Minister of Education Reports

The Ten Commandments

Indispensable Supports

We continue our report on the Ten Commandments with more wisdom from the pen of David C. Gibbs, Jr., as it was published in The Legal Alert in May 2000:

George Washington said in his Farewell Address of 1796 that "religion and morality are indispensable supports to political prosperity" and that "reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." Washington and Adams would both have thought it appropriate to regularly remind Americans how a virtuous and civil community ought to behave.[1]

…James Madison, recognized by many as the Father of the Constitution, believed wholeheartedly that the future of American civilization had been staked not upon civil government, but upon the capacity of Americans to govern themselves responsibly under moral principles such as the Ten Commandments. When citizens do not govern their own actions, a multiplicity of laws must govern them from outside in every detail. Such outwardly imposed regulation of every aspect of life, inevitably leads to dictatorship and to real "tyranny."[2]

More than two hundred years after American freedom was promulgated on the basis of moral codes such as the Ten Commandments, we have every reason to be concerned about the future of American civilization. As John Adams, both Founder and President, noted: "If 'Thou shalt not covet;' and 'Thou shalt not steal,' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or free." {Works, 1851, Vol. VI, pg. 9}[3]

[1] Evil men have sough to disparage the very character of the founders of our country. In the day of our founders such slanderers would have been promptly challenged to a duel and despatched forthwith. -ed

[2] The increasing restriction on the use of private property, right down to the burning of brush on that property is an example of the breakdown of freedom allowed by the decline of virtue and responsibility among Americans. -ed.

[3] I am concerned that people exhibit a gross lack of concern. When I was in grade school I learned of predictions made by people early in the nations history that said if America were ever to fall, it would do so from within. I do not think such statements are any longer taught in schools, and I am certain that the lack of concern for the nation will be a great aid to causing the nation to fall. -ed.