On “The Ben Shapiro Show: Sunday Special” this week, Ben Shapiro speaks with historian and author David Barton about the faith of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Were they deists? Were they Christian? Barton debunks the myths surrounding the Founders and where they actually stood on matters of faith. Video and partial transcript below:
Ben Shapiro: Let&#8217;s talk about the religious perspective of the founders. The typical narrative goes in public education, I was in public school and I went to public school for college as well. Historians tend to say that the founders were basically deists, that they believed in the clockwork universe maker. God set the universe in motion, and then through natural law discoveries we came up with all of these wonderful ideas, but the Bible is really sort of a secondary afterthought, that these were theist. They may have been sort of the root-level theist belief system that they believed in. But when it came to the Bible, they didn&#8217;t take it literally, not seriously. What do you make of that characterization of the founders?
David Barton: &#8220;Characterizations&#8221; is the right word, and it&#8217;s based on the fact that we really don&#8217;t know them or who they are. We actually reprinted an old 1848 public school textbook that we used for generations. In public schools, we studied all 56 signers of the Declaration. We knew who they were, their names, their character their sacrifices. We knew their faith and their family; we knew all about them.
Today we know a small handful. I was recently with an academic at Notre Dame and he jumped me and said, “You overstate the faith that the founding fathers; they were largely deists.” I said okay, here&#8217;s the deal, you name it a deist, name what you call a deist founding father, and for everyone, you say I&#8217;ll name five overtones that today would probably be considered evangelicals in religious terms.
So, you name one, I&#8217;ll name five, let&#8217;s see who runs out first. Well, he got through three or four and kind of ran out. I&#8217;m still going, and the problem is we take the least and we make that into the rule. And the rule is that for example, the 56 signers of the Declaration, 29 of them graduated from schools that in their day were considered Bible schools or seminaries. Now, you&#8217;re going to have a hard time convincing me that a deist is going to attend a bible school or a seminary, a place with trained ministers, and they were largely Christians, so that&#8217;s their faith?
An easy example is to take somebody like a John Hancock. This (document shown in video) is an original proclamation from John Hancock and this is for the state of Massachusetts, and by the way, he&#8217;s calling them to a day of public fasting humiliation prayer, which is fairly serious. That’s kind of serious on your faith, but you find throughout that he is very open as a Christian, he talks about Jesus Christ and savior, etc. In fact, he called the state of Massachusetts to prayer like these twenty-two times.
You find that by the time you get to 1815 there had been 14,000 government-issued calls to prayer in America, largely by founding fathers. So, if they&#8217;re deists, why do they have you praying? And why are they calling you to prayer with what might be considered evangelical language? He would alternate oftentimes with thanksgiving and fasting, it is one of Hancock&#8217;s Thanksgiving proclamations. This is when we found out Benedict Arnold was trying to kill George Washington, and it’s such an amazing story. He says “wow”, the fingerprints of God and this are such, to know that this was a God thing. Because of the way the weight came about they should never have been discovered, It’s a too well-laid plan.
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Ben Shapiro: But people don&#8217;t know that story, could you share it?
David Barton: Yes, the story is really kind of interesting because Benedict Arnold had an ego which didn&#8217;t get matched in the American Army because he thought he should have been promoted much faster, but he wasn&#8217;t being recognized or wasn&#8217;t being promoted. So, he starts saying, “Well the British will respect me, they&#8217;ll honor me, I can get a promotion through them,” and so he starts working with the British and he&#8217;s in charge of West Point. By the way, the biggest statue you find when you go to the battlefield at Saratoga, which is the first major victory of the American Revolution, massive statue of Benedict Arnold because he was the hero. He was an American general, he was courageous, but he just didn&#8217;t think he&#8217;d get enough respect, and so because of that ego, he turns to the British. He works with them.
He makes his plan to give West Point to the British and it will happen at the time that George Washington arrives, so they can kill Washington or capture Washington and end everything right there. A British officer, John Andre, is going back and forth with Benedict Arnold and so they lay out the plans. Andre actually takes the plans, folds them up, puts them in the bottom of his shoe to hide so that no one would find them. He gets into what is considered to be a safe part of New York, run by the British with all the loyalists and no Americans. He runs up to three guys and starts talking to them, which he believes are British guys, so he can tell them what&#8217;s going on. He starts sharing more information than he should have, and it turns out they weren&#8217;t British guys, there were three American militiamen who had just escaped from a British prison, they shouldn&#8217;t even be in this area.
They were prisoners that got free, and now as Arnold starts becoming too open with them, they start getting curious and they think this “doesn&#8217;t smell right,” and so they actually grab and take him to an American post, which wasn&#8217;t supposed to be in that area at all. Everything was improbable all the way through. They searched him and for some reason checked the bottom of his shoe, where they found the papers. They saw too many coincidences, too providential and too much God here, so that&#8217;s why Hancock called that time of Thanksgiving.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/series/sunday-special">Click here watch &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show: Sunday Special&#8221; on-demand.</a>

