CHAPTER 3: ARE WE A JUDEO-CHRISTIAN NATION OR NOT?
1. Peter Lillback with Jerry Newcombe, George Washington’s Sacred Fire (Bryn Mawr, Penn.: Providence Forum Press, 2006), 485 – 86.
2. Federer, America’s God and Country, 635.
3. Federer, America’s God and Country, 654. National Day of Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1789.
4. www.petahtikvah.com/Articles/salomon.htm.
5. www.jewishworldreview.com/jewish/salomon.asp.
6. nationaldayofprayer.org/about/history/.
7. www.christiannewswire.com/news/4387713640.html.
8. Federer, America’s God and Country, 248 – 49.
9. Federer, America’s God and Country: George Washington, 634; John Adams, 4; Alexander Hamilton, 273; Daniel Webster, 668; Thomas Paine, 489; John Locke, 397; John Madison, 409.
10. texaslegislativeupdate.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/liberty-institute-arguing-candy-cane-case-implications-for-first-amendment-rights-of–41-million-school-children-and-parents/.
11. www.proconstitution.com/under_god/.
CHAPTER 4: A DIFFERENT SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
1. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11601692.
2. education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1878/Compulsory-School-Attendance.html, under subheading “Development of Compulsory School Attendance Philosophy and Laws,” paragraph 3.
3. education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1878/Compulsory-School-Attendance.html, under subheading “Development of Compulsory School Attendance Philosophy and Laws,” paragraph 7.
4. Education of slaves was forbidden in 1740. See www.campaignforeducationusa.org/us-public-education-timeline and www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/docs1.html.
5. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. http://books.google.com/books, 337.
6. Federer, America’s God and Country, 206 (source quote p. 746).
7. Federer, America’s God and Country, 680.
8. Spalding, The Founders’ Almanac, 150. Excerpted from a letter to WT Barry, dated August 4, 1822.
9. Ibid., 180. James Madison from The Federalist Papers number 10, November 23, 1787.
CHAPTER 5: CAPITALISM: ITS PROS AND CONS
1. www.inventions.org/culture/african/matzeliger.html.
2. www.horatioalger.com/index.cfm.
3. www.usatoday.com/life/people/obit/2010–03–30-stand-and-deliver-teacher_N.htm.
4. Matthew 25:14 – 30; Luke 19:12 – 28.
5. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25percent3A14–30&version=NIV, “A talent was worth about twenty years’ worth of a day laborer’s wages.”
6. www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h–2062.
7. Spalding, The Founders’ Almanac, 158.
8. www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/education/22dropout.html; www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23889321/ns/us_news-education/t/cities-cited-low-high-school-graduation-rates/; www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006–06–20-dropout-rates_x.htm; www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0610/Graduation-rate-for-US-high-schoolers-falls-for-second-straight-year.
CHAPTER 6: SOCIALISM: WHOSE POT OF SOUP IS IT?
1. money.cnn.com/2011/04/19/news/economy/ceo_pay/index.htm.
2. Davis, Don’t Know Much about History, 351.
3. freemasonry.bcy.ca/history/boston_tea_party.html, under subheading “December 16.”
4. The following quotes can be found at http://conservativecolloquium.wordpress.com/2007/11/24/founding-fathers-on-charity-wealth-redistribution-and-federal-govt/.
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
“God helps those who help themselves.”
“The U.S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.”
“There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means — either may do — the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.”
“He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.”
Benjamin Franklin
“It’s not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government.”
“In the main it will be found that a power over a man’s support (salary) is a power over his will.”
Alexander Hamilton
“The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.”
“The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.”
James Madison
“No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.”
John Jay
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”
John Adams from A Defense of the
Constitutions of Government of the
United States of America, 1787
5. www.epi.org/publications/entry/briefingpapers_bp143/.
6. www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1246489837.pdf; http://www.thirdreport.com/third-report.asp?storyid=365; http://www.naked-capitalism.com/2009/04/socialism-gaining-ground-in-america.html; http://socialismdoesntwork.com/why-socialism-doesnt-work/; http://www.preservearticles.com/201102073940/merits-and-demerits-of-socialism.html.
CHAPTER 7: WHAT IS A MORAL NATION?
1. www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/index.asp.
2. Remini, A Short History of the United States, 274 – 81.
3. Ibid., 326 – 31.
4. Federer, America’s God and Country, 240.
5. John R. Howe Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), 189.
6. ethicsalarms.com/2011/01/26/where-we-miss-morality-the-unmarried-mothers-disaster/; http://www.ocpathink.org/articles/354.
