can produce almost one-half of the world’s wealth? We Americans have turned a wilderness continent into a rich and powerful nation in such a short time. Why and how did we manage this?
Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution which is the greatest document to govern people that the world has ever seen. Using the Constitution and the Bill of Rights enabled us to create the most successful major society in all human history.
Our great Country was build on these five principles:
1. We had a belief in God-our religious background made us reliable
and dependable with one another.
2. We had limited government-and this limited our national expenses
and gave us surplus capital for tools and a good living standard.
3. We had individual freedom-every man could work at what he wanted
4. We had incentive-which was simply the right to keep the fruits of
our labor.
5. We had competition-the thing that makes businessman and employee
alike serve his fellow man well.
Some of our values were formed by the ideas and examples of our founding fathers.
Patrick Henry said, “If my family has freedom, and I have not given them one shilling, they would be rich. If they would not have freedom, and I have given them the whole world, they would be poor.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “As government advances, freedom gives way.”
Woodrow Wilson said basically the same thing, “Liberty has never come from government. The history of liberty is the history of limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.”
The freedom that our founding fathers gained for us could never have been given through Marxism, collectivism, Socialism, or fascism. Our freedom and prosperity will always rest on individual responsibility, courage, and faith.
I hope we will always treasure and guard our hard-won freedoms. I hope we will reject the welfare state and not allow the government to do what we as individuals should do. May we not allow the light of America die…..for if it does it will go out all over the world. God have mercy upon us if we get smug and complacent and allow the government to be our keeper.
Coming Soon Lesson 2