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Joshua Charles reveals founder’s eerily prophetic insights on America today
Around a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams
penned words that he intended for his own time, but which eerily and
prophetically describe our own. In his famous “Novanglus” essays (released as
newspaper editorials), he wrote the following:
“There is nothing in this world so excellent that it may not be abused. … License of the press is no proof of liberty. When a people is corrupted, the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin: and it is now notorious that the ministry [the British government] are daily employing it to increase and establish corruption, and to pluck up virtue by the roots.”
So Adams was accusing the media of his day of not carrying out its function to properly inform and educate the people, but of completing the ruin of their liberties? He was accusing the media of plucking up virtue “by the roots,” presumably making light of it, and encouraging vice? Hmmm …
“Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul. … But we are told that the nation [Great Britain] is now united against us, that they hold they have a right to tax us and legislate for us as firmly as we deny it. … I would ask, by what law the Parliament has authority over America? By the law of GOD in the Old and New Testament, it has none. By the law of nature and nations, it has none. By the common law of England it has none. … What religious, moral, or political obligation then are we under to submit to Parliament as a supreme legislative? None at all.”
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“There is nothing in this world so excellent that it may not be abused. … License of the press is no proof of liberty. When a people is corrupted, the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin: and it is now notorious that the ministry [the British government] are daily employing it to increase and establish corruption, and to pluck up virtue by the roots.”
So Adams was accusing the media of his day of not carrying out its function to properly inform and educate the people, but of completing the ruin of their liberties? He was accusing the media of plucking up virtue “by the roots,” presumably making light of it, and encouraging vice? Hmmm …
“Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul. … But we are told that the nation [Great Britain] is now united against us, that they hold they have a right to tax us and legislate for us as firmly as we deny it. … I would ask, by what law the Parliament has authority over America? By the law of GOD in the Old and New Testament, it has none. By the law of nature and nations, it has none. By the common law of England it has none. … What religious, moral, or political obligation then are we under to submit to Parliament as a supreme legislative? None at all.”
Continue Reading...
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