A Short Library Of American Liberty

The Spanish-American philosopher Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (known in English as simply George Santayana) famously said in his book The Life Of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

For all intents and purposes, America is in the process of fulfilling Santayana’s proverb. If America’s founders were to rise from the grave and look at the country they sacrificed so much to create, they would think they were looking at King George’s England instead of the free and independent republic they birthed.

The only references to America’s past nowadays seem to be those that either condemn our Founding Fathers or glorify Abraham Lincoln. That is pretty much the sum total of what most Americans (including conservatives and Christians) are taught about their history. It is no hyperbole to say that virtually the entire country (with very few exceptions) has thoroughly and completely lost touch with its history. And the consequences of this travesty are everywhere.

For the most part, real American history is not taught in America’s grammar schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges, or universities. Neither is it taught in America’s churches, Bible colleges, or seminaries. Most Americans will graduate from high school, college, and post-graduate school and never learn their own history. Most Christians will go through Sunday School, Christian grade school, high school, and college and never learn their own history. Ditto for most private and parochial schools and colleges. Most Americans will live their entire lives and die at a ripe old age having never learned their own history. And even worse, most of them seem to have little desire to learn it. They seem very content to spend untold numbers of hours listening to radio and television talk shows and Internet podcasts rather than studying their own history for themselves.

The only thing most conservatives and Christians know is the Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal and “right” versus “left” paradigms. (The same is true for liberals, of course.) It’s Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow, Fox News or CNN and Donald Trump or Joe Biden. THAT’S IT!

Face it, folks: neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump knows The Federalist Papers from The Cat In The Hat. The constitutional IQ of either man is about 30 - and that’s probably being generous. The same goes for the vast majority of our congressmen and senators - from either party - in Washington, D.C. And the biggest problem is that the people who keep electing and reelecting these constitutional morons to the highest political offices in the country don’t even recognize that it’s a problem.

At the risk of sounding self-serving, I am going to strongly urge readers to become familiar with the following literary works that I proudly carry in my online store that will help you more fully understand the foundational principles of American Liberty.

I urge readers to obtain the book Lex, Rex, Or The Law And The Prince, written in 1644 by Scottish Presbyterian Minister Reverend Samuel Rutherford. This book contains masterful, in-depth research. It is one of the most scholarly works on Christian liberty ever written.

For his "radical" preaching and writing, Rutherford was charged with treason under penalty of death (but passed away naturally before the trial began), and his famous book Lex, Rex was ordered to be burned. 

Writing in the third person, Charles Spurgeon wrote this of Rutherford: 

Let the world know that Spurgeon held Rutherford's letters to be the nearest thing to inspiration which can be found in all the writings of mere men.

Order Lex, Rex, Or The Law And The Prince here. 

The next book I urge readers to get is Second Treatise Of Government, written in 1689 by John Locke.

John Locke was the “Father of America's Founding Fathers.” Thomas Jefferson borrowed heavily from Locke's Second Treatise when he penned the Declaration of Independence.

Unlike many Natural Law philosophers - especially the humanistic ones - John Locke had a moral and philosophical compass that was centered on Christianity and the Bible.

Locke's Christian training was immersed in Calvinistic Trinitarianism. He believed in the pre-existence of Christ; he believed in the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; he believed in the divine nature of Christ; and he had no tolerance for atheism.

As with other Theistic Natural Law philosophers such as Grotius and Pufendorf, Locke believed, as do I, that Natural Law and Scriptural Revelation were integrated - not separated. He took the definition of freedom and liberty from the Bible, including the fact that men are created by God. He also relied heavily on the Decalogue, the teachings of Christ, and the writings of the Apostle Paul. 

Locke was heavily influenced by Baptist theologians such as John Smyth and Thomas Helwys. Without a doubt, Locke's political views were based on Protestant Christian teachings. 

This is the first book one should read to learn the Liberty principles of Natural Law.

Order John Locke’s Second Treatise Of Government here.

The next book I highly encourage readers to order is entitled The Rights Of The British Colonies Asserted And Proved, written by James Otis in 1764.

James Otis is regarded as one of the most brilliant of America’s Founding Fathers. Considered the top jurist in Boston (and the role model for John Adams), Otis is probably more responsible for the sacred American doctrines enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of our Bill of Rights than any other single founder.

When Otis petitioned the court in 1761 in protest of Britain’s issuance of general warrants and writs of assistance, John Adams, who was present in the courtroom when Otis spoke, said this was “the spark in which originated the American Revolution.” 

This treatise comes from the mind of a scholar and the heart of a patriot. His explanation of the necessity of Natural Law to the cause of Liberty and Good Government is unequaled among Colonial writers. 

In particular, this treatise was an impassioned appeal against taxation without representation. Otis was the one who birthed this popular phrase, which at that time was more than a phrase - it was an indictment.

Read this work, and peer into the mind of a genius - and one of America's most important (and least remembered) Founding Fathers. 

John Adams said this about James Otis: 

I have been young and now I am old, and I solemnly say I have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent or sincere, never one who suffered so much, never one whose service for any 10 years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770.

Order The Rights Of The British Colonies Asserted And Proved by James Otis here.

And since modern America (including Christians and conservatives) has an ongoing idolatrous love affair with Abraham Lincoln - a love affair that has thoroughly tainted and twisted their understanding of liberty and constitutional government - I urge readers to get the book The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo.

Through extensive research and meticulous documentation, DiLorenzo portrays the sixteenth president as a man who devoted his political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralized - as the Founding Fathers intended - to a highly centralized, activist state. Standing in his way, however, was the South with its independent states, its resistance to the national government, and its reliance on unfettered free trade.

To accomplish his goals, Lincoln subverted the Constitution, trampled states' rights, and launched a devastating Civil War, whose wounds haunt us still. According to this provocative book, 600,000 American soldiers did not die for the honorable cause of ending slavery but for the dubious agenda of sacrificing the independence of the states to the supremacy of the federal government, which has been tightening its vice grip on our republic to this very day.

Order Thomas DiLorenzo’s book The Real Lincoln here.  

America is repeating the mistakes of so many nations before it and repudiating its own founding principles. This is happening because the vast majority of the American people have lost touch with their own national history and heritage.

I dare say that if one were to read the four books I recommend in this column (I also strongly urge folks to read George Washington’s Farewell Address delivered in 1796), he or she would be far more educated in the historic liberty principles upon which America was founded than the vast majority of college graduates, TV talking heads, radio talk show hosts, newscasters, university professors, congressmen, senators, and pastors in this country.

And please allow me the liberty of announcing that we have just released my latest Prophecy Message on DVD, which is Prophecy Message Number 16. The message is titled The Essential Elements Of Christ’s New Covenant.

These essentials are interspersed throughout the Prophecy Series, but this message condenses all of them into one succinct message.

This message, by itself, exposes the egregious errors of evangelical pulpits that either ignore or deny these New Covenant essentials. Watch this message, and you will be able to tell when a pastor is preaching the New Covenant Gospel and when he is not.

And you will have a complete and condensed list of the major components of Christ's New Covenant contained on one message DVD. 

Order The Essential Elements Of Christ’s New Covenant here. 

I could not deliver the next Prophecy Message (Prophecy Message 17) from Revelation Chapter 12 entitled The Persecuted Woman And The Dragon That Hated Her until people had an opportunity to hear and digest the essential New Covenant principles outlined in this latest message.