by Karla Perry

Created on: September 16, 2010

Everyone wants to be free. America was born on the shared value of freedom that ran deep in the hearts of the first patriots and Founders. Most every nation in the world desires the freedom found between our shores. A grassroots rally cry has been sounded in recent months for a return to greater levels of freedom while rejecting current policies that would restrict freedom.

The Founders, and the philosophers that influenced them, had a very unique idea to build a nation where the people would be free. Thus, they set out to build a limited government by the people and for the people. A government that would not be the granter of freedom, but it's most ardent protector for this government would be elected and held accountable by the people.

The Founding Fathers were very clear in their thoughts concerning the nature of such a free people. They encouraged, with great enthusiasm and urgency, that the education of the people always include instruction from the Christian Bible. Now, in these days there were no public schools. There was no Department of Education. There were only community schools usually tied into the local church that shared the one room school house facility. There were also home schooling and private tutoring depending on ones economic status.

The Founders view on this is evidenced by these quotations by James Madison:

“It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

The Founders saw it as instrumental to securing a free nation that the citizens of this nation govern themselves. The only way they could be free, is if they did not need a governing authority to make laws guarding their conduct. Thus they frequently wrote that people be instructed in Biblical morality and to make that and the law of nature (what they saw as the unwritten laws known in our conscious) our external guide to maintaining our liberty. In their opinion, if we behaved ourselves we would have little need of the government keeping us in order by excessive laws and punishments.

However, as good as this plan is it stopped short of the freedom that is available to people. The Founders way would ensure a great deal of freedom never before established

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