Education
Education For Liberty Project
One month from now, Americans have the privilege of going to the polls to elect their leaders. Nearly one hundred nations in the world do not allow that privilege.
Many of us possess the right to vote, but don’t value it enough to use it wisely.
I have a friend, who, when he was young, reminded me of Clark Kent. He was talk, dark, handsome, soft spoken and deeply committed to “truth, justice and the American way.”
That friend has an idea for the 2014 election…
His name is Bill Burtness, thinker, author, and missionary who has written one of the best books I’ve ever read on civil government. His book explains how government works and how liberty is lost in a society.
Bill not only writes, teaches and speaks in many places, he also trains political science majors in the nation of Kosovo.
I mentioned that nearly one hundred nations on this planet do not allow people to elect their leaders. At least, they don’t have “real elections” as we know it. The youthful demonstrations taking place in Hong Kong right now are over this issue. The Communist Chinese government in Beijing is calling the shots on who can run for office in Hong Kong.
The students are saying no–and protesting in the street. They want the true freedom to choose their own leaders and not be governed by communist puppets.
We shall see if they prevail or if another Tianneman Square massacre is coming.
Other nations that don’t allow “We the People” to govern include Muslim states (over fifty of them), other communist regimes like North Korea, Viet Nam and Cuba, and various monarchies such as in Nepal or Brunei.
Question: What do most of these nations have in common?
Answer: They are poor and oppressed (especially women and children).
Then there is the United States of America where a “5000 Year Leap” took place two-and-a-half centuries ago which produced the world’s freest nation.
In a short space of time, the US became the wealthiest, most religious, and most prosperous nation in the history of the planet.
Today that freedom and blessing is at great risk because many Americans don’t know where liberty originates, nor they they care about maintaining it.
They show their apathy by not voting. And many of those who do vote are grossly uninformed and end up electing people that only hasten the nation’s demise.
My friend, Bill Burtness, has an idea.
It’s called the Education for Liberty Project.
During this month and for the remainder of your life, I encourage you to follow Bill’s wise words and example. Our response will determine whether America remains a free nation, or joins the list of tyrannies that have cursed people’s lives from the dawn of time.
The Education for Liberty Project
“I’m not even going to vote. It’s just the lesser of two evils!”
FRUSTRATED WITH POLITICS
A pastor in one of our city-wide pastor’s meetings recently voiced this frustration felt by many Bible-believing Christians at this time, not knowing how to approach the quandary we find ourselves in and feeling our single vote as impotent. Evidently, there were some 20 million believers who felt the same way in recent elections, and that adds up!
Unfortunately, this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of cultural decline, as Godless policy has been implemented at every level of civil government in our nation, for many years, while we scratch our heads.
The Scriptures tell us about ancient Israel’s decent into chaos and violence in Judges 2:7 & 10, “There arose a new generation that did not know the Lord, nor the things He had done for Israel.” Their problem was they had not been taught.
That is our problem as well.
We believers have not been taught the original thinking of the American Founders. There is now a need for a huge education movement in our day as our culture has become more secularized and postmodern. We believe this movement has begun, but there is much work to be done, especially at a grass roots level. Thus the
EDUCATION FOR LIBERTY PROJECT!
America at its founding was unique on the earth – the people could for the first time as a nation govern themselves under God in the area of civil government. We could choose those who govern us! Thus the opportunity to “hire” the best in the land periodically to be our representatives.
But, we must want the best. That is a matter of our personal character. And we must find the best, and get them into office. That will take some effort.
The Education For Liberty Project is a grass-roots vision to help remedy this dilemma, challenging believers with four key elements:
PRAY – STUDY – VOTE – SERVE.
1) Pray, daily. This is the beginning point! If we are going to be delivered, it is only God who can deliver us. We need His intervention. Our wits are not good enough. We know prayer changes things. God’s people must turn back to Him. In II Chronicles 7:14, God tells us that if we do, He will forgive our sin, and He will even heal our land. We must see a new Third Great Awakening in America.
2) Study, regularly. Like Ezra, who studied the law of the Lord, practiced it, and taught His statutes in Israel, Ezra 7:10, so must we put forth some effort to learn, practice and teach God’s ways for nations. Study the Bible and the Biblical worldview. Learn the Biblical principles America was founded upon. Apply them in your family, church and civil government. Teach them in your sphere of influence.
SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS by Bill Burtness is a resource textbook, written in simple terms especially for Christian Americans to study and teach, to help renew a practical understanding of how America was designed to work. It is about how to have a free nation. It is about philosophy of government, not politics.
The least expensive and easiest way to begin your study is the PDF e-book you can download now for your computer or portable reading device. Hard copy available at Amazon.com.
Get your copy of SELF-EVIDENT TRUTHS today!
Learn, and teach your family, friends and co-workers.
3) Vote, always. And vote wisely. A studied vote is a crucial action step. Actually, though “voting for the lesser of two evils” may be a helpful way to look at it, we are actually “voting for the best available option in this particular election,” not for a minimum of evil. (Acts 1:21-26) If the choice is really that bleak, we need to find better individuals to run for our representatives in the next election cycle. Voting intelligently is the most basic part of governing ourselves under God in the civil sphere. This is what America is all about.
