Understanding History To Understand the Present

Life Matters

In this vital episode, Commissioner Johnston examines how history is being directly attacked and rewritten at this very moment. This practice is the ongoing pattern of progressive, historical revisionism.

It also reflects a fundamental principle lost on most of us in our day-to-day lives: what has preceded us has lead to this moment. A proper understanding of history will empower us to address this moment in which we live.

Brian ties this to an understanding of the abortion culture surrounding us, and even more importantly, to what truly happened in the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions. Many Americans and even numerous pro-lifers do not fully understand the impact these decisions, nearly 50 years ago, have had on our present moment and how we are to address it.

Brian explains that our misunderstandings of history are not our fault. Many educational institutions, particularly in the United States, are under the sway of the John