WATCH: Shapiro, Barton Debunk Myths About The Faith Of The Founding Fathers

American History

Ben Shapiro

Conservatism

Constitution

Making History

The Daily Wire

On Thursday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; the host discusses how George Washington University is mulling removing statue of America&#8217;s first president in order to please students who claim to be threatened by the mere image of George Washington.
Students at GW University now want to get rid of George Washington. For those of you who don&#8217;t know G.W. University stands for George Washington University, and they want to get rid of their namesake and their mascot. This is the majority of students here. There was a vote that was conducted that fifty-four percent of students at G.W. want to get rid of George Washington. How about George Washington High School in northern California? They now want to get rid of a mural that depicts George Washington. And the way they did it is so insidious. It&#8217;s just that creeping, tyrannical, leftism that seems like it&#8217;s nice and orderly, so they mask all of their totally destructive instincts with this sort of orderliness of bureaucracy and meetings. They didn&#8217;t just take a sledgehammer to it -no. They formed a working group. Oh, it&#8217;s a working group, there&#8217;s a committee and they&#8217;re going to meet and then they&#8217;re going to decide to take a wrecking ball to a work of art and a piece of history.
The working group decided that a mural of George Washington the founder and father of our country at a high school called George Washington High School quote, &#8220;traumatizes students and community members.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t just offend them it traumatizes them.
This is what we have been seeing increasingly for years now, and what I see at these universities when I go and give speeches there. They are conflating speech with violence. So, it&#8217;s this work of art and history. History is not simply offensive, not simply unpleasant, not simply unappreciated &#8211; no. It is traumatizing, which is to say it is committing an act of violence that has physical repercussions on students. And so, if the school is going to protect the student&#8217;s safety, their physical well-being, then they have to paint over the artwork. Very clever strategy because what the school should say is, we&#8217;re not going to erase art in history because you don&#8217;t like it &#8211; because some mob is demanding it.
What is happening, in reality, is a mob is demanding that we burn books, burn history, burn artwork and burn paintings. But the way the left organizes it is they say, it&#8217;s not a mob it&#8217;s a working group and we&#8217;re not destroying art because it offends us, we&#8217;re destroying art because it traumatizes us. It committed violence on us, so we now will commit violence on it.
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The spokesman for the administration of the school district said, &#8220;at its conclusion, the group voted, and the majority recommended that the life of Washington mural be archived and removed because the mural does not represent the school district&#8217;s values.&#8221; Then what values does the school district hold?
George Washington, the father of our country, created the greatest country in the history of the world. A country premised on the idea that all men are created equal that we&#8217;re endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, that man and what that man established and presided over and fought for and won, has led to the most just, most equitable, most prosperous and most charitable country in the history of the world ever, at any time. Certainly now, by orders of magnitude.
If the school district doesn&#8217;t stand for that what do, they stand for? What are their principles? They apparently oppose life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. They oppose charity. They oppose justice. They oppose equality. What do they stand for? If we were to give this school district the benefit of the doubt, it seems that they just don&#8217;t know anything about history. They don&#8217;t know anything about George Washington or about what he stands for. But that indictment is just as bad because they&#8217;re a school district. They are supposed to educate students but they don&#8217;t know anything themselves. They don&#8217;t know anything about history.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/michael-knowles-show">Subscribe to watch &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on-demand.</a>

KNOWLES: Students Triggered By George Washington Mural

George Washington University

Michael Knowles

Students

Daily Wire editor-in-chief and author of The New York Times bestseller &#8220;<a href="https://amzn.to/2HjtBTp">The Right Side Of History</a>&#8221; Ben Shapiro hosts the latest video from Prager University, &#8220;Why Has The West Been So Successful?&#8221; in which he explains how Western Civilization has helped shape the history of the world for the good. 
&#8220;Western civilization; it&#8217;s been around for a while, but suddenly everybody is talking about it. Some are anxious to save it; others are happy to see it go. But what exactly is Western civilization?&#8221; Shapiro begins.
&#8220;The Left likes to focus on the bad: genocide, slavery, environmental destruction. But those have been present in every civilization from time immemorial,&#8221; he continues. &#8220;The positives are unique to the West. Religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method: these are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim.&#8221;
Shapiro posits that the &#8220;balancing&#8221; of two focal points in history, Jerusalem and Athens, has become the foundation of the West. &#8220;Jerusalem represents religious revelation as manifested in the Judeo-Christian tradition: the beliefs that a good God created an ordered universe and that this God demands moral behavior from His paramount creation, man,&#8221; says Shapiro. &#8220;The other city, Athens, represents reason and logic as expressed by the great Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle and many others.&#8221; 
&#8220;These two ways of thinking, revelation and reason, live in constant tension,&#8221; he continues. &#8220;Judeo-Christian religion posits that there are certain fundamental truths handed down to us by a transcendent being. We didn&#8217;t invent these truths; we received them from God. The rules He lays down for us are vital for building a functioning, moral civilization and for leading a happy life. Greek thinking posits that we only know truth by what we observe, test, and measure. It is not faith, but fact, that drives our understanding and exploration of the universe. Western civilization, and only Western civilization, has found a way to balance both religious belief and human reason.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
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<blockquote>
Western civilization. It&#8217;s been around for a while, but suddenly everybody is talking about it. Some are anxious to save it; others are happy to see it go.
But what exactly is Western civilization?
Is it the great cathedrals of Europe or the Nazi concentration camps? Is it the freedoms secured in the US Constitution or chattel slavery? Life-saving medicines or poison gas?
The left likes to focus on the bad &#8211; genocide, slavery, environmental destruction. But those have been present in every civilization from time immemorial.
The positives are unique to the West &#8211; religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method: these are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim.
These aren&#8217;t the only achievements that make the West special and uniquely successful. As Western thought evolved, it secured the rights of women and minorities, lifted billions of people out of poverty, and invented most of the modern world.
Progress hasn&#8217;t been a straight line, of course. But the arc of history is clear. The obvious proof is that the world is overwhelmingly Western. And, with few exceptions, those parts of the world that aren&#8217;t aspire to be.
Why? Why has Western civilization been so successful?
There are many reasons, but the best place to start is with the teachings and philosophies that emerged from two ancient cities: Jerusalem and Athens.
Jerusalem represents religious revelation as manifested in the Judeo-Christian tradition: the beliefs that a good God created an ordered universe and that this God demands moral behavior from His paramount creation, man.
The other city, Athens, represents reason and logic as expressed by the great Greek thinkers Plato and Aristotle and many others.
These two ways of thinking &#8211; revelation and reason &#8211; live in constant tension.
Judeo-Christian religion posits that there are certain fundamental truths handed down to us by a transcendent being. We didn&#8217;t invent these truths; we received them from God. The rules He lays down for us are vital for building a functioning, moral civilization and for leading a happy life.
Greek thinking posits that we only know truth by what we observe, test, and measure. It is not faith, but fact, that drives our understanding and exploration of the universe.
Western civilization, and only Western civilization, has found a way to balance both religious belief and human reason.
Here&#8217;s how the balance works.
The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that God created an ordered universe, and that we have an obligation to try to make the world better. This offers us purpose and suggests that history moves forward. Most pagan religions taught the opposite: that the universe is illogical and random, and that history is cyclical. History just endlessly repeats itself &#8211; in which case, why bother to innovate or create anything new?
Second, Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that every human is created in the image of God; that is, each individual&#8217;s life is infinitely valuable. This seems self-evident to us now, but only because we have lived with this belief for so long. The far more natural belief is that the strong should subjugate the weak &#8211; which is precisely what people did in nearly every society in all of history. Only by recognizing the divine in others did we ever move beyond this amoral thinking toward the concern for human rights, democracy and free enterprise that characterize the West.
But Judeo-Christian religion alone didn&#8217;t build our modern civilization. We also required Greek reason to teach us objective observation: that man has the capacity to search beyond revelation for answers.
Greek reason brought us the notion of the natural law, the idea that we could discover the natural purpose &#8211; the telos &#8211; of everything in creation by looking to its character. Human beings were created with the unique capacity to reason; therefore, our telos was to reason. By investing reason with so much power, Greek thought became integral to the Western mission.
Nowhere is this more perfectly expressed than in the American Revolution, in which the Founding Fathers took the best of the European Enlightenment with its roots in Greek thought and the best of Judeo-Christian practice with its roots in the Bible and melded them into a whole new political philosophy.
Without Judeo-Christian values, we fall into scientific materialism &#8211; the belief that physical matter is the only reality, and therefore also fall into nihilism &#8211; the belief that life has no meaning, that we&#8217;re merely stellar dust in a cold universe.
Without Greek reason, we fall into fanaticism &#8211; the belief that fundamentalist adherence to unprovable principles represents the only path toward meaning.
The Soviet Union, Communist China and other socialist tyrannies rejected faith and murdered 100 million people in the 20th century.
Much of the modern Muslim world has embraced faith but rejected reason. It&#8217;s noteworthy that when the Muslim world did embrace Greek reason, from the 8th to the 14th centuries, it was a leading center for scientific advancement.
So, again, we need both &#8211; Jerusalem and Athens. Revelation and reason.
And yet, many want to reject both. These people call themselves &#8220;progressives.&#8221;
Ironically, they want to take us backwards, to a time when man was governed neither by reason nor faith, but by feeling, and therefore back to a time of moral chaos and disorder, of feeling over fact.
It would be a fatal mistake to follow the &#8220;progressives.&#8221; Stick with Athens and Jerusalem.
I&#8217;m Ben Shapiro, editor of The Daily Wire and author of The Right Side of History, for Prager University.
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Ben Shapiro: Here’s Why The West Has Been So Successful