7. www.wftv.com/news/25813000/detail.html.
8. www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2010/07/21/the-total-us-debt-to-gdp-ratio-is-now-worse-than-in-the-great-depression/; http://useconomy.about.com/od/fiscalpolicy/p/US_Debt.htm; www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/08/usa-treasury-debt-idUSN088462520100608.
9. For data on the United States’s historical debt, see www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm.
10. freemencapitalist.com/founding-fathers/thomas-jefferson-biography/thomas-jefferson-quotes/, under subheading “Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Government Waste/Debt.”
11. articles.cnn.com/2009–01–16/world/zimbawe.currency_1_zimbabwe-dollar-south-african-rand-dollar-note?_s=PM:WORLD.
>
CHAPTER 8: LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES
1. See oxforddictionaries.com/definition/Motown). Motown: “The first black-owned record company in the US … Motown was founded in Detroit in 1959 by Berry Gordy, and was important in popularizing soul music, producing artists such as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye.” Motown was an “informal name for Detroit”; the term is “a shortening of Motor Town, by association with the car manufacturing industry of Detroit.”
2. www.blackinventor.com/.
3. Albert Henry Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Macmillan, 1905 – 07), 3:135.
4. William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, 3 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1865), 1:154.
5. www.working-minds.com/TJquotes.htm, {Issue #54}.
6. Ibid., {Issue #59}.
7. www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/democracy-will-cease-to-exist-quotation.
8. www.constitution.org/je/je4_cong_deb_12.htm.
9. Spalding, The Founders’ Almanac, 188.
10. lifestrategies.thingseternal.com/topics/foundersoneducation.html; www.nccs.net/newsletter/apr99nl.html.
11. www.rutgers.edu/guides/glo-sov.html; www.heritage.org/Research/Lecture/Who-Lost-Russia; http://reasonovermight.blogspot.com/2005/06/cubas-decline-by-numbers.html; future.state.gov/when/timeline/1969_detente/fall_of_communism.html.
CHAPTER 9: AMERICA’S ROLE IN A WORLD AT WAR
1. library.uncg.edu/dp/wv/collection.aspx?col=887
2. www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-pac/pearlhbr/pearlhbr.htm, paragraph 5.
CHAPTER 10: IS HEALTH CARE A RIGHT?
1. Fifty-two million in 2010: www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–03–16/americans-without-health-insurance-rose-to–52-million-on-job-loss-expense.html.
2. For more information, see Larry Schweikart, The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States (Ft. Worth, Tex.: Harcourt, 2000). See also www.american.com/archive/2009/april–2009/Success-on-the-Side.
CHAPTER 13: WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT AMERICA?
1. From Dave Thomas’s biography available on Wendys.com.
CHAPTER 14: WHAT DO WE BELIEVE AND IN WHOM DO WE TRUST?
1. www.ehow.com/about_4597645_do-colors-american-flag-stand.html; www.memorials.com/Flag-Cases-Flag-Color-Meaning-information.php.
2. www.allabouthistory.org/spiritual-heritage-and-government-monuments-faq.htm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish heartily to thank:
John Sloan, Sealy Yates, Bob Hudson, Bill Federer, Scott Macdonald, Don Gates, and the entire team who worked tirelessly to get this book published.
About the Author
DR. BENJAMIN CARSON is a Professor of Neurosurgery, Plastic Surgery, Oncology, and Pediatrics, and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. He is a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor in America. He is also the author of four bestselling books–Gifted Hands, Think Big, The Big Picture, and Take the Risk. He serves on the boards of the Kellogg Company, Costco Wholesale Corp., and the Academy of Achievement, among others, and is an Emeritus Fellow of the Yale Corporation. He and his wife, Candy, cofounded the Carson Scholars Fund (www.carsonscholars.org), a 501(c)3 established to counteract America’s crisis in education by identifying and rewarding academic role models in the fourth through eleventh grades, regardless of race, creed, religion, and socio-economic status, who also demonstrate humanitarian qualities. There are over 4,800 scholars in forty-six states. Ben and Candy are the parents of three grown sons and reside in Baltimore County, Maryland.
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Also by Ben Carson, M.D.
America the Beautiful (with Candy Carson)
Take the Risk (with Gregg Lewis)
Think Big (with Cecil Murphey)
Gifted Hands (with Cecil Murphey)
The Big Picture (with Gregg Lewis)
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America the Beautiful
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Carson, Ben.
America the beautiful : rediscovering what made this nation great / Ben Carson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-310-33071-4 (hardcover)
1. United States – Civilization. 2. Social values – United
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