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Comments on Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech

If you did not watch Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore last night, you may do so here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qCiM_0vt2I

It was a clear message to the Bolsheviks/Communists pretending to believe in Democracy that he had no intention of standing on the sidelines and watching a Bolshevik revolution take place in America that would overthrow the government given to us two centuries ago.

The problem is not the biblically-based government that our founders gave us but the fact that it was not fully implemented. The radical principle that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence was not allowed (at the time) to be extended to all, because there were yet too many people who did not believe in that proposition.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, he included in the list of grievances against King George III:

“Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

Ultimately, this had to be deleted from the Declaration of Independence in order to appease the southern states which had come to depend on slavery for its commerce. Yet it was understood that “after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States.”

In addition, it was agreed that the States “shall forever remain part of the United States of America,” something that would be challenged unsuccessfully in the 1830’s and again in the 1860’s.

The Lost Opportunity

After the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress in 1787 lost the opportunity to ban slavery altogether in the Articles of Compact. Article 6 read,

“There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor, or service, as aforesaid.”

A motion was made by strike out this clause prohibiting slavery. Six of the thirteen States voted to retain the clause, three states voted not to retain it.

The rule was that each State had to be represented by two delegates, and some States were divided. But if only one delegate was present, the other’s vote did not count. One of the delegates from New Jersey voted to retain the clause prohibiting slavery, but the other delegate was unavoidably delayed and so was not present to vote. Hence, New Jersey’s vote was lost, resulting in a tie. The rules stated that only a majority vote could pass a resolution, and so the anti-slavery article failed to pass.

The country was divided on the issue, the northern states being solidly against slavery, the southern states being largely pro-slavery. America thus lost its opportunity to eliminate slavery at the outset, but this issue continued to fester over the next decades. The Missouri Compromise in 1820 was a policy where new states would be added to the Union two at a time, one a slave state and the other a non-slave state, with the line of demarcation at 36 degrees 30 minutes of north latitude.

With an equal number of slave and non-slave states, neither group would be able to gain the power to impose their will upon the other states. So the country grew, and the division grew with it.

The Missouri Compromise Breaks Down

Then in 1848 Oregon wanted to join the Union as a free state, which implied that the next state would be a slave state. However, the next state wanting to join the Union was California in 1850, and it insisted on being a free state.

Another Compromise was worked out, but it did not last long. The status of the Nebraska territory was hotly debated and eventually divided into two states (Kansas and Nebraska) with the idea that Kansas would be a slave state and Nebraska a free state. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 effectively ended the Missouri Compromise, as it allowed the territories themselves to decide the issue for themselves.

The Republican Party Formed in 1854

In the midst of all this, a new political part was formed in 1854, called the Republican Party. It was formed as the party of anti-slavery and quickly gained many members in the northern states. Their first presidential candidate (John Fremont in 1856) won in 11 out of 16 northern states but the Democratic candidate, a southerner named Buchanan, won the overall vote.

However, in 1860 Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican candidate to win the presidency when the southern Democrats were divided. During the debates prior to the election, the majority of the southern slave states publicly threatened secession if Lincoln should win the election. Lincoln insisted that in spite of his strong views opposing slavery, he believed that presidents must represent all of the states. Hence, he insisted that he would not impose his views upon the southern slave states.

But most southerners did not believe him. When he did indeed win, South Carolina formally seceded from the Union, and within six weeks, five other southern state followed their lead. Some today insist that slavery was not the real issue behind the Civil War. But It was. The southern states seceded because they believed Lincoln would abolish slavery. The south believed that they had a right to hold slaves, because the Declaration of Independence had edited out its anti-slavery assertions and the Constitution failed to prohibit it. So they were able to claim to be Constitutionalists with the God-given right to own slaves.

While other issues and grievances were always present, they were not strong enough to divide the Union. The division took place specifically because the Republican Party was a strong anti-slavery party that opposed the pro-slavery platform of the Democratic Party.

This secession took place before Lincoln even took the oath of office. It took place because of what the southern states believed Lincoln would do after he took the oath of office. The Confederacy was formed in February of 1861, and in those days presidents were not sworn into office until March. President Buchanan allowed the Confederacy to take root, because he was sympathetic to its cause.

A Government, not a League

Hence, the overriding issue of the Civil War was about whether the states had a right to secede from the Union just because they didn’t like the results of the election.

In fact, thirty years before the Civil War, President Andrew Jackson had already faced the “secession crisis” (1828-1832) during his term of office (1829-1837). Tariffs on manufactured goods from Europe made the southern plantations less competitive with products from the north. Jackson was sympathetic to their cause but was staunchly against a state’s right to secede.

In this he was opposed by his own vice president (Calhoun, from South Carolina). South Carolina declared that it had the power to nullify any law of the United States and to secede from the Union. Jackson threatened to send troops, saying, "The Constitution... forms a government not a league... To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation."

Jackson pushed for the passage of the “Force Bill” authorizing the use of military force to enforce the Tariff law and any other federal law that individual states might try to nullify. At the same time, the Compromise Tariff Bill was set forth, lowering the tariffs to satisfy the southern states. Both were passed by Congress on March 1, 1833, which Jackson signed, and the threat of secession was removed. But Jackson, himself a southerner, established the precedent that the states did not have the right of secession and that that military force could be used to force compliance with federal law.

The American Form of Government

The American Constitution (1789) was written under the authority of the earlier Declaration of Independence (1776), which established that all rights come from God and that governments are established to protect those God-given rights. This placed government under obligation to God Himself (called the “Creator”).

Government has no right, then, to grant rights. Whatever it grants are mere privileges. This is (or was) the basis of the American form of government. The problem came when, in the wake of the Civil War, the government was said to grant citizenship rights and voting rights to all people. It should have been proclaimed that the government was merely enforcing the rights that God had already granted to all men equally.

But many people did not make this distinction, and so the uniquely American idea of government under God began to be obscured. Eventually, under President Roosevelt in the 1930’s, this was lost completely, and the government began to be “secularized” under the atheistic principle of Socialism. Men began to remove God from government in the guise of the separation of Church and State. Government became the highest power in the nation, and the men in power assumed power to do as they pleased, “granting” rights as they saw fit.

This fundamental change from God’s government to men’s government resulted in the loss of the original Republic as conceived by the founders. In a real sense, it was the same problem in Israel that brought about the reign of Saul. We read in 1 Samuel 8:7, 8,

⁷ The Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in regard to all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them. ⁸ Like all the deeds which they have done since the day that I brought them up from Egypt even to this day—in that they have forsaken Me and served other gods—so they are doing to you also.”

This is the fundamental issue today. It began a long time ago, and America has repeated the problem. But if you listen carefully to Donald Trump’s speech last night, you will note that he was telling us that he intends to return America to the rule of the Creator. This is why so many hate him and oppose what he is doing. They opposed him even before he came into office. The present Civil War started the day of his election in 2016, even as the first Civil War began immediately after Lincoln’s election in 1860.

Just as Lincoln wanted to extend God-given rights to every race of people, so also does Trump want to extend God-given rights to people “born or unborn.” Abortionists hate Trump for upholding the rights of the unborn, every bit as much as the slave-holders hated Lincoln for wanting to extend God-given rights to their slaves.

That is what I heard in Trump’s speech last night. I believe that the time of men’s rule is ending and that God will regain His right to rule that which He has created. As Christians, it is our duty to uphold God’s rights.