God Bless America

The Greatest Nation in History

Richard Salbato 5-1-1008 (St. Joseph, the Worker)

I try to write only about the Faith of the Catholic Church and its relation to our daily lives: how we treat God, how we treat each other, are we doing the right thing in each and every action of our day.  Over the years I have seen that people really want to do the right things but emotions get in the way of good thinking.  I have also noted that people think they can know what God wants of them without any real learning; in-other-words, they do not want to learn or study.  They think God will teach them directly through their own uneducated conscience. 

This lack of knowledge has opened up the abuse of conscience by cult leaders, who do not see the balance between individual freedoms and the common good.  Within the Church there is a war between those who want no laws against their self-created conscience and the written laws of God and the Church.  The Church, on the other hand, teaches a good and proper balance between personal freedoms and the common good.

This brings me to the subject of this article: the obligations of Catholics to get involved in the politics of the nation they live in, and not just passively but actively.  Before you can know that you are doing God’s will, you must know what God said to the world: the Bible and the teaching of the Church, even the early Church Fathers. 

Likewise, before you can be active in the political world, you should know something about government and even the history of government.  You should even know God’s ideas about government.  For this reason I have written a great deal about governments and what both God and the Popes have written on this subject. 

There are 75 documents by the magisterium on governments.  I have done a 20 year study on the relationship of God and governments and the relationship of Catholics and government.  You can find some of that study on my web site:

Pope Leo XIII on Governments ,  Government by the Popes , Government by Saint Thomas , Government by Jefferson , Government by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle  , Government of Machiavelli , Government of the Bible

It was of interest to me why Saint Peter went to Rome and why all the first Popes remained in Rome even though they faced martyrdom.  I wrote the answer to that question in a Newsletter a few years ago:  `Why Did Peter Go To Rome?  

I also studied the Constantine, the Great, because he liberated the Church from the persecutions of Rome.  I found it interesting to note that although Constantine did great things for the Church, the Pope did not agree with all his actions.  When Constantine outlawed all Pagan Gods and Paganism, the Pope disagreed with him, because it violated personal freedom of religion.

Now that brings me to the reason I am writing about America, instead of about faith and religion this time. We are headed for the greatest challenges to our faith over the next 8 years that we have ever faced in history and it is because we have not paid enough attention to our social obligations and its connection to our faith and even our beliefs.   Pope Benedict XVI knows this and talks constantly about secularism and its dangers.   

Not only have I studied governments but I have traveled the world over for the last 15 years, and have been in 38 countries on ever continent except Australia.  What I have learned in all these  countries will cause some anger amongst conspiracy theorists and American haters. 

I have not only concluded that America is the greatest nation in the world, but that it is the greatest nation in the history of the world.  To make these people even angrier, I think God thinks of America as the greatest nation in history. 

Many Americans have different opinions about this, and everyone can point out what they do not like, and I hope to address these things.  Some people think of America as having being founded by Masons, and other think of America as being founded by Protestants, but are these people looking at a very limited view of history?

Parts of the East Coast were colonized by people getting away from an English King, some were Protestants and many were Catholics getting away from persecution.  The Central part of America was colonized by the French, from Louisiana up the Mississippi valley.  The West was colonized by the Spanish from New Mexico to Washington.  When we came together as a nation, we had learned what not to do by the oppression of the Kings, by the failure of the French Revolution, and even by the oppression of the aristocrats of Europe. We saw that power in the hands of the few was wrong.  We saw that power in the hands of the majority was worse.  Catholics, Protestants, and even Masons were there to create a government.

What they wanted to end was the oppression of the people by governments. They wanted the least amount of government possible, so that no one had any real power over the people.  However, they knew that there had to be laws and some form of government to keep the social order.  These laws had to be just and enforced.  What they came up with was a government of checks and balances that put no power in any branch of government and limited the powers of the central government to basic things that state governments could not handle.

They put everything into a written document and called the new government a Constitutional Republic.  What was new about this government was that the written law had more power than any of the different branches of the government.  In fact, the written document had more power even than the majority of the people. 

What makes the government of the Catholic Church so great is that we have written law, and the basics of that law cannot change.  What makes America so great is the same thing.  It is true that throughout history Bishops and Priests and people have abused and disobeyed the law of the Church but in the long run it keeps on working and never dies.

The same is true of America.  When people corrupt or abuse the laws we have problems, but even with the worst kind of people, the law always brings us back to the center and in time the written law corrects the problems.  Just in my life time we have had 5 Mason presidents, one communist, socialist presidents, a mentally incompetent president, 3 presidents who want a world government, and one who wants a unified government with Canada, America, and Mexico.  But because of the check and balance system, none of these stupid people were able to destroy the basic system, that even protects us against bad presidents.