Jerusalem

Prager University

On President&#8217;s Day, historian and author John Rhodehamel hosts the latest video from Prager University, &#8220;<a href="https://www.prageru.com/videos/what-made-george-washington-great">What Made George Washington Great</a>?&#8221;, where he details how his leadership of the United States as Army commander and as the first president changed the course of the nation. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to imagine there would have been a United States of America without George Washington,&#8221; Rhodehamel said. &#8220;He was there at the birth of the nation. He successfully guided it through war and nurtured it in peace. How did he do it? Not by being a great general, a potent political theorist, or even a clever politician. He was none of those things. And yet, he was admired by generals, political theorists and politicians. Why?&#8221;
He explained, &#8220;Because he was a man great men trusted. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and so many others looked up to him&#8230; literally. He was one of the tallest men of his era at six-foot-three. Add courage, integrity, and wisdom, and you have a truly impressive figure. Let&#8217;s start with his courage. That was never in doubt. If anything, he had too much of it.&#8221;
Rhodehamel breaks down George Washington&#8217;s heroism during the French and Indian War, the War for Independence, and later when a young United States was developing into a republic. 
He added, &#8220;We commonly refer to George Washington now as the father of our country. It&#8217;s hard to imagine any nation ever had a better one.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
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<blockquote>
It&#8217;s hard to imagine there would have been a United States of America without George Washington.
He was there at the birth of the nation. He successfully guided it through war and nurtured it in peace.
How did he do it?
Not by being a great general, a potent political theorist, or even a clever politician. He was none of those things.
And yet, he was admired by generals, political theorists and politicians. Why?
Because he was a man great men trusted. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and so many others looked up to him&#8212;literally. He was one of the tallest men of his era at six-foot-three. Add courage, integrity, and wisdom, and you have a truly impressive figure.
Let&#8217;s start with his courage. That was never in doubt. If anything, he had too much of it.
Bold to the point of rashness as a young man, he fought for the British against the French over control of the Ohio Valley, then the Western-most point of the American wilderness.
Throughout that conflict, known as the French and Indian War, and the American Revolution, Washington was always in the thick of the action. His aides often struggled to keep him from surging too far ahead of his own troops. In one battle, his coat was pierced four times by musket fire. Horses were shot out from under him. Amazingly, some would say miraculously, he was never wounded&#8212;not so much as a flesh wound.
By the time the revolution broke out in April of 1775, Washington was firmly committed to the cause of American independence. He arrived in Philadelphia in May of that year to offer his services to the Continental Congress. He was quickly made commander of the new rebel army. There was only one problem: there was no army to speak of. There was just a rag-tag collection of state militias. How was Washington going to defeat the greatest military force in the world with that?
It was a problem the general struggled with for eight and a half years. That he managed to hold the army together, organize it into a disciplined fighting force and guide it to victory was testament to his fortitude, his patience, and his personal bravery.
Of his integrity, one need only to look at what he did when the war ended: exactly what he promised to do when the war began. He resigned his military command and went home to Mt. Vernon.
By stepping down, Washington raised himself up as the embodiment of republican heroism. It is said that King George III asked the London-based American painter Benjamin West what Washington was likely to do when peace came. West replied that Washington would probably return to his farm. The king was astounded. &#8220;If he does that,&#8221; His Majesty declared, &#8220;he will be the greatest man in the world!&#8221;
This story may be apocryphal, but the Newburgh Rebellion, and how Washington handled it, is not. With experience had come wisdom.
As the revolution wound down, a group of officers refused to give up their arms until they were paid. If they didn&#8217;t get their money, which Congress didn&#8217;t have, they would take control of the government. It was not an idle threat. No less a figure than Alexander Hamilton was in a panic.
Washington, no great orator, sought to defuse their anger. They had risked everything to create a republican society, he told the officers. To abandon the cause now, when true victory was so close, would mean all their sacrifices would have been in vain.
However convincing the speech may have been, it was a simple gesture that carried the day. Washington concluded his remarks by reading to them a letter sent to him from a member of Congress. Suddenly, he stopped. From his pocket, he pulled a pair of spectacles. None of the officers had ever seen him wear them. Putting the glasses on, Washington said, &#8220;Gentlemen, you must pardon me. I have grown gray in the service of my country and now find myself going blind.&#8221;
He finished reading the letter and left the hall without another word. The gesture, sincerely offered with just the right touch of stagecraft, pierced the hearts of his men. Many were moved to tears. They immediately passed a resolution declaring their loyalty to civilian government. George Washington had saved the revolution once again.
It wouldn&#8217;t be the last time. During the writing of the Constitution and during his eight years as President, Washington was repeatedly called upon to hold the fractious young nation together. He never failed to do so.
We commonly refer to George Washington now as the father of our country. It&#8217;s hard to imagine any nation ever had a better one.
I&#8217;m John Rhodehamel, author of &#8220;George Washington: The Wonder of the Age, for Prager University.&#8221;
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PragerU: What Made George Washington Great?

