Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what are principles 20 and 21 of the 5,000-year leap? Now, if you've been following our study of principles of our Constitution that our founding fathers espoused, then you know what these terms mean. The 5,000-year leap, the title of an important book for our time, published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, and you can access their website at ncca.org, ncca.org.

It represents the phenomenal progress made by mankind during the relatively short period of time the United States has existed on the earth. And the great service rendered to us by this book is that it has succinctly summarized the vast web of thought and biblical principle that went into the making of our Constitution. The Constitution was not pulled out of hats, but from heads. And no other single volume has given us the essence of the thought of men like Jefferson and Hamilton and Adams than has the 5,000-year leap.

Cleon Skousen composed it in conjunction with a team of scholars and managed to boil down the vast sea of material available to us into 28 discrete principles. And we've worked our way through 19 of them, and today we'll discuss principles 20 and 21. First of all, principle 20, efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority. Now, this is a rather long and extended principle, so let me read this again. Principle 20, efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.

Here in principle 20, our founding fathers wrestled with one of the naughtiest questions in all of political thought. Can we accomplish the will of the majority of citizens regarding a particular issue without running rush out over the rights and will of the minority on the issue? History provides us with many examples of a loud, no, this cannot be done. In the first place, the will of the majority wants its way and will do what it takes to achieve it. The classic example is the trial of Jesus before Pontius Pilate, where, as Matthew tells us, the chief priests and elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus, unquote.

Now, Pilate as governor was responsible for administering justice in this province, and he could find no guilt in him, but he declared him innocent. He was in the minority, and the majority against both God and man's justice cried out, crucify him. And who do you think got their way? Of course, we know the majority, since Pilate saw that the people would riot if he didn't turn Jesus over them to be crucified. Well, so it has been throughout history.

Minorities often suffer at the hands and by the policies of the majority. Our own founding fathers observed Protestant minorities suffering in Roman Catholic majority lands like Spain, and Roman Catholic minorities suffering in Protestant lands like their own native England, with Jews suffering in all of them. Now, majorities lord it over minorities, whether it be an issue of war and peace, as it was amongst the Roman people during the Punic Wars, or whether trade would go forward with the West, as with the Chinese during the Boxer Rebellion, or whether the American colonies would suffer punitive taxation by British overlords.

The majority has always asserted their will at the expense of and will with total disregard for the minorities amongst them. Now, in all of these issues, and others like them, passions tend to run high, and opinions and egos inflate such that the minority is not only defeated at the issue, but is often crushed and destroyed altogether. Majorities impose their wills, and violent revolutions by disillusioned minorities dot the landscape of history, don't they? How can a nation accomplish the will of the majority while respecting the will and the rights of the minority at the same time?

On the other hand, an over-regard for the minority opinion has created numerous bottlenecks throughout history, too. What can the vast majority of people do when a small number among them disagree with them and have a dissenting, action-blocking vote? A dissenting, action-blocking vote. Now, this was brought home to me in a very personal and vivid fashion in the very first church that I served as a pastor back in Lake Forest, Illinois. My boss, the senior pastor, was fond bragging that the ruling body of our church, the board of elders, always made decisions with a unanimous vote.

If the vote was not unanimous, then no action was taken. He would talk of how the Holy Spirit would lead the men to a decision, and the power of God was made clear in their deliberations, and that if unanimity could not be achieved, then how could that decision be of God? Oh, well, dear listener, guess what happened? One of the seven men on that board of elders, there was one cantankerous fellow in the minority who obviously was not as filled with the Holy Spirit as the rest of us, and he thought, though, that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the rest of us were filled with something else.

Well, his constant no votes on almost every issue brought our church to a grinding standstill. Nothing got done. Should we build a building, new building? No, because of a six-to-one vote. Should we admit so-and-so into membership in the church?

No, because of a six-to-one vote. One of that minority dissenter preventing, right? Should we change the color of the bathrooms from beige to mint green? No, because of a six-to-one vote. Our one minority dissenter preventing.

Note well, dear listener, issues large and small. Nothing was getting done, and the one man in the center of all this conflict was the fellow who voted no on almost everything. He loved being the center of attention and felt that he was a righteous and noble person and the sole stander for truth. But in reality, he was little more than a self-centered attention-getter and troublemaker. It didn't take too long before our policy changed, too, from one requiring unanimity to a simple majority.

