"You and I are America. Unless we change, America will not change. Unless we are willing to experiment boldly with the application of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love in our lives and in our relationships and responsibilities, America, the land of the free, may lose her freedom because she no longer has the moral and spiritual values to maintain it."
?J. Herbert Smith
Many poignant words, like those above, have been spoken or written about Americans and America since our nation's founding. Taken separately, oftentimes the power of some of the most poignant of them is lost.
Oftentimes writers, sages, politicians, teachers, parents, professors and other assorted wise men and women take a line or two or a paragraph from some of the best that has been written or said about our great nation, either to prove a point or simply to sound like someone who's wise enough to know wisdom when he sees it.
One such man who does both is radio talk show host Chuck Baldwin. He has proven himself wise enough not to simply quote a line or two from some of the nation's most moving documents; rather, he was wise enough to assemble 50 of the nation's greatest documents and put them in an easily referenced book.
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If you have a few bucks left over from Christmas, you ought to spend them to get this book – especially if you have school-aged children who will inevitably be asked by teachers to write papers about subjects undoubtedly covered by the documents in this collection.
From Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" speech of March 23, 1775, to the complete Constitution of the United States, to the words to our national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," to Theodore Roosevelt's take on "the new nationalism," Chuck has managed what most revisionist history texts fail to do – accurately portray our nation's history, without agenda, without politics, without alteration.
"Our American heritage is a rich one," he says in the foreword. "It is incumbent upon every American to read and know our history if we are to appreciate and preserve the liberty which was so dearly purchased by our founding fathers."
So right is he.
"Unfortunately, our public institutions, which are dominated by liberals and leftists, do not want our posterity to know their history," he continues. Sad but true; liberals, it seems, are the worst culprits.
"Much of the material contained in this volume used to be readily available in even the elementary grades of our nation's schools," Chuck wrote. But today, thanks to liberal revisionist history, most kids go through 12 years of public education and never even discuss more than half of these documents, let alone the events surrounding them.
Chuck says his volume is "offered with the hope and prayer that [readers] will, once again, discover our country's great history and heritage." Let's hope so, because that's exactly what this collection of documents does – it accurately depicts the history of the greatest nation ever built – all under the auspices of God Almighty.
This book is more than a great read. It's a treasure trove of reference material. Any home reference library that doesn't have a copy will be woefully incomplete.
Dougherty note: I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Year!