We have had corrupt Supreme Court Judges, that totally corrupted the written law that they swore to protect, by legalizing slavery, abortion, confiscation of land, restrictions on guns, and many other things that are contrary to the law they pledge to support.  But as long as we hang on to this constitution, these abuses will be corrected. 

The biggest abuse of the constitution is when we accepted Common English Law in our legal system, which corrupted the concept of fixed law under the constitution.  This also has to be corrected, but I am confident that in time it will.

When I was a kid in school, we had to read the Constitution and Bill of Rights and understand them.  I wonder how many of my readers today have ever read the Constitution, and among those who have, how many remember much of what it says?

I do not want here to repeat what our Constitution says, but I do want to say why it says what it does.  A perfect government has to balance individual freedoms with the common good. It has to protect me from you and you from me, but not me from me.  A perfect government is not feared by the people but the government has to fear the people.  The Bill of Rights gave that power to the people and by giving them the right to bear arms it gave them the power to protect itself from that government. 

It divided the central government into three different check and balance systems, who had some powers over the other branches of government and back and forth.  It gave that central government limited power, and most of the power to the individual state governments.  It created the greatest educational system in the world without being directly involved in the system.

Now this is important.  The power of the Central Government (Washington D.C.) was limited two three things and three things only:  National Defense (first and most important), Foreign Affairs (dealing with Foreign Governments) and Interstate Commerce (State Disputes).   

The Federal Government has no constitutional right to be in the School business, nor the Medical business, nor the housing business, nor the labor business.  In keeping with their three mandates above, they do have the right to regulate businesses, banks, and other companies that have business that crosses state lines.  They do have the right to make tariffs or remove them because that deals with Foreign Affairs.  They do have the right to build National Highways, Dams, electrical grids, and pipe lines because they deal with more than one state. International harbors and airports are within the Feds jurisdiction because of the same reasons.    

State governments take care of local law and order, interstate roads, utilities, and state and local schools. They make zoning regulations and local business and labor regulations.  State governments are supposed to take care of everything except for the three duties above.  

This entire system was designed to give people the most peace, freedom and prosperity in the history of the world.  However, with freedom comes corruption and often the government took too long to react with the regulations that prevented that corruption, but it was not the fault of the system. 

In the early years large corporations took advantage of workers.  Then unions formed to protect workers. Then the unions became corrupted and people had to be protected from unions. States sometimes violated the personal rights of people and the government at times was too slow to correct the abuse.  One example of this was the “Right To Liberty” but some states bypassed that law by saying that black slaves were not humans. We had to fight a hard war to free the slaves and protect the Constitution but in the end the system worked.  The difference between America and other slave countries is that we had it on our soil, whereas England, Portugal, Spain, etc. had their slavery on the soil of their colonized possessions.  However, even our slavery was instigated by the English and Spanish, who wanted the cheap cotton from our southern states. 

Today we have the same problem with “The Right to Life” in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, because Supreme Court Judges (who swear to protect the Constitution) ruled that babies in the womb are not humans. In the end the Constitution will prevail and that will be changed as all other abuses have slowly been corrected, because we have written law.

Because this government gave people the greatest freedom in history, people came here from all over the world, often without a dime in their pockets.  This freedom not only produced the wealthiest nation in history but the greatest in science, in technology, in medicine and in education.  This freedom produced the inventions of electricity, lighting, the auto industry, airplanes, jets, rockets, atomic power, atomic bombs, computers, telephones, television, radios, the internet, and space travel. 

Freedom also brings some freedoms we are not proud of but should not change.  We have the greatest freedom of speech and the press in the world.  For that reason we have pornography, the KKK, Masonic Lodges, and a legal Communist party.  This freedom is almost unconditional, so long as it does not force itself on others, advocate violence, cause violence or infringe on others freedoms.

All the problems we have today are because the government has violated one or more of the provisions of the Constitutions.  Before the Federal Government got involved in the School System we were the best in the world, now we are the worst in the main countries, and that is because we took away completion and incentive. 

Our medical care is the best in the world but government intervention has made it four times as expensive as it should be. 

The housing mess we are in is because of Federal Changes to mortgage laws.  In 1995 (under President Clinton) the Federal Government forced Banks and Mortgage Companies to accept Sup-prime mortgages or be fined.

The Oil Shortage is because of government’s interference in the free market, because the government does not allow them to drill for oil off shore, in the oil shale deposits or in Alaska.  So these oil companies go to Brazil and Arab countries where they are allowed to drill.

