I was reading a good book today written in by Charles Carleton Coffin The Story of Liberty. The Story of Liberty was written in 1879.
Charles Coffin became a Journalist for the Boston Globe in in 1851 and stayed there until after the Civil War in 1867.
This lead me to Little House on the Praire, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. As a child this was one of my favorite TV shows. When I started to have children I bought the books and read them to my children.
In the Chapter "4th of July Celebration", when the Ingalls family was at the 4th of July Celebration, a man stood up and read the Declaration of Independence. As he did, Laura was thinking and on page 76-77 this is what she pondered:
"God is America's king. She thought: American won't obey any king on the earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has the right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good. Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. . . . The laws of nature and of Nature's God endow you with the right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free."
I read a blog today and I left a comment on it from a quote by President James Madison:
We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government: upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, control ourselves and sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.
Elections have consequences, we all know this. A price was paid for our Liberty and it requires eternal vigilance to keep us a free. (Thomas Jefferson)
Tomorrow we vote.
Regardless of who you vote for, it is your responsibility to vote, a price was paid for that right. These two quotes came together today as I was reflecting on the election tomorrow. Self government is one of the principals our Nation was founded on. We will not agree on the individual issues, but the wind blowing across our Nation is stirring up in Americans the realization of the internal principals we were founded on.
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