CONSTITUTIONAL CONVERSATIONS
To What Evil Times Hast Thou Preserved Me?
by
- E. Boyd, Esq., “Miss Constitution” Miss Constitution can be reached at: MissConstitution@comcast.net
Miss Constitution borrowed the title from a sermon given by Theodorus Frelinghuysen, a Dutch revivalist in 1720. It is a great question for today. Are these evil times or just normal times with an edge? Think deeply about your answer. Miss Constitution has said that we are a good and decent people. She has also said that we can be debauched and brainwashed as any people can.
For those of you who answered, “yes”, we are in evil times, many of you think that the political views that you now hold represent a stand against it and that you hold high moral ground. I would ask you to suspend that view, if only for a moment, and consider the nature of what has taken hold of you, personally.
*vile filth is pouring from your mouth couched as “free speech”
*your heart is a piece of petrified wood
*a serpent has slithered into your brain, destroyed your ability to think critically, and is now emerging from your nostril fully satiated
But what does this have to do with the United States Constitution? It has everything to do with it! The Supreme Positive Law of the Land, as enunciated in Article VI, depends for its relevance and efficacy upon a virtuous citizenry. Not a perfect citizenry but a critical mass of virtuous citizens. When you sit on a jury, as is your duty, the momentousness of the judge’s instructions, the gravity of the moment, the seriousness of the consequences, grab your heart and for a brief moment you are not a resident of America, but a citizen of America.
The attack on our system, Miss Constitution is afraid, is highlighted by:
*cynicism and its sister sarcasm
*high moral ground that is actually low putrefied sludge
*ignorance and its sister cowardice
Four times in our history the American people have been shaken from their acceptance of “evil times” by a Great Awakening. The first occurred between 1730 and 1740, centered in New England, and brought thousands of wayward souls to personal salvation. The second occurred between 1790 and 1850, with the rise of independent black churches and the abolitionist, temperance, and women’s rights movements. The third occurred between 1850 and 1900 as the Doctrine of the Social Gospel gripped the American conscience. The fourth is the relatively recent decline of mainline Protestant churches and the rise of Evangelical ones.
While we do not have a theocracy in America, we do most certainly have a reliance on a Creator who endows us with unalienable rights and in whom we implicitly trust. We are one nation, under God. Our Constitution frames positive law, not moral or natural law (although positive law is based on our moral law), and it uniquely rejects majority tyranny over minorities. Our system diffuses corrupting power concentrations through the concept of federalism, but we rely on a virtuous people to resist corruption at any level of power. Civic religion, not established religion, undergirds our entire system and was seen by the Founders as essential to a long-lasting Republic. The notion that “separation of church and state” means a separation of the American people from God is simply untrue. Spreading this myth has helped create the evil times we are in. For a visual of “civic religion” take a tour of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. It is stunning.
Miss Constitution calls for a fifth Great Awakening of the American people and a rejection of the smug, the morally dead, the personally destructive, the indifferent, the corrosive, and the secular. We are people with souls – not a science project. We have a spark of the divine in each of us that can be crushed or nurtured; abused or fostered; sucked out by the serpent or as carefully protected as any newborn Panda.
To what evil times hast thou preserved me? These times. Slay the serpent; recover your brain; march unafraid and unembarrassed; pray for our nation’s deliverance.
Copyright©2019 M.E. Boyd, Esq., “Miss Constitution”