Social Security should never have been a government program. All these things that the government should not be involved in have produced excessive taxes and taken away freedom.  All are because the government violated the constitution and we, the people, were not watchful.    

America’s Wars

There are some today that say we should not be involved in any foreign government’s problems. However, we always have done this when it was in our interest to do so.   

President Monroe and his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, drew upon a foundation of American diplomatic ideals to write the Monroe Doctrine that told Europe to keep their hands off the new free American states in North and South America or we would come to their military defense and we did in the Mexican-American war.

We went to war in the First and Second World Wars to protect our European friends because it was in our interest to do so.  We wrote and implemented the Marshal Plan to reconstruct Europe after the war and even paid for it.  

We protected Europe from the threat of Communism with NATO treaties and placing large American armies on European soil for over 60 years and they are still there. We still have American armies in Korea protecting them and our interest in that region.  We keep our enemy far from our shores. 

We are the greatest nation in history because 98 countries have followed our system of freedom to have similar constitutional democracies, just in the last 100 years.  We have protected the world from all the dictators of the last 100 years and continue to do so.  Without American, China would have invaded Japan, Taiwan, Korea and PI by now.  Only America prevents them from doing so.  Russia would have taken over Europe except for America standing in their way.

People in America are worried about food and gas prices, but in England gas is $8.50 a gallon and the same throughout Europe.  Food in Europe is twice as expensive is in America.  If you compare one hour of wages with the cost of anything in America, then our country is the cheapest country to live in the world.  Except for housing, which I have mentioned above, which is correcting now, we are the exception to the world.  In most countries, food is from 25% to 65% of their income, but for us it is 5% of our income. 

Yes, America is the greatest nation in the history of the world

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building' by George Bush.

He answered by saying, 'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Then there was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done?

He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intended to do, bomb them?' 

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply  emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 30,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck.. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of Officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, 'whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.' He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied 'Maybe it's because the Brits, Canadians,     Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

A group of Americans, retired teachers, recently went to France on a tour. Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry on. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically. Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

“Impossible. Americans always have to show your passports on arrival in France!"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained. "Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in '44 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find any damn Frenchmen to show it to."

You could have heard a pin drop

Other than food, the largest export from the USA is American movies and music.  From these movie and hip-hop music, foreigners develop ideas about America that are not true.  What is true is that NATO has 2,000,000 troops but has no will or ability to come to our aid or even to protect themselves.  As was true throughout history, most people want peace even if it means giving up freedom and justice. 

American Catholics

American Catholics think that even as Catholics we are the worst in the world, but after being in all the major Catholic nations of the world, I think we are the best. We migrated here because of the Catholic persecution in England, Spain, France and even Italy.  Hundreds of thousands of Catholics were martyred during the great migration of Catholics from all over Europe during the great Protestant revolt.  Even Protestants came to get away from Government religions that they did not agree with.    

Do you know – that the American Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. Your Catholic graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you.  To the rest of the Americans it's free.

The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 700,000 students.  The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, - not just Catholics - which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people in the United States today.

More Catholics go to Sunday Mass in America than the Catholics in Spain, France and Italy.  Catholics in America are more educated in their faith than any place in the world.  Is that good?  No! But it is better than Europe.  What then about the sex abuse?  An amazing 1-1/2% of priests were involved in some sex in the last 30 years.  But let us compare that to others.

Let me give you some figures that you as Catholics should know and remember. For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church, 41.8 % of clergywomen reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen have been sexually harassed. Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not just a Catholic Problem.

If you go by percentages of population, we are a Catholic Nation and our percentage is growing year by year, now at 38% and the closest to us is 17%.  We publish more Catholic Books than any other country in the world.  We collect more money as a Church than any other country in the world, and we give more to the poor of the world than any other Catholic body in the world.

The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

We are also pledged to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.  The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., is the pre-eminent Marian shrine of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.    Envisioned by its founder, Bishop Thomas J. Shahan (1857-1932), it became a part of the Catholic University of America, the first pontifical university in an English-speaking country since the Reformation – the Catholic Oxford. 

Nothing with God happens by accident.  On the same day, May 16, 1920  that Pope Benedict XV canonized the "Maid of Orleans," Joan of Arc, at St. Peter's in Vatican City,  Archbishop Giovanni Vincenzo Bonzano blessed the site designated for the National Shrine and in the same ceremony blessed a statue of Joan of Arc.

celebrating simultaneously with solemn ecclesiastical ceremonies at Rome the official canonization of the Maid of Orleans and the opening of the national shrine, is not accidental.  