Dennis Prager

Brad Schaeffer is a historian, author, and musician whose columns have appeared in several news media outlets including the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and here at <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/authors/brad-schaeffer">The Daily Wire</a>. He delves into historical fiction with his novel &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Another-Time-Place-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1682616630/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1543689929&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=Brad+Schaeffer">Of Another Time and Place</a>.&#8221; The story takes place at two points in time, first in the modern-day streets of London, but also in the skies of Europe during the second World War.
The book is described as a &#8220;a novel about love, redemption, and two young lovers separated by war and desperate to survive the unparalleled violence consuming their war-torn nation. It is the story of a country gone astray, mesmerized by their mad Fuehrer, and the artist-turned-warrior and his courageous bride who vow to break his spell and make a difference, even it if means dangling at the end of a Nazi rope.&#8221;
The plot involves American reporter Rachael Azerod, who flies to England in order to meet Harmon Becker, the former German WWII hero to whom Hitler himself awarded the highest honors. However, there is more to his story than meets the eye. 
Becker explains how as the second World War breaks out, he joined the German air force known as the Luftwaffe, leaving behind his parents and his fiancé Amelia, who is protesting the rise of the Third Reich as the Jewish community begins to be targeted. 
After battling in the skies above Russia, Becker is transferred to Belgium where he is promoted to captain and tasked with training a new squadron of pilots.
He is given leave to travel and meet Adolf Hitler himself, who is to give him an award for his prowess in the sky. He stops off at his hometown where he learns a secret. Amelia has been hiding a Jewish family in the woods near their town &#8212; but not just any family. It is none other than his former music teacher under whom he studied prior to the war. Now, he must make a choice to either do the right thing, or report his own loved ones to the dreaded Nazis. 
&#8220;Of Another Time and Place&#8221; is not simply a historical novel, it tells the story of a man who is torn between a genuine love for his home country and his forced loyalties to the Nazi regime.
Schaeffer perfectly captures this tragic moment in history. It is an excellent and well-crafted plot that engrosses you as you travel with Becker on his journey of divided loyalties and dangerous secrets. Every step of the way, you feel the tension build as Becker makes choices that he knows could get him and his entire family killed by the deadly Gestapo. It is a story that you do not want to miss.
The Daily Wire&#8217;s editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro says of the novel, &#8220;I love Brad Schaeffer&#8217;s writing, and &#8216;Of Another Time and Place&#8217; is no exception. Buy it and read it. You won&#8217;t be disappointed.&#8221;
Check out the book trailer below:
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Book Review: ‘Of Another Time And Place’ By Brad Schaeffer