So, my personal experience can be replicated throughout history, wherever a minority holds up the will of the majority. One of the reasons that Charles I, for example, of England was so roundly hated and therefore beheaded in 1639 is that he constantly frustrated the will of parliament by canceling their acts and their legislation again and again because of his own petulant desires.

The will of the majority on every issue, war and peace, the Church of England versus religious freedom, rampant spending by the king, inconsequent burdensome taxes on the people, all of this was stopped dead in its tracks by this arrogant minority of one, Charles I, King of England. These kinds of abuses were fresh in the minds of our founding fathers. And Hamilton says this in Federalist paper number 22. Hamilton says, and I quote, the public business must in some way or other go forward.

If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, pertinacious, I love that word, pertinacious means stubbornly adhering to a pursuit or opinion, perversely persistent, pertinacious. Hamilton says, if a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority in order that something may be done must conform to the views of the minority. And thus, the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays, continual negotiation and intrigue, contemptible compromises of the public good, unquote.

These are the consequences of a minority controlling the opinion of the majority. Well, how often have we observed these abuses in our own country of late, right? Tedious delays, continual negotiation and intrigue, contemptible compromises of the public good, huh? Whether it's been budget or war or peace. It's been noted by many in the past that our country has descended into a nation of special interest, for example, vying not only with a majority of Americans, but with one another, where every minority not only wants a voice and a vote to which they're guaranteed in the Constitution, but they want their way as well.

The transgender minority not only wants protection in their persons and their property, but special rights, especially gay rights to which they're not entitled, like public sanction and recognition of gay marriage. The Muslim minority amongst us wants not only the liberty to practice their faith, but exemption from American civil law by having their own Sharia law imposed in their own communities. And how long do you think it will be before they insist on Sharia law being imposed on the whole country?

Well, the environmentalist minority, for example, has recently destroyed an entire agricultural community in the Central Valley of California by turning off the spigot of irrigation water on behalf of the Delta smelch. Oh, and almost got away with turning off the water to our farmers in Southeast Idaho, sequestering almost 200,000 acres of good farmland for environmentalist reasons. Oh, this pertinacious minority is indeed guilty of contemptible compromise of the public good, as Hamilton puts it. Well, on and on the list of minorities go, emphasizing their differences and distinctions, not the things that bind us together as Americans.

They have clearly demonstrated their pertinacity by being perversely persistent in insisting not only upon a voice and a vote in our culture, but their way, our founding fathers built into our constitution that the majority of either house shall constitute a quorum. Two-thirds majority can expel a member. A majority is required to pass legislation in the Congress. Two-thirds majority can override a presidential veto of that same legislation. On and on the constitution goes, requiring simple majorities and two-third majorities for legislation and discipline.

Nowhere is their provision for unanimity in anything. Yet our founders were not negligent of the rights and vulnerability of the minority either. Fresher in their memories was the way that Britain had pertinaciously ignored the rights of the minority, that is, the colonists. Washington and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson were all minorities in the recent past and now were part of the majority in this new American republic. They were ready to ensure that no legitimate minority in the future would be jeopardized by the majority in terms of their rights and security in their persons and property.

This reason is one of the prime motivations for the Bill of Rights appended to the constitution. Religious minorities, political minorities, ethnic minorities, all protected by our constitution, and it is one reason why people have flocked by the millions to our shores. Empathy. Ah, empathy is that ability to understand and resonate with one person's experience since it is your experience too. Empathy.

It is what our founding fathers had with all minorities everywhere. As Jefferson puts it, and I quote him, all too will bear in mind this sacred principle that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable, that the minority possesses their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Unquote. Very succinctly put by our founding father, Thomas Jefferson. From whatever angle you observe our constitution, principle 20 is evident in every respect.

That is, efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. This, our founding fathers built into the constitution, elegantly and wisely, if only we would be faithful to it. Well, the very same things can be said about principle 21. Principle 21 of the 5,000-year leap is strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. I love this one.

Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. If there's one blind spot in the American character that's darker than all others, it's this one, I'm afraid. Almost every American I encounter has lost that sense for strong local self-government. To most Americans, every solution to every problem has to come from Washington, D.C. What's so wrong with that, Pastor? Are you, well, are you poor?

Well, there's a government program to give you subsistence wages. Are you sick? Oh, don't worry. There's government health care now, courtesy of Obama. If Medicare or Medicaid do not cover you, have you fallen behind in your mortgage payments?

Let the federal government bail you out. On and on it goes with everything from roads to schools to weddings to cigarettes to even your electric bill very soon if the cap-and-trade legislation continues to grow. All of it determined by the federal government. The ancient solution to tyranny inculcated by our founding fathers. That strong local self-government preserves human freedom.

Oh, that has been forgotten by Americans today. Replaced by its evil twin. That is, strong centralized federal government is the keystone to your every imagined women need. Oh, you no longer need God. The president or some government bureaucrat will take his place.

You no longer need your mother. Oh, no. Hillary Clinton, right? Or some government program will take your mama's place nicely. You no longer need your neighbors, your extended family.

We are the world and the human community, as Obama puts it, is here to take care of you. How evil is the temptation for a strong, centralized federal government to rule over us and take care of us? Yeah, they'll take care of us all right. Indeed, Mr. Skousen notes perceptively, and I quote Leon Skousen now, he says, political power automatically gravitates towards the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening. The centralization of political power always destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level and transferring it to the officers of the central government.

Unquote. This automatic gravitation of political power towards the center is an irresistible temptation of the human spirit, isn't it? We have to admit that. We have observed it time and again, from the centralization of power of all humanity at the Tower of Babel to the centralization of power in Israel when she asked for a king. Well, on the one hand, those in power want as few impediments to their will and ways as possible, ostensibly to do so much good for us.

Thus, the ambitious ones are always scheming to gather as many of the reins of power into their hands as possible, and their subjects, if we're not trained and disciplined with a biblical spirit for self-government and independence, well, their subjects continually seek for a human savior for their problems and a provider for their needs. And so, they continually tend toward seeding. We, the people, continually trend towards ceding more and more of our rights and privileges and independence to those in power in exchange for perceived security.

Our founding fathers noted this in history, especially in ancient Anglo-Saxon Britain, where a strong tradition of local self-government held sway for centuries. Our founding fathers looked to them. The historian Richard Frothingham puts it this way, and I quote him. He said, in ancient England, local self-government is found in connection with a political and territorial divisions of tithings, hundreds, bergs, counties, and shires, in which the body of inhabitants had a strong voice in managing their own affairs. Hence, it was the germinal idea of the Anglo-Saxon polity.

Unquote. Local self-government. And over the centuries, more and more decision-making power gravitated to the central government in the form of the king in England. You know what happened next, right? The crown deprived the body of the people of this power of local rule, vested it in a small number of persons in each locality, according to Frothing.

Power gravitated to the center. And if this was true of the average English citizen of the 18th century, think of how centralized power concentrated in George III felt to the American colonists. Jefferson captures it well in his grievances in the Declaration of Independence. He summed up in this pungent phrase, he says, when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism. Eloquently put, Mr. Jefferson.

So, make no mistake about this, dear listener. This is the pot of lead at the end of the socialist rainbow for you. The design of all those abuses and usurpations, promising you health care if you just let us abuse you and usurp your resources and freedom to choose health options, promising you financial stability if it just lets you abuse and usurp your banking and investing options, promising you a secure retirement if you just let us abuse and you usurp your retirement investment, on and on we could go. This is nothing less than the concentration of power into the hands of a few until you have absolute despotism.

Israel found this out soon after she asked for a king. England found this out after she ceded the last of her liberties to the crown. And we are finding out the very same thing as we increasingly abdicate our local concentration of power that is in the people and their representative assemblies. We cede them to a strong centralized government. And, dear fellow citizens, the same thing might be said of us as was said of the ancient Anglo-Saxons.

