Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with the Moment of Truth, where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, I want to challenge you to think through the issue of what kind of law enabled the American dream to come true in the 5,000-year leap. Yes, we've been examining the 5,000-year leap, as it's called. That is, how has humanity made such tremendous progress in technology and in culture and in politics, too, and in government over the last 250 years in comparison to the last 5,000 years?

And we've seen how America has inspired the earth, nations all over the globe with its tremendous progress in so many areas. We've reviewed some of those areas. We've examined four different kinds of revolutions that have occurred because of the great advances in America because of the liberty provided Americans by the American Constitution. And one of those reasons is that there has been what is called people's law in comparison to ruler's law or in comparison to anarchy. Now, we looked at last week, so I'm picking up from where we left off last week.

Last week, we examined the spectrum, the continuum of power that is really at work. It's not the idea of communism versus Nazism. It's not the contrast between left and right that is at the heart of power. It is whether it is ruler's law. And we looked at Stalin, for example, who is a epitome of that which is on the left.

And we looked at Hitler, who is the epitome of a ruler who is on the right. And we saw how they are really just cardboard cutouts of the same thing. That is ruler's law or a dictator or a single ruler indeed demands obedience, exercises power. And then right in the on the other extreme is anarchy, not right or left, not communist versus Nazism, but rather anarchy stands at the other end of the spectrum. Ruler's law, complete dictatorship is on one side and complete anarchy or chaos or disorder is on the other side.

And humanity despises both of those extremes. Right in the middle is people's law. That's what I want to focus on today. The idea of people's law. That is, who is it who really rules?

Who is it who is designed then to manage government, to shape its institutions and its forms? And it is indeed the people, we the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice. And then on and on we go with the other four items of what government is, we the people. The idea of people's law is that which is right in the dead center middle between complete dictatorship and complete chaos. And that is what our founding fathers understood as well.

Our founding fathers understood that it is people's law which should shape government in the long run. And so we continue then with the idea of people's law. What is essential for us to remember as Americans is that we strive for the power model of people's law, which has a number of salient features that we must note. What are the features of people's law? Okay, first of all, under people's law, men relate to one another as free men.

They are not subjects of a king as under ruler's law, nor are they anonymous non-entities as they are under the anarchy of no law, which is precisely what people are which is precisely what the left is trying to lead us to today, anarchy in the streets of America. Instead, under people's law, each man is a freeman who has the constitutional balance of liberty countered by responsibility under law. And then secondly, we also note, under people's law, no major decision is made without the consent of the governed. That is the people who live under that law.

That is the same principle that motivated our founding fathers to cry, no taxation without representation. And then thirdly, under people's law, power is decentralized. We need to return to this vital, vital principle of people's law. That is, power is decentralized, being concentrated insofar as possible at the local level. This is wise.

It is wise to have local families band together to educate their children or build roads and bridges or take care of our poor amongst us. To have an outside entity do these things like the federal government is a sure sign of encroaching tyranny, dear listener. And then under people's law as well. Fourthly, under people's law, individual rights are seen as unalienable and bestowed by God, not by government. So many people in America today are brainwashed into thinking that it is government's responsibility or job to give or take rights away from people as they see fit.

It's one of the prime tyrannies of both left and right in modern America. The left may bestow fewer liberties, the right slightly more, or vice versa, depending on your political affiliation. But the source for those rights and liberties is the same for both. That is, it's the government.

But both left and right in America today function as if rights and liberties come from them in government, rather than being an inherent property of every individual bestowed graciously by God in heaven, not by Obama or Biden in Washington, D.C. Oh, these features, plus many more, characterize people's law and distinguish it from the other two more radical alternatives, and that's ruler's law and no law or anarchy. Make no mistake about this, dear listener. Our founding fathers knew precisely the difference between them, and they crafted our constitution to embody people's law, in utter contrast to the other extremes.

