historical-outcomes-change-when-leaders-do

=**Historical Outcomes Change When Leaders Do**=

We can look back in history and study victories and changes and things that were done to bring freedoms and economic well-being and the things that helped people the most. We can also understand the tragedies and when people fell into bondage and wars and slavery. We can teach these lessons and learn from the past. History lessons teach us principles and absolute truths – they don’t change…but if we don’t learn them then we’re doomed to repeat them. One thing is common in every victory and every defeat in all of civilization à moral issues. Every issue and defeat was founded on moral issues. Our country today is going away ever so quickly from morality.

America is seemingly following the decline in morals and civilization like Ancient Rome. Rome was a flourishing republic (before it became an empire with an emperor – the people had democracy, power, and freedom…but Rome became an empire). Rome went through the Cycle of Democracy. It’s about where societies have always gone, though societies don’t have to go there…if a society is made aware of these issues, the cycle can change. We’ve grown into a society that votes in its benefits because we deserve taxes to fund us. Alexander Tytler said a democracy can only exist until the people discover that they can vote themselves a largesse from the public treasury and then the majority always votes for candidates that promise the most benefits from the public treasury and a democracy then collapses under a louse fiscal policy always followed by a dictatorship.

Cicero was the orator in Rome when Rome was becoming an empire as Julius Caesar had taken power. He tried to warn Rome. He came out of the Greek and study of the Stoic teaching. Stoics believed in a prevailing moral current (they weren’t Christian, but as close to it as one would be in the time of the Stoics). He became an announcer to restore the republic. He believed the government was morally obliged to serve the people.

Cicero wrote what he saw as Rome’s problems. He said because of the economic expansion of the empire there was a lower standard of living. In America today, there’s still an abundance of stuff but how many have large personal debt…still see prices increases and see the squeeze on us? Cicero talked about politicians who ran on bringing benefits back to the people if elected, about the expansion of government power, grain prices skyrocketed, which hurt farming, the currency was devalued, increased taxation, wealth was redistributed and caused apathy, and business was disrupted. Cicero pointed these problems out. Our Founders studied Latin and Greek and the classics, which taught how to think…classic literature had a theme – study of growth of tyranny over liberty…these have largely been eliminated from our society.

Once Rome collapsed, Europe went into the Dark Ages. Why? Information stopped and dictators came up in the form of local small governments and became armed and began feudalism. They began to take from the serfs and peasants for their own benefit. There was no information or reading, only fighting. Europe went into bondage and lost //their freedoms. Centuries went by – from 800 into the 1400s – a 600 year period of// bondage.

Johannes Gutenberg invented something that brought Europe out of bondage – the printing press (around 1439). He was frustrated in the old archaic way of writing. People could get information and literature that they were never able to get before. The first book they published was the Gutenberg Bible à spiritual liberty took hold and brought great courage to fight the tyrannies that were destroying civilizations. All nations began to own presses. Books were published and created the Renaissance. Great men of history came out of the liberties that could be read about and made a difference in the 1500s and 1600s. Leaders began to make a difference in the cycle.

Samuel Rutherford wrote about all men being created equal. He was a result of the Reformation. His most important work was Lex Rex, or the law and the prince. He presented the theory of limited government and constitutionalism and connected them using support of scripture. He offended Charles II so bad that England would have a book burning since the truth offended him so bad.

John Locke had read Rutherford’s literature and is one who wrote about liberty and private property – about natural rights of life, liberty, and property. He saw society teetering between bondage and liberty (often in several places in the cycle of democracy). Our Declaration of Independence says we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our Founding Fathers knew history, they read Cicero, Latin, Greek, Stoics, the classics, Rutherford, and Locke.

The Great Awakening brought more spiritual truths with George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. They preached that all were equal in the eyes of God. Samuel Adams said of George Whitefield religion and public liberty are intimately connected and cannot exist separately. Thomas Jefferson called the laws of nature and nature’s God a moral law; a conscious which God engraves on the minds of man.

In our world today, America is similar to the end of the Roman Republic as America loses its principle, morals, and absolute truths. As morality is torn away, we lose our foundation and tear our history apart. Phillip Johnson, a retired professor from the University of California-Berkeley said agnostics rule America today since scientific naturalism rules universities and universities control the social definition of knowledge – that is universities define what we know. Without morality, the current secular view becomes we want to serve our own needs and pleasures – these are the laws going in today. Meanwhile, China is experiencing spiritual truth – more Chinese going to Sunday church than members of the Communist Party in China and look at China economically…it’s growing.

The tearing down of the family takes place when morals aren’t held up. This leads to a decay of civilization. Today, we have more law that tells you how to think. That is the opposite of spiritual liberty. That is why the decline of morals leads to bondage. The more law governs you the more bondage you head towards. If the body is just a piece of matter with no moral absolutes, then it can be pleasured with no moral consequence. With no rules, we now pick the gender we want, we identify as whichever gender we want. We have some that dispute that a child with DNA and a heartbeat inside the womb is not life and that life can be ended. Spiritual liberty and science together can be liberating – study Isaac Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Louis Pasteur, and Roger Bacon and you’ll see what science does when founded in a moral absolute country. Combining secularism with science leads to a decaying of morals and values. Science can be destructive when combined with no moral absolute truths. This is how abortion gets justified – Princeton ethicist Peter Singer says personhood remains a gray area even at three years of age. Richard Dawkins compared humans to machines and Columbia University biologist Robert Pollock said I have no sympathy pulling the plug on any machine. James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, suggested waiting three days after birth and do genetic testing before deciding whether or not the baby should live. When we allow science to rule our moral behavior, it leads to social decline. There is no denying the decline of society in America.

The most important lesson to learn in history based on all civilization is moral absolute truth.

Analysis of how a decline in values impacts the family structure in a negative way (from 2014): [|Click here]

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