4) Serve, as the Lord leads, however possible. This is a long-term frame of mind in a free nation. There are many local positions where we can begin to serve in the civil sphere – election judges and pole watchers, precinct committee and political party leadership, school board or city council, local, county, state, national representatives, and more. As the Lord leads, each position is a place of learning and service to the Lord and the community.
Our representatives must be the most Godly, Biblical, intelligent and capable servant leaders in the land. (Matt. 20:25-28)
TAKING THE LEAD
The basis of law and government comes from God and the Bible. Without that basis, we only have man’s greed, power hunger and opinion directing nations. So the charge for restoring America lies at the feet of Bible-believing Christians, many of whom refrain from voting. Since we believers have the instruction Book, we must take the lead. Refraining from voting is in itself a vote. But how do we cast an intelligent Godly informed Biblical vote?
The Decline and Fall of Private Education
Chuck Norris is right on the mark in this article about the battle for education in the United States. On the other hand, the advance of the homosexual agenda in America including the recognition of homosexual marriage in a number of states, may eventually force the flight of people of faith from the government schools to private education. Let’s pray for the triumph of school choice. Liberty is always the best.
Chuck Norris is a world famous martial artist, action film hero, political commentator, and humanitarian who is deeply involved in the renewing of American culture.
By Chuck Norris
The report explains that during the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions, 44 states introduced school-choice legislation. And in 2008, choices for private school were enacted into law or expanded in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. Today 14 states and the District of Columbia offer voucher or education tax-credit programs that aid parents with sending their children to private schools. But that may be short-lived.
Despite the growing public preference for private education, Congress recently canceled the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was created in 2004 to offer students from low-income families in the nation’s capital an opportunity to join the voucher educational community. The law provided $14 million in scholarships to help pay for tuition at private schools of their choosing. But no longer.
So its cancellation is not a result of costing too much, because it’s half the price of public schooling. And it’s not because of inferior quality, because the kids enrolled in the program were scoring higher than students in regular schools. There’s only one reason Congress canceled it, and it comes down to this: federal control and educational indoctrination.
Of course, government officials won’t admit to a blatant usurpation of our rights, but they will say their educational reform is seeking to help your children. They will say it is necessary to establish common educational standards. They will say that we need to leave education to the experts and not to parents. And I fear that too many of us simply will give in to the whims of the nanny state.
As I wrote in my new best-selling book, “Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America“: “The reason that government is cracking down on private instruction has more to do with suppressing alternative education than assuring educational standards. The rationale is quite simple, though rarely if ever stated: control future generations and you control the future. So rather than letting parents be the primary educators of their children — either directly or by educating their children in the private schools of their choice — (government) want(s) to deny parental rights, establish an educational monopoly run by the state, and limit private education options. It is so simple any socialist can understand it. As Joseph Stalin once stated, ‘Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.'” (Get a free chapter of my book at http://www.ChuckNorrisNewBook.com.)
What’s amazing, too, is how hypocritical it is for Congress to make this decision. The Heritage Foundation’s report also conveys that 44 percent of current United States senators and 36 percent of current members of the U.S. House of Representatives have “at one time sent their children to private schools.” While the foundation found that 11 percent of American students attend private schools, 20 percent of the members of the 111th Congress attended private high schools. And they want to remove the voucher option for private school education?
While the members of President Barack Obama’s administration profess to have education as a top priority, they did nothing in March when Congress chose to discontinue the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Why? Because they all are in cahoots to not only choose our medical care for us, own the mortgage insurance and finance businesses, and place caps on corporate earnings but also control our educational choices for our children.
Our Founders’ educational philosophy seems to me to be the charter of a true American system of education. But as we know, our nation’s public schools, especially our nation’s colleges and universities, are the seedbeds of politically correct and leftist indoctrination. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. It’s a travesty that we have come to the point that we have to protect our children from the public school systems by looking to alternative methods.
If you have a good public school, congratulations. Stay active in the PTA, and attend school board meetings to keep it that way. For many parents, the only responsible choice is to send their children to private, parochial or Christian schools or to home-school their children. My wife and I home-school our 8-year-old twins.
What I also think is good about private schools is the students’ wearing uniforms. Just like in my KICKSTART martial arts program for kids in Texas schools, uniforms in private schools give students a sense of pride and empowerment. They increase the atmosphere of respect. And uniforms make economic class more of a nonissue, making rich and poor students indistinguishable — not to mention the fact that uniforms do away with young people’s style of wearing their jeans down to their knees and showing their butt cracks!
Parents deserve educational choices; choice is what this country was founded upon. Government’s controlling and monopolizing education is just another avenue for usurping power and control on the slippery slope to socialism. And it’s unbecoming for our republic, whose Founders created a system of freedom, choice and minimal government intervention.
Is it merely coincidental that the private choice of home schooling was outlawed by the Soviet state in 1919, by Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938, and by Communist China in 1949?
Is America next?