2 Corinthians 1:3-4
3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
Forrest McDonald
Of the many generalizations customarily made about the Founding Fathers, one of the most common but least defensible is that they all thought pretty much of the same things about the nature of man, society, and government. On one level of consciousness, we know better. Had there been such unamimity of opinion the American public would scarcely have taken so long to work out an acceptable governmental system. Our political union—begun in 1774 and crystallized with the writing of the Constitution thirteen years later—was at first only a paper union of states with widely divergent social customs, economic interests, and ideological conceptions; and secession movements repeatedly threatened to tear the Union asunder for nearly a century after independence, when the telegraph and the railroad finally gave it sinews and substance.
On the other hand, despite their differences the Revolutionary generation did achieve independence, they did write a number of strikingly similar state constitutions, and they did draft and put into operation the federal Constitution. What underlay and made possible these monumental accomplishments, however, was not a universally accepted set of philosophical principles. Rather, I suggest, most Americans shared a common matrix of ideas and assumptions about government and society, about liberty and property, about politics and law. These ideas and assumptions, together with the belief (however inaccurate) that they shared a common historical heritage, made their achievements possible. They derived those ideas and assumptions, as well as their perception of their heritage, from a variety of sources, but the principal wellspring was the printed word.
IRS Thugocracy
President’s Weekly Address: Please Give Americans a Raise
In his weekly address, Obama continued to push his idea about raising the minimum wage.
Republican Weekly Address: Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)
This week, Sen. Portman discussed a few ideas to get Americans working again and restore opportunities toward the American dream.