Principle #2 - I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” from George Washington’s first Inaugural address.

Whether some people like it or not, or are even willing to admit it, the United States was based on Judeo-Christian values. If you strip away the religious context of those values, you will inevitably find that they are almost universal across the country even today. Values and principles such as honesty, compassion, charity, forgiveness, personal choice and liberty, responsibility, humility, and an entire list of “Thou shalt nots” have molded the overarching concepts of right and wrong that the majority of Americans accept to be true. That is the very fabric of our society that allows us to take that moral high ground that keeps us standing as a Good nation (see yesterday’s comment on Principle #1 – America is Good). To deny these values and their origin would be to violently rip apart that fabric. Has anyone noticed a little division lately? Over the last 50 years or so, there has been a massive “freedom from religion” movement hell-bent on erasing God from everything except our minds; though they’d like that as well I think; to the point that it’s “politically incorrect” to be religious outside of a church/synagogue/mosque/temple. By doing so, we inevitably are forced to check our values at the door as well. As Washington stated, if we disregard these values and principles, we will lose the great blessings that God bestowed on this great nation at its inception. Has anyone noticed the growing list of people/countries that don’t like us anymore or at best no longer respect us? If we want to restore our standing in the world, we must first realize how we got there in the first place.