Germany

Jews

London

Nazis

New York Daily News

Wall Street Journal

The United States has a rich history of men and women who helped mold the nation into what it has become. In Prager University&#8217;s new video, &#8220;<a href="https://www.prageru.com/videos/hamilton-man-who-invented-america">Hamilton: The Man Who Invented America</a>,&#8221; lawyer, writer, and historian Joseph Tartakovsky discusses Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and his impact on America. 
&#8220;It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Alexander Hamilton invented the United States of America,&#8221; Tartakovsky explains. &#8220;George Washington was the guiding star; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary; and Benjamin Franklin, the sage. But Hamilton was the pragmatist, the man who got it done. This most self-made of self-made men took a country with no past and planned its future.&#8221;
Tartakovsky explaines that, unlike many other Founding Fathers who grew up in &#8220;tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates,&#8221; Hamilton grew up on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, but it was not a paradise. Abandoned and orphaned as a teenager, Hamilton became an abolitionist after observing the brutal realities of the slave trade on the island. 
&#8220;He soon took a job as clerk for a local merchant,&#8221; Tartakovsky says. &#8220;Before long, he was running the business&#8212;coordinating shipments of mules and codfish, calculating currency exchanges, and advising sea captains on how to deal with pirates. It was an unmatchable apprenticeship in trade, credit, and commerce.&#8221;
He moved to New York to attend Columbia University in 1773, but soon joined the Continental Army to fight in the American War of Independence. Gaining the trust of General George Washington, he quickly became a trusted staff officer. 
His true impact would come after the war, when the newly elected President Washington appointed him to the cabinet. 
&#8220;Washington named Hamilton, still only 34, to be the first Secretary of the Treasury.&#8221; Tartakovsky continues, &#8220;He served in the post for almost six years. His task was nothing short of Herculean: put the country, drowning in war debt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, on a sound financial footing. He succeeded, and in doing so set the course for America to become the world&#8217;s most prosperous nation.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
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<blockquote>
It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that Alexander Hamilton invented the United States of America.
George Washington was the guiding star; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary; and Benjamin Franklin, the sage. But Hamilton was the pragmatist, the man who got it done.
This most self-made of self-made men took a country with no past and planned its future.
He was born on January 11, 1755 on the island of Nevis. This was not the Caribbean of your cruise fantasy&#8212;quite the contrary. As Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Hamilton, &#8220;While other founding fathers were reared in tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates, [Hamilton] grew up in a tropical hellhole&#8230;&#8221;
Sugar plantation slave auctions were a regular feature of island life. The spectacle&#8212;buyers swinging branding irons as they surveyed the human &#8220;merchandise&#8221;&#8212;made a permanent impression on Hamilton: He was a fierce abolitionist his entire life.
Abandoned by his father at an early age, his mother died of yellow fever when he was 14, leaving the teenage boy destitute. A local judge had to buy him shoes so that he could attend her funeral.
He soon took a job as clerk for a local merchant. Before long, he was running the business&#8212;coordinating shipments of mules and codfish, calculating currency exchanges, and advising sea captains on how to deal with pirates. It was an unmatchable apprenticeship in trade, credit, and commerce.
In 1773, he arrived in New York to attend King&#8217;s College, the forerunner of today&#8217;s Columbia University. Swept up in the revolutionary fervor of his adopted country, he dropped out to join the Continental Army.
He quickly came to the attention of George Washington, who made him a staff officer. The sonless Washington called the fatherless Hamilton &#8220;my boy.&#8221; Fellow officers later remembered &#8220;Call Colonel Hamilton&#8221; as Washington&#8217;s instinctive utterance when important news arrived.
As Washington&#8217;s trusted aide, he was involved in every aspect of running the war, including actual fighting, where he distinguished himself on multiple occasions. But more than anything, it was his dealings with the weak and indecisive Continental Congress that shaped his political views.
The problem with the Congress, in Hamilton&#8217;s view, was that too few members took the idea of nationhood seriously. They quarreled over their narrow interests rather than uniting over the national interest.
As the war was winding down, Hamilton laid out the choice before the country in a widely read six-part essay. We could become a &#8220;noble and magnificent&#8221; federal republic, he wrote, &#8220;closely linked in the pursuit of a common interest&#8230;&#8221; or we could stumble ahead as a &#8220;number of petty states, with the appearance only of union&#8230;&#8221;
It was clear where Hamilton stood.
The speed by which the United States became a unified nation with a cohesive federal government is largely a result of his tireless efforts before, during, and after the Constitutional Convention.
Washington named Hamilton, still only 34, to be the first Secretary of the Treasury. He served in the post for almost six years. His task was nothing short of Herculean: put the country, drowning in war debt and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, on a sound financial footing.
He succeeded, and in doing so set the course for America to become the world&#8217;s most prosperous nation.
Historian Leonard White writes that Hamilton was not only the &#8220;greatest administrative genius of his generation&#8230;&#8221; but &#8220;one of the great administrators of all time.&#8221;
There&#8217;s no telling what Hamilton might have achieved had he lived a longer life. Instead, he died one of the most pointless deaths in American history. As hard as it is to fathom today, he was killed in a duel with the Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr, a man with whom he had a long and bitter political feud.
Hamilton fired his pistol harmlessly into the air. He never intended to kill Burr. To Hamilton, it was an affair of honor. But to Burr, it was something else. The Vice President took careful aim, shot and mortally wounded his rival, who spent some 30 hours in agony before succumbing. Hamilton was 49.
Hamilton lived in a time when the great danger to the national project was a government that was too weak. We live in a time when many believe that the great danger to the nation is from a national government grown too strong.
The ideal, Hamilton would have told us, is somewhere in between. But perhaps America will have to wait for another Hamilton to achieve that happy medium.
I&#8217;m Joseph Tartakovsky, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, for Prager University.
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PragerU: Hamilton: The Man Who Invented America

