Forward by Fred G. Clark
The American giant towers over the world in its physical strength, greater than that of all the rest of the nations put together. But something is wrong with America.
At this high moment of history when the task of world leadership has been thrust upon us, we stand confused, reluctant, hesitant, and ineffectual. We are no longer certain what we stand for, and this, I believe, is because we have forgotten the circumstances surrounding the birth of our nation. . . . For decades it has been popular in America for the cynical intellectuals to sneer and scoff at what we call the traditions of Americanism. The instruments of this sabotage are words and thoughts — plausible half-truths, sly appeals to that spark of larceny that lurks in every human heart, subtle suggestions of an atheistic nature, and the careful nurturing of a patronizing attitude toward everything America has held to be fine and sacred. The people who planted these words and thoughts may have been either stupid or vicious, fools or foreign agents, smart-alecks, or cunning organizers.
What they were does not now matter—the thing that does matter is to counteract what they have done. Everybody in every position of leadership has to get into this act because the damage has affected every phase of our lives. The places in which this sabotage occurred were the schools, the churches, the communist-dominated labor halls, the lecture platforms, the motion pictures, the stage, the pages of our newspapers and magazines, and the radio. Every means of communication has been utilized against us. . . . The man (or nation) who has a plan—a way of life—in which he believes, has mental security. To destroy this security, one must destroy that man’s faith in his plan. Reliance on a code of life which, if held in common with one’s fellow men, brings peace of mind, develops the abilities of the group. . . . The degree to which the American code of life has been weakened can best be demonstrated by simply calling attention to the degree to which the foundation of that code has been weakened. Many people become self-conscious when discussing this foundation: I am not one of those people. That foundation (and of this there cannot be the slightest shadow of a doubt) is made up of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. Within this moral code, we have a complete way of life. Acceptance of these precepts takes care of every phase of human life—spiritual, political, social, and economic. . . . America was a nation of people who had faith in their political and economic systems because they had faith in God, and had built those systems around the teachings of God. Every collectivist from Karl Marx to Stalin has agreed that faith in God must be destroyed before socialism can take over.
Therefore, it was obvious that the problem of sabotaging America’s faith in America was the problem of transferring the people’s faith in God to faith in the State. That thing called morality in politics, business, and private contracts, had to be broken down. To an increasing extent the American people have come to look upon morality as an old-fashioned superstition. Religion has for many church members become a safe way of dying rather than a good way of living. . . . There are many who tell us that all this is a waste of time—that the process of socialism cannot be reversed; that once it is started it must run its course. This we do not believe—we consider it part of the fake propaganda that is poisoning our will to resist. Our first-hand experience with millions of typical Americans convinces us that there is nothing wrong with America that the truth will not correct. We must be militant.
We are no longer fighting to defend a way of life—we are fighting to get it back. Our problem is a counterrevolution. In this fight we are not going to get any important help from any political party—the politicians have been giving the people the kind of government the people say they want, and the policies in Washington will not change until the people change. And that is the job of people who know the truth and love it enough to spread it. This must be a crusade—the greatest crusade in history. Those who take part are called hard names—reactionaries, Fascists, professional patriots, apologists for special privilege, and many others. These smears are also a part of the enemy’s strategy. Our forefathers who fought the first revolution were also smeared. They too were told that they were wasting their time and their fortunes on a hopeless adventure. It would have been much easier for them to go along with the established order and try in some way or other to buy their freedom instead of fighting for it. But unlike many people today, they preferred to fight. How many people do you know today who are sitting back, confident that their bank accounts will in one way or another protect them and their families from the creeping tyranny of strong central government? That is what people [in pre-World War II] thought in Italy, in Germany, in New Zealand, in Australia, and still later, in England. All they did was put off the hour of decision and weaken their power to fight back. In America people now console themselves with the idea that it can never happen here. It seems to them unreal that people with good old-fashioned American names and fine-looking American faces could exercise the tyrannies that have always been identified with bombs, daggers, whiskers, and unpronounceable syllables. But the fact remains that it is already beginning. Most of the instruments of tyranny are already on the statute books. The means of freedom’s destruction are already in the hands of the Federal administration. You say that no administration would dare use them? All history is against that answer—in the long run, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It always has and it always will. Our best weapon is truth—we must start using it. And we must do it while there is still time.
Skousen, Paul B.; Skousen, W. Cleon. How to Save the
Constitution: Restoring the Principles of Liberty (Freedom in America Book 4)
(p. 14). Izzard Ink Publishing. Kindle Edition.