Just as Joan of Arc (1412-1431) freed France from the English, so too, America was freed from England.  Just as Joan of Arc, was told to protect France by military force, from foreign invasion, we keep our military strong not only to protect ourselves from invasion, but our friends and allies.

The Object of All War is Peace

The above statement might seem like an oxymoron, but it is not.  Throughout history the object of every war was peace, even by the invading army.  The concept is peace on my terms. An invading army might say, we can have peace if you give us all your land and become slaves to our people.  To the Christians, the Romans said we can have peace if you worship our gods, our Cesar, and denounce your god.  On the brighter side, America told Hitler, we can have peace if you stop invading our friends.  America has never gone to war for what it could gain, but only to protect and to bring about peace in justice.  Even the Church teaches that peace without justice is a fallacy.  We teach liberty and justice for all, and therefore we cannot stand by and witness injustice and do nothing.

The greatest danger to America is not from Foreigners but from an ignorant American people. 

 

 

 About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.  The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency; 6. From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage.'

Predestined

America is destined by God to save the world again, and this is the only possible way I can see for there to be a fulfillment of Our Lady of Fatima’s promise, that “in the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph and there will be a period of peace.”  We dedicated our nation to Her, and She will not let us down as orphans. 

But we must first protect  America from those who want to destroy it from within.  I believe we will now be voting for one Socialist, one Marxist, and one Patriot to be the next President of the United States of American and the Commander of the greatest army in history. 

I want these candidates to say publicly, “I love America.  God bless America.”

Richard Salbato 

Note:

1. America, semantically is the name for all nations in north and south Americas, and the official name of America is the United States of America.  However, as each nation in these continents have taken on names that do not include the word, America, we have come to be known as simply, America, and everyone, everywhere, thinks of us as simply, America.

Good Books:

1. Understanding America

2. America Alone

3. Hole in Our Soul

4.  Pete Domenici’s Energy Bill

Domenici Unveils Plans to Increase American Energy Production

from the Office of Senator Pete V. Domenici

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Click here for an Audio Clip

-- Legislation Seeks to Bring Lower Prices, Less Foreign Oil --

WASHINGTON – Saying American consumers who are shocked by escalating gasoline prices will demand Congress reassess its opposition to increasing energy production at home, U.S. Senator Pete Domenici today introduced legislation to dramatically increase domestic production of oil and natural gas.

Domenici backed by 19 cosponsors today introduced the American Energy Production Act of 2008 (S.2958), which is intended to help lower energy prices and make America less dependent on foreign sources of oil.

By expanding production offshore and in Alaska, the legislation will produce up to 24 billion barrels of oil—enough to keep America running for five years with no foreign imports. In addition, billions more barrels of fuel would be made available through development of oil shale and coal to liquids technology.

“For years now, I have been trying to develop more domestic production of oil and gas, and for years, with one exception in the Gulf of Mexico, I have been blocked for political reasons. Consumers are now paying the price for those years of obstruction,” Domenici said. “The American people are fed up and I think oil prices at $115 or more a barrel might prompt them to ask Congress to reconsider the prohibitions that keep us from producing our own energy resources.”

“The bill I’m introducing today will produce up to 24 billion barrels of oil through common sense measures to open up areas offshore and in Alaska for exploration. It will also allow us to develop billions more barrels of fuel through oil shale and coal to liquids technology. This measure will go a long way toward helping us break the cycle of dependence on foreign sources of oil,” he continued.

Domenici pointed out that had President Clinton not vetoed exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in 1995, when oil was $19 a barrel, America would currently be receiving over 1 million barrels a day from Alaska. The amount of oil in ANWR is enough to supply New Mexico for 222 years.

The American Energy Production Act will also lift the one-year moratorium on developing oil shale in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Over 2 trillion barrels of oil shale currently exist in those states—three times as much oil as Saudi Arabia has in reserve.

The bill will allow petitions for leasing activities in the Atlantic and Pacific regions of the Outer Continental Shelf in order to tap into the 14 billion barrels of recoverable oil in those areas. Exploration will occur off the shore of a state if that state’s Governor petitions to have the moratorium on exploration lifted.

“Congress has spent billions to research and develop clean sources of energy. I’ve been a leader in those efforts and I will continue to be. However, we must face the fact that no matter what we do, America will still need oil, and without action, an increasingly large portion of that oil will come from unstable regions. With gas prices soaring higher and higher, we must produce more at home, and this bill allows us to do that in an environmentally responsible manner,” Domenici said.

Among the original co-sponsors of the bill are: Senators Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Robert Bennett (R-Utah), Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), John Thune (R-S.D.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio), and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).