United States

In PragerU&#8217;s latest video, &#8220;<a href="https://www.prageru.com/videos/american-trinity-three-values-make-america-great">The American Trinity: The Three Values that Make America Great</a>,&#8221; Dennis Prager discusses what makes the United States unique compared to the rest of world. 
&#8220;Race and ethnicity have defined every nation on earth. Except one,&#8221; Prager explains. &#8220;The United States of America. It is defined by values. So, to understand America, you have to understand American values.&#8221;
Those three values, he says, are 1. &#8220;E Pluribus Unum,&#8221; 2. liberty, and 3. &#8220;In God We Trust.&#8221; 
&#8220;I call this &#8216;The American Trinity,'&#8221; says Prager. &#8220;I made up the name, but I didn&#8217;t make up the values. They are on every American coin.&#8221;
Prager breaks down each of the values and explains why they matter to the United States. One particularly important concept he addresses in the video is why liberty should always be a higher priority than equality when it comes to national values.
&#8220;The moment you affirm equality, as the French Revolution did, you will lose liberty,&#8221; Prager argues. 
&#8220;It is a basic American value that all human beings are born equal, and all must be equal before the law,&#8221; he explains. &#8220;But ending up equal &#8211; that&#8217;s a French and European value. And if you want people to end up equal, you must deprive them of liberty. Which is exactly what happened right after the French Revolution and in every other society that made equality its national goal.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
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<blockquote>
Race and ethnicity have defined every nation on earth. Except one: the United States of America. It is defined by values.
So, to understand America, you have to understand American values.
They are: 1. &#8220;E Pluribus Unum&#8221; 2. &#8220;Liberty&#8221; 3. &#8220;In God We Trust.&#8221;
I call this &#8220;The American Trinity.&#8221; I made up the name, but I didn&#8217;t make up the values. They are on every American coin.
The first, E Pluribus Unum, is Latin, meaning, &#8220;Out of many, one.&#8221; When first adopted as an American motto shortly after the American founding in 1776, it referred to the thirteen American colonies becoming one nation. Over time, however, most Americans understood the motto to mean one people from many backgrounds. To quote The E Pluribus Unum Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, &#8220;Over the years, E Pluribus Unum has also served as a reminder of America&#8217;s bold attempt to make one unified nation of people from many different backgrounds and beliefs.&#8221;
In other words, America doesn&#8217;t care about your national or ethnic origins.
This explains why people who immigrate to America assimilate faster and more fully than immigrants to any other country.
Most of those who have immigrated to Europe, from, for example, Turkey &#8211; as millions have &#8211; are not considered fully German by fellow Germans or fully Swedish by fellow Swedes or fully Spanish by fellow Spaniards. This is even true of the children and grandchildren of those immigrants.
And, just as important, few of those immigrants &#8211; or their children or grandchildren &#8211; will ever feel fully German, Swedish, or Spanish. But a Turk who immigrates to the United States will be regarded as fully American &#8211; as American as any other American &#8211; the moment he or she becomes a citizen. And they &#8211; and certainly their children &#8211; will feel fully American.
Of course, America has not always lived up to this &#8220;e pluribus unum&#8221; ideal. But the ideal was always there. And it was applied to virtually every immigrant to America.
The second component of the American Trinity is liberty.
Now, you might ask, &#8220;Didn&#8217;t the French Revolution also enshrine liberty as a central national value? Wasn&#8217;t its motto &#8220;Liberty, Equality, Fraternity&#8221;?
The answer is yes. America is hardly the only country to enshrine liberty; it is the only country to enshrine &#8220;Liberty,&#8221; &#8220;E Pluribus Unum,&#8221; and &#8220;In God We Trust.&#8221;
What&#8217;s the difference?
The difference is this: The moment you affirm equality, as the French Revolution did, you will lose liberty.
It is a basic American value that all human beings are born equal, and all must be equal before the law. But ending up equal &#8211; that&#8217;s a French and European value. And if you want people to end up equal, you must deprive them of liberty. Which is exactly what happened right after the French Revolution and in every other society that made equality its national goal.
America gives people the liberty to end up wherever their abilities, work ethic, and luck take them &#8211; meaning unequal. Therefore, professional athletes will make more money than teachers or doctors. That may be unfortunate, but that is what liberty allows. If you want equality, you will tell people how much they can earn &#8211; and that means the end of liberty.
And third, In God We Trust.
Unlike almost every other country, America never had a state religion. But it wasfounded on the principle that God &#8211; specifically, the God of the Bible &#8211; is the source of moral values. As the Declaration of Independence put it, all people &#8220;are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.&#8221; In other words, rights come from God, not from men. If rights are given by men, men can take them away.
The American Trinity is the reason America became the world&#8217;s freest and most prosperous country. But many Americans want to, in the words of former President Barack Obama, &#8220;fundamentally transform&#8221; it. They wish to replace American values with European values &#8211; equality of result and an ever-expanding state, which greatly reduce individual freedom; the celebration of ethnic and racial identity, which is the opposite of E Pluribus Unum; and the removal of God as the source of morality and rights.
Which set of values Americans adopt will determine whether America remains free, prosperous, and the force for good in the world that it has been. With the exception of the Civil War, this is the greatest internal battle in American history.
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Dennis Prager: ‘The American Trinity: The Three Values That Make America Great’