As the historian, French historian, Francois Guizot says, and I quote him, when there scarcely remained traces of popular assemblies, the remembrance of them, of the right of freemen to deliberate and transact their business together, the remembrance of them resided in the minds of men as a primitive tradition and a thing which might come about again. Unquote. Oh, the wistfulness. This is the heritage we are bequeathing to our children, where liberty and power concentrated in the hands of the people at the local level is but a remembrance, right? Residing in the minds of men as a primitive tradition.

Oh, is that what you want for the babies you have bouncing on your knee, dear father and grandfather? Will you wistfully speak to them of liberty as a memory with a tear in your eye as they ride around in Russian Yugos, maybe, or wearing gray Mao jackets in North Korea, eating three gruel meals a day, afraid to criticize the government? Ah, this is approaching. And the heritage you will leave to your children if we do not do something to change it now.

For the generation of those who made our American Revolution, liberty and power power at the local level was a primitive tradition that did come about again as the skill and wisdom of our founders hedged about that local level power as a written constitution. It is scarcely possible to overemphasize how meticulous and insistent our founders were to bind down despotic tendencies in men by the chains of the constitution, as Jefferson puts it. Do you remember how suspicious they were of federal government, not naively trusting it as our generation does? Jefferson puts it this way.

Once again, he says, the way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to perform best. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the great national one down to through all its ordinations until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself. Unquote. Yes, all distributed power should end in the administration of every man's farm by himself. I love that.

Despotism and tyranny are checked by dividing and subdividing power, not by concentrating in Washington, D.C. This is the whole philosophy behind the doctrine of enumerated powers. That is, the federal government is only licensed by the constitution to exercise those powers specifically delegated to it by the states as enumerated in the constitution and absolutely no others. As the 10th amendment puts it, the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. Unquote.

There are 23 specific enumerated powers delegated to the federal government in our constitution. Did you know that? 23 specific enumerated powers. And perhaps we can touch on those someday. But for now, you must understand, dear listener, that our federal government has far exceeded those specific limited enumerated powers many, many fold.

Our founding fathers would be aghast at how we the people have let the camel's nose of the federal government get under the tent to the point where at this stage of our history, the whole camel is in bed with us. As Samuel, I love this quote, Samuel Goldwyn puts it, he said, if George Washington were alive today, he'd be rolling over in his grave. Oh yeah. This was not the state of affairs that has been bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. No.

James Madison in Federalist paper number 45 puts it this way. He says, the powers delegated by the proposed constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. Unquote. Oh, dear friend, fellow citizen of this land with a powerful heritage.

Our founding fathers gave us an extremely spare and sparse federal government because they relied upon the people to have the personal responsibility and courage to honor the fullness of self-government. Govern yourself from within by the power of God's Holy Spirit, and you will not need an external force to impose government from without. Who needs a nanny state providing you with a grubby mere subsistence for doing little or nothing when you have the potential to prosper beyond your wildest dreams, when the government stays out of your way, and you have no limits as to what you can do and what you might achieve.

No one knows the needs of your life like you, and those around you in your family, your church, your neighborhood. Decisions about property, schools, taxes, roads, water, air, sewer, health care were meant to be made by you and your neighbors, not by some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. or Boise. This is why you have city councils, school boards, county commissioners. You know them, they know you. Therefore, how true and wise were our founders in articulating principle number 21, strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.

Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. Oh, nowhere is this principle of justice also the biblical principle that, for example, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me, Jesus said, right? It was applied to the most vulnerable and weak in society by our founders, too, for that matter. That is the minority of the nation. Therefore, the rights and property of minorities protected on our Constitution without sacrificing the will of the majority.

That was principle 20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. Nowhere is this principle of justice combined with mercy so well in the civil sphere as it is here in this principle, balancing the will of the majority with the rights of the minority. When God commands us, he's told you, O man, what is good? What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?

Dear fellow citizen, keep in mind as you go about your daily lives that you do so with the freedom, liberty, and prosperity you have due to biblical principles applied in forming our Constitution. Take away the Bible and Christianity from it, and you take away the kind of liberty we've known in the U.S. for some 200 years. May you find not only the true justice which God requires of a nation, but also know his blessing in mercy to express supremely in Jesus Christ and even in his providential care over you as he has placed you in this time and place in the United States of America in the years of the 21st century.

This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth. New Geneva meets for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us for more information or feedback at area code 208-523-0196. 208-523-0196.