From page 69, "Today, public schools are simply not teaching how important the religious dimension was in shaping our history and our nation's character. Whether teachers are just uncomfortable with this material or whether there has been a concerted effort to cover up the truth, the result is the same. Kids are no longer learning enough to understand and appreciate how and why Amercia was created.

The story of the Pilgrims begins in the early part of the seventeenth century (that's the 1600's for those of you in Rio Linda, California). The Church of England under King James I was persecuting anyone and everyone who did not recognize its absolute civil and spiritual authority. Those who challenged ecclesiastical authority and those who believed strongly in freedom of worship were hunted down, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for their beliefs.

A group of separatists first fled to Holland and established a community. After eleven years, about forty of them agreed to make a perilous journey to the New World, where they would certainly face hardships, but could live and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of their new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness. There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves.

And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilrims - including Bradford's wife- died of either starvation, sickness, or exposure. When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod, and skin beavers for coats. Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments.

Here is the part that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a commmon store, and each member of the commmunity was entitled to one common share. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the commmunity as well.

Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

That's right, long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism for well over a hundred years - trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it - the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.

"The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years... that by taking away property, and bringing community into comon wealth, would make them happy and flourishing - as if they were wiser than God," Bradford wrote. "For this community {so far as it was} was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense... that was thought injustice."

Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result?

"This had very good success," wrote Bradford, "for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." Bradford doesn't sound like much of a Clintonite, does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980's? Yes Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Folowing Joseph's suggestion {Genesis 41:34}, Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20 percent during the "seven years of plenty" and the "Earth brough forth in heaps." {Gen. 41:47}."

.... End of Rush's take on the Pilgrims. This is a great chapter and worth reading his book.

There are not a whole lot of people out there today, who really understand the role that Biblical principles played in the actual founding of our country. And I believe that God blessed this, and he honored it and that is why we are the great nation that we are today. We should be looking for more ways to return to putting God's ways into our government, schools and activities, and not separating it into something that we only practice on Sunday morning.