France

The Bible has been the foundation of Christianity for most of history. It gives us principles to live by and inspires us to be greater in our faith and in our lives. While there are many inspirational truths in the Bible, Christians grasp onto certain platitudes that seem nice, but they are not biblical. We print them on clothes, jewelry, and, more than likely, you can find them printed on a placard in your local Christian supply store. 
I want to expose these six lies that Christians believe. 
1. A blessed life is a perfect life. 
The Bible certainly says that Christians will live a blessed and abundant life. Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:8, &#8220;And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.&#8221; However, some leaders in the faith have taken this to mean that &#8220;if you just have enough faith, your life will be perfect.&#8221; In other words, they mistake being &#8220;blessed&#8221; for having wealth and material things. This is a misinterpretation of the Gospel message. 
As Jesus Christ said in Matthew 16:24: &#8220;Then Jesus told his disciples, &#8216;If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?&#8217;&#8221; 
God will provide blessings to us, but that does not make us immune to the trials and hurts of life. To say otherwise is a disservice. It leads to false expectations and when those are not met, it steers to a faltering of the faithful.
2. Not everyone can receive God&#8217;s love.
A core misinterpretation of the Bible is that not everyone can receive God&#8217;s love. This is a dangerous teaching that goes against the very nature of Jesus Christ. While it is true that God wants to draw every man, woman, and child to Him, He will not negate their free will, but that does not mean He stops loving them. 
Christ says plainly in the most quoted verse in the world, John 3:16: &#8220;For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.&#8221;
Now of course, as a Christian, I believe that no one is worthy of God&#8217;s love, but He gives love to us freely. The Apostle Paul elaborates on this further in Romans 8:38: &#8220;For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.&#8221;
3. I can sin because of grace. 
This is a dangerous trend that biblical scholar Dr. Michael Brown refers to as &#8220;<a href="https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/in-the-line-of-fire/56901-the-grace-controversy">hyper-grace</a>.&#8221; It is the idea that Christians can continue to live in sin because Jesus&#8217; forgiveness is sufficient. 
Christ&#8217;s forgiveness and love is all sufficient, but that does not negate the need for repentance. When we sin, whether unintentionally or willfully, we should get on our knees before God and ask for forgiveness. To do otherwise is to be insincere. 
The lack of repentance or conviction of sin is nothing more than an excuse not to grow and learn what it means to follow after Christ. 
As it says in Romans 6:1, &#8220;What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.&#8221;
4. Christianity is not a religion. 
I have heard this on many Christian television shows and from many pulpits, &#8220;Christianity is not a religion, it&#8217;s a relationship.&#8221; In my own evangelical circles, &#8220;religion&#8221; or being &#8220;religious&#8221; has become a catchphrase to tackle things like hypocrisy, legalism, and being pious. 
I do understand the sentiment, separating Christianity from the rest of the plethora of religions while at the same time calling out the hoity-toity. It kills two birds with one stone, but this does not make it correct. 
Religion is simply defined as &#8220;the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods&#8221; or &#8220;a particular system of faith and worship.&#8221; 
Christians certainly believe in God, that He has supernatural power, we have a system of faith and worship. In that sense, Christianity is a religion. 
Wishful thinking does not change that definition or the fact that Christianity falls under it, nor does it downgrade our faith in any way. The Bible speaks very favorably about religion and being religious. 
As it says in the Book of James 1:26, &#8220;If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person&#8217;s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.&#8221;
5. I don&#8217;t need to read the Bible. 
This is a dangerous idea. It comes from an arrogance that if you heard it once from a televangelist, you know what you are talking about, so you do not need to actually read the Bible for yourself. 
This is why when young Christians &#8220;leave the nest&#8221; of a loving church family and go off to college or work, they falter when they are challenged by someone who is not a Christian, but knows more about the Bible than they do. In one instant, their deeply-held beliefs are challenged and without the knowledge to back up their faith, they begin to lose heart. 
The Bible teaches us in 2 Timothy 4:2,&#8221;preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.&#8221;
It is important that every Christian, no matter the denomination or stream, read the Bible for yourself and research it so you can grow in the knowledge that God gave us. Of course, listen to your local pastor&#8217;s words, but study for yourself so that you can grow in understanding. 
6. A simple message is not a biblical message. 
No, I am not saying we should change the message of the Gospel. Got it?
That being said, there is this idea that the Bible has to be convoluted in a ridiculous cycle of fancy words and feckless platitudes. Any sermon, devotional, or study book that does not do a deep dive into full commentary on every phrase, word, or grammatical nuance is somehow lacking. 
This is not true and while there is a time and place to analyze, not every message has to be put in that context. 
As the Apostle Paul says in Colossians 2:8, &#8220;See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.&#8221;
Every Christian should study the Bible, but when they present the Gospel to an unbeliever, it is not wrong to do it in a simple manner. Christ certainly did this in his famous &#8220;Sermon on the Mount.&#8221; He broke down his message in a way that was easy to understand for His audience. 
The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 2:14, &#8220;The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.&#8221; 
The things of God are &#8220;folly,&#8221; as another translation says, &#8220;foolishness,&#8221; to someone who does not know about the Gospel or what it says. At times, the Bible does not have the appearance of rationality or reason, it can seem odd and downright bizarre. 
At times, it is appropriate to boil it down to help people grow and learn. Once a basic understanding is grasped, the deeper knowledge can be brought to a greater extent. 
I have found that in my experience, this makes the deeper meanings of the Bible have a richness to the person who is receiving the teaching. 
&#8212;
All scriptures are taken from the English Standard Version.

AIREY: 6 Lies That Christians Believe

Bible

Christianity

Religion

Alvin Felzenberg&#8217;s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Man-His-Presidents-Political-Odyssey/dp/0300163843">A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr</a>. tells the story of the life of the man who made modern-day conservatism mainstream. From his humble beginnings, to his rise in political circles, and through several decades of presidents, the book captures the man behind the movement.
The author takes us to the earliest days of the Buckley family, and we follow the famous conservative author and commentator to college. Felzenberg gives an account of Buckley&#8217;s opposition to America&#8217;s entrance into the Second World War, which shifted following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He would later join the Army and serve stateside as a second lieutenant. 
Felzenberg recounts his marriage to Patricia Aldyen Austin &#8220;Pat&#8221; Taylor, his time at Yale, his rise to prominence as a conservative thought leader, the founding of the conservative magazine National Review, the hosting of &#8220;Firing Line,&#8221; his opposition to the Iraq War, and beyond.
A Man and His Presidents offers the reader several unique insights into the life of Buckley. While most books written about the conservative writer cover specific aspects about him, such as his connection with President Ronald Reagan, this biography gives us the first broad look at Buckley&#8217;s life from beginning to end. Felzenberg examines Buckley&#8217;s life from a mostly objective historical lens and contextualizes the author&#8217;s life within the history of American conservatism.
Felzenberg has previously written about another unique figure in American conservatism in his nonfiction biography <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Governor-Tom-Kean-Statehouse-Commission/dp/0813537991">Governor Tom Kean: From the New Jersey Statehouse to the 911 Commission</a>. 
For more information, check out Michael Knowles interview with Felzenberg:
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Review: ‘A Man And His Presidents: The Political Odyssey Of William F. Buckley Jr.’