The general public knows very little of this distinction today. Public schools don't teach it in government and civics classes, no. But rather, the general public continues to labor under the misconception that the major differences in our nation fall between liberal and conservative, rather than ruler's law, that is tyranny, and no law, and that is anarchy. All nations throughout history have waffled between these two extremes. Only America has maintained a consistent middle way with people's law.

How much longer can we survive, dear listener? Do we even know what we face? Our founding fathers did. This precondition for understanding our constitution was not new, as it is for many Americans today. It was the standard knowledge for our predecessors.

With this in mind, let me outline several other preconditions for understanding the 28 principles of the constitution. We will be covering the 28 principles of the constitution outlined by the 5,000-year leap, which is published, of course, by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a wonderful organization that has published many fine works on the constitution and its founding principles. And we're reviewing the 5,000-year leap, which was published then by the National Center for Constitutional Studies. And you can find it at nccs.org. nccs.org.

And Dr. Skousen is the one who indeed published that work in league with a number of other researchers. But this is a wonderful, wonderful work. And we're reviewing then the 28 principles outlined in that 5,000-year leap. Well, in a day of exalting supposed cultural diversity, which we live in today, and so many on the left celebrate cultural diversity as a positive good, it's important to keep in mind that the America at its founding was a single unified cultural monolith. Yes, our founding fathers saw cultural diversity as a weakness and not a strength.

As Michael Medved points out in his book, The Ten Big Lies About America, an excellent work outlining some fallacies that so many on the left embrace, and he calls it The Ten Big Lies About America. Well, in that, our founding fathers affirmed not only our homogenous Anglo-Protestant society, but they also took great pride in our common language, which was English, which was Western European, and our core religious values, which were Judeo-Christian. The lie here is that we were somehow diverse in our ethnicity, which we were not. We were diverse in our language, which we were not. 90% of us were English speakers.

And the lie is that we were diverse in our religion, which we were not. We were Christian, and that we wanted to keep it this way, right? That we were diverse in our religion and language and culture and so forth. No, on the contrary, there was a rush to fulfill the vision of America and shed the identities of Europe or Africa or any other land of the past and be a new man. To be an American was the aspiration.

One Frenchman observed, and his name was de Krakow, he said, here in America, individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world, unquote. Oh, yes. Hasn't it been true? It is simply false that our founding fathers embraced cultural diversity and that they wanted to maintain cultural diversity. No, no, no.

It's difficult for us in the 21st century of a late America to recall the sheer inspiration that America was for the entire world at our beginning in the late 18th century. But the fact that we represented a whole new idea for a nation inspired people to come here at any cost. The fact that race and ethnicity was played down, not like it is today, not played up, was a motivation to cross the sea and come here at any cost. Race was played down. The fact that class differences were no barrier to advancement in America as they were in old Europe was a motivation to cross the sea and come here at any cost.

The fact that religious affiliation was no barrier to public office or material advancement was a motivation to cross the sea and come here at any cost. The fact that a premium was placed upon a man's natural talents and gifts and not where he was born or the wealth and the title that he may have inherited, right? All of this was a motivation to cross the sea and come here at any cost. In America, for them, the powerful draw was that a man could work as hard as his energies and his talents would take him and he would succeed or fail based on this and not on what the government could do to help or hinder him.

That is what that man was fleeing from. In the old country of Europe, the very thing we are fleeing to in our own day, unfortunately, America at its founding was based upon a man's natural talents and his personal merits and not on inherited wealth and privilege and not certainly on government handouts and favors. This is what the founding fathers and the thinkers who inspired them, men like John Locke or Adam Smith, this is what they called personal self-interest. John Locke in particular talked a great deal about personal self-interest. That is, that each man acts to better himself within the limits of a Christian moral framework.

Yes, that was the American ideal then that John Locke articulated called personal self-interest. Each man acts to better himself within the limits of a Christian moral framework. There are limits to working for oneself and that is a Christian moral framework and he does so to prosper and increase while behaving, tempered, all of this tempered, with behaving with benevolence to his fellow man. This was the American dream. This was the vision that founded America, dear listener.

As Crevecourt says, once again, our Frenchman, we quoted just a minute ago, as he puts it, an observer on America. He says, the American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here, that is in America. Here, the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor. His labor is founded upon the basis of nature.

Self-interest, can it want a stronger allurement? Unquote. The idea of enlightened self-interest. Dear fellow listener, our founding fathers would chide us in despair for how we have forfeited this dream for the paltry vision of a government welfare nanny state. Weak Americans raised in the false notion that government is there to act as a mother and father to help us and guarantee that we will not fail.

These look to a government program to help when things are difficult. What they do not realize is that Uncle Sam is more like Tony Soprano, right? The mob boss. And when you take a loan from him, he's there not just in the bad times when things are tight for you, but he's there when and if your business succeeds and grows, he's there for a taste. Or when you buy a new car, he's there for and grows, he's there for a taste.

If he's there for a taste, or when you and your wife go out to dinner when your daughter gets married, oh, he's always there. That's the federal government. In short, you're married to the mob for life or else. It is precisely the same with government. They are in the banking business for life now, and Americans are weaker for it.

When any individual or institution in America is too big to fail, as the banks were so many years ago, you also correspondingly, its character is too small to succeed. You are too small to succeed. Any individual or institution that needs a government bailout to keep it from failing already by definition has shown that its character is too small to succeed. It should be allowed to die. Americans have bounced back from more difficult circumstances, and they've been stronger for it.

Government, leave us alone, and we'll be just fine without you. Well, another precondition for allowing the 28 constitutional principles to take hold was an informed and educated electorate. So important. An informed, educated electorate is necessary for the 28 constitutional principles to take hold. There simply is no way that our Constitution can be maintained and furthered unless our citizenry can first read the document and then interact with its principles, thinking deeply through them and applying them to everyday life.

Our founding fathers in the 18th century knew that even the simplest farmhand could do this, even as the reformers of the 16th century knew that the same farmhand could read, understand, and apply his Bible to. Our founding fathers thought that true liberty could be had in America if every citizen availed himself of these two documents, first and most importantly, his Bible, in which he found genuine spiritual liberty, and then secondly, the freshly minted constitution in which he would find genuine political liberty.

In fact, Noah Webster, when he was in the process of making his famous dictionary, saw that two basic documents should grace every American's kitchen table, a Bible and a newspaper. The first, to assure spiritual liberty. The second, that is, the dictionary, it was truly, or newspaper, it was truly independent paper that understood political liberty, to assure political liberty. The newspaper, both he saw, would be a watchdog over tyrants. And if our people could read and think, they could vote and fight.

Thomas Jefferson puts it this way, no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness than a literate citizenry. Preach a crusade against ignorance. Establish and approve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils of misgovernment. Thomas Jefferson.

So, the education of the next generation was a passion for our entire founding generation as well. There was a vast array of options for them. Most children were educated at home, and though it was fairly rudimentary, there was always a Bible in a cabin to read, even as Abraham Lincoln witnessed, and perhaps a newspaper, sometimes days or even weeks old. And not too long after the revolution, there was Webster's American Dictionary, too. Private schools also began to thrive, and private tutors either resided locally or they traveled in a circuit in the young states.

Local communities began to band together to start public schools in which education would be made available to every child in the community, regardless of income. In fact, one of the great proofs they saw for the necessity of education, that is, our founding fathers, not so they can text their friends and play with their Xbox, no, but rather to read and study their Bibles and their Constitution. One of the proofs they saw for the necessity of education was the provision made for schools in that other great but unknown and overlooked document, that is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Yes, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 made provision for education. Past the year our Constitution was approved by Congress, when it was apparent that new states would be added to the young republic, the Northwest Ordinance helped young territories make a smooth transition to the status of a state. And Article III then of that ordinance says this, religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government. Well, Congress wouldn't say anything like that today, would they? Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.

Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged, unquote. Towards that end, provision was made for specific tracts of land to be set aside for schools in every new territory. So, keep in mind, O fellow citizen, with young ones perhaps swarming about your ankles today, wondering how you'll raise them from ignorant, bickering stumps into polite, civilized citizens of a free republic, contributing members of America, and free citizens of the heavenly kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Well, you keep in mind that these schools' missions were not to provide free lunches, or reproductive counseling, or condoms, or sex ed, or to be cheerleaders for a particular party. Oh, no, but rather to inculcate religion, morality, and knowledge. As the charter of the Northwest ordinance declares, oh, and until recently, it was thought foundational to include courses in civics and government, too. However, in order to make room for sex ed and Native American and gender and check balancing courses, which are deemed far more important, of course, these civics and history and government courses have been crowded out.

And as I have indicated in previous lectures, I believe that there's a purposeful agenda in our modern public schools for keeping your children ignorant of these pesky ideas about freedom that may have been good ones, but are just naive in the big bad socialist world of today, right? So, we really shouldn't burden our poor little babies with information and ideas that are obsolete and irrelevant to the real world. No. Give them casserole, condoms, and communism, casserole, condoms, and communism. And whether they can read their diploma or not, they will be model citizens of the new world order, and they'll never vote anything but Democrats.

Well, dear listener, the final precondition that I would like to outline with you before we unpack the 28 principles of our Constitution is that our founding fathers expected our citizens to be a responsible, moral, electric, electorate, excuse me, electric electorate, maybe we can call us. Our founding fathers expected our citizens to be a responsible, moral electorate. If our republic was to survive, and as I have demonstrated to you in past lectures as well, our founding fathers gave liberty to the states and individuals so extensive and absolute that it would be dangerous to give to an immoral and degenerate people.

So extensive was our liberty. Oh, think of this, dear listener. A straight razor in the hands of a sober, competent man is salutary, and he'll use it to keep himself groomed and civilized. But a straight razor in the hands of a drunkard or a child or a pathologically enraged man, oh, that straight razor presents a danger to himself and society. So it is with liberty.

And without liberty's responsible use, liberty will only prove a danger to the immoral and unethical, giving them freedom for their destructive immoralities that hurt us all. We see this all around us today, do we not? We see it borne out in our own culture today. George Washington said, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Unquote.

George Washington indeed saw that religion and morality are indispensable supports to political prosperity. I'm going to come back to this again and again, dear listener, because it's so irresistibly relevant. But how destructive has the immoral behavior of, for example, Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich been to his state or other states? And yea, our nation, the careers of so many corrupt politicians like Cuomo is a walking, talking metaphor for the precise thing that we outline here.

Cuomo's attempt then to brazenly destroy the elderly and the healthy, for that matter, in the recent pandemic plus his sexual immoralities is the definition of corruption, isn't it? And yet perhaps it's not so much the fact of Cuomo's corruption that's so offensive to modern America, but he was so brazen about it and that he got caught. These things are usually done with a wink and a nod, aren't they, under the table? And Cuomo's crime is that he spoke so crassly and openly of his crimes. Put it right there on the table and did it in the hearing of, then, the public.

Dear listener, it is time indeed that we meet these preconditions for the 28 principles of the Constitution and the liberties that they encompass. It is the absolute requirement that if we are to restore the Constitution of America, we must first find repentance and reformation in America. We must educate. We must indeed embrace the morality of the Christian religion if we are to survive. Oh, dear listener, this has been Pastor David Bass articulating for you the 5,000-year leap and the preconditions if we are to apply effectively the 28 principles ensconced in our Constitution.

I exhort you to them. I exhort you to revival in Jesus Christ and reformation in the Christian faith. Then we will be able to return to a true constitutional republic. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and we meet for holy worship on Sundays at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. If you've been thinking of crossing our threshold and visiting us, we encourage you to do so.

And we meet at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street. And our phone number is area code 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.