Totems, Silent Sentinels of History
From time to time you can see an ancient, authentic totem pole in this country. These silent sentinels are honored symbols of specific families or clans and serve as a reminder of ancestral history.
Today, the Rant assumes the power of creating such a symbol for our nation to leave for future generations.
The symbol at the base--that alone which all other pertinent history can be built--would be a Bible signifying our dependence upon the Creator as the source of all America's prosperity and liberty. The second symbol, firmly seated upon the foundation supplied by the Bible, would be the family--our civilization's main building block for maintaining liberty's responsibilities and providing guidance to younger generations. The third symbol would be the scroll of the Constitution signifying our Founders' unique-in-history intent of having a limited civil government--insuring a reliance on first the base symbol and secondly upon the individual family unit.
The many reasons for having a symbol acknowledging the role the Creator played in our country as the first symbol are usually obvious. Some might be more obscure to the masses with the passage of time as liberties are removed to "protect" us from ourselves. We individuals need protection because far too often we discard the attending responsibilities that go along with prosperity and liberty.
There is another reason. When I was employed as a tax auditor, I had the opportunity to meet a mining engineer from Australia. Together we witnessed the large, open-pit Black Thunder Mine operation near Wright, Wyoming. When the tour guide explained the amount of feet of overburden removed to get at a nearly equal depth of coal, the Aussie walked away. Coming back he still had tears upon his cheeks. "Forgive me," he said, "we go down two miles to get at a 6-inch seam of coal. America is truly the land God blessed."
I saw my homeland in a new light. The purpose for the first symbol is to reflect that knowledge.
Since we so easily forget or want to disavow the responsibility for living with liberty and prosperity, it is up to the immediate family to make each generation learn this lesson so it can be passed on to the succeeding generations. Thus the second symbol.
The family is obligated to negate the government's education system where youth are taught reliance upon government is more important than personal responsibility. Thus the second symbol is the prosperity building block that must be available and used by each individual before they can be expected to join the society. It is family that instills this value.
The Constitution symbol is not merely intended for the clan or family but for the entire community as a whole.
A limited government means each unit whether as an individual or as a family or clan has to be vigilant not to provide for government but to keep it within its Constitutionally-imposed constraints. If the government is bigger than it was intended, the totem is unbalanced. The first two symbols are eroded to where they can no longer support the totem or pushed into ground where they are out of sight and thus forgotten by the totem's observers.
The Constitution symbol is intended to enhance the first two symbols vicariously. The Constitution limited civil government and preserved freedom of religion, not freedom from religion or the acknowledgment of society we need to remember Whom we serve.
Whatever else might seem appropriate to you to put as symbolic on the totem of our country, those three must be the first elements because nothing else can be achieved without them as history has taught.
The three must be engraved upon the totem so they will forever remain engraved in our hearts and understood by our minds.
It must seem strange to the bureaucrat class that it would not have its own symbol but it has distanced itself from the cornerstone of the Constitution and brings the totem out of balance.
It must be even more disturbing to those solemn "Officers of the Court", those short-of-common-sense judges and attorneys who impose themselves upon the many aspects of our lives because they view themselves as protectors of "Right" even when they are almost always wrong in following an agenda.
But the most disheartened of all will undoubtedly be the professional educator class. What the school element fails to recognize is a good education is not necessary to teach everyone what to do but should provide hints as to how to undo what should not have been done in the first place. In that the government education falls far short because it has forgotten an axiom of the main Constitutional writer, Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson noted, upon more than one occasion and in various forms, "As government grows, freedom recedes." Our public school system promotes government "goodness" on malleable young minds.
That is the Rant's totem for America; three symbols that sustain the country's origin and refute the overbearing government currently endured.
"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson
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