Iraq War

Ronald Reagan

Yale

Historian and bestselling author Andrew Roberts hosts the newest Prager University <a href="https://www.prageru.com/videos/churchill-man-who-saved-free-world">video</a> &#8220;Churchill: The Man Who Saved the Free World.&#8221; The short film details how former British Prime Winston Churchill is, in-large part, responsible for keeping the West free. 
&#8220;In May 1940, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi war machine were sweeping across the European continent. The future of the free world hung in the balance,&#8221; Roberts says. &#8220;An isolationist-leaning United States was an ocean away. There was one man who stood between Hitler&#8217;s seemingly invincible army and crushing defeat. That one man was Winston Churchill.&#8221;
Churchill was born on November 30, 1874, to Lord Randolph Churchill of English nobility and his wife, Jennie, the daughter of a wealthy New York stock speculator.
&#8220;From his early school days, Churchill recognized the power of words. Throughout his life, he used them with consummate skill. They never let him down,&#8221; Roberts says.
&#8220;He first made a name for himself as a war correspondent in the 1890s, covering conflicts in Cuba, Northern India, the Sudan, and South Africa. Though he never abandoned journalism, and became one the greatest historians of his age, Churchill used his family connections and his own fame to launch himself into politics. His confident manner and matchless oratory marked him as a natural leader.&#8221;
Churchill had a tumultuous career during the First World War. He became First Lord of the Admiralty, when he tried to lead campaigns against Germany through Turkey. This strategy proved to be a failure and he took the blame. Despite that, he rose in politics and became a leader before the Second World War, seeing the growing threat of Nazism in Europe. 
&#8220;The English had been traumatized, as had all of Europe, by the shocking amount of death and destruction of the First World War. No one wanted to face the possibility that it could happen again,&#8221; Roberts says. &#8220;Churchill, however, saw that a new confrontation with Germany was inevitable. And when the inevitable arrived with the stunning German attack on France in May 1940, a desperate nation turned to him. 
&#8220;He was ready.&#8221;
Watch the video below:
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WATCH: Churchill, The Man Who Saved The Free World

Winston Churchill

The Gettysburg Address is a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the brief but momentous speech during one of America&#8217;s darkest periods, just a few months after the bloodiest battle of America&#8217;s bloodiest war. Army War College Professor Doug Douds explains in a new <a href="http://www.prageru.com/videos/how-lincoln-changed-world-two-minutes">Prager University video</a> how the speech helped restore the &#8220;enduring national values&#8221; of a war-torn and divided America.
&#8220;President Abraham Lincoln&#8217;s Gettysburg address is one of the most famous speeches ever given. It is stunning in its brevity: ten sentences, 272 words, and delivered in just over two minutes &#8230; few have said more with less,&#8221; says Douds.
&#8220;Lincoln delivered the address on November 19, 1863,&#8221; Douds explains. &#8220;He was in Gettysburg to dedicate a national military cemetery to the Union soldiers who fell at the Battle of Gettysburg four months earlier. The North&#8217;s victory here was one of the pivotal battles of the American Civil War.&#8221;
The primary reason Lincoln&#8217;s speech resonates so strongly, Douds suggests, is that the president reiterates in a concise and profound manner the &#8220;enduring national values&#8221; expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
&#8220;Lincoln goes back in time, not to the signing of the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, in forming our government, was the product of many compromises &#8230; most notably, slavery. In contrast, the Declaration of Independence declares our enduring national values. In one sentence, Lincoln summarizes the American project: liberty for all and equality of all,&#8221; says Douds.
&#8220;Lincoln&#8217;s assertion is two-fold. First, the United States is unique. No nation was ever founded on a commitment to liberty and equality. And the Civil War was a trial to see if a nation based on such lofty ideals could survive,&#8221; he says.
Watch the video below:
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PragerU: How Lincoln Changed The World In Two Minutes

Abraham Lincoln

Gettysburg

Liberty&#8217;s Secrets: The Lost Wisdom Of America&#8217;s Founders by Joshua Charles is a look back at the writings and wisdom of many of the United States&#8217; Founding Fathers. From George Washington to John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, the author takes the reader on a journey illustrating how the Founding Fathers can help America today. 
This nonfiction book takes modern political issues and asks the question, &#8220;What would the Founding Fathers say about this?&#8221; Through the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, letters, and other sources, the author examines how the secret is not to abandon the principles of America&#8217;s founding, but to &#8220;rediscover&#8221; them. 
The author explains in the introduction, &#8220;I wrote this book for one reason and one reason only: to reintroduce my fellow countrymen to the Founders of our country and the vision of a free society they articulated, defended, and constructed in their own words.&#8221; 
Through careful study and examination of several historical documents, the author does a great job of taking a look at a modern political realities and explain how the values of the Founding Fathers would help solve the problem. 
Joshua Charles knows American history better than most teachers and scholars; he is an international speaker on the topic. He is also the co-author, along with Glenn Beck, of the number one New York Times bestseller, The Original Argument: The Federalists&#8217; Case For The Constitution, Adapted For The 21st Century.
Dennis Prager says in the Forward, &#8220;Joshua Charles is, first and foremost, committed to telling the truth about the Founders.&#8221; That is a rarity in these contemporary times.
Liberty&#8217;s Secrets is an insightful study about the Founding Fathers&#8217; principles and philosophy. The book shows the definite wisdom in returning to those ideals. As the author explains, these values can help the United States keep freedom at the forefront in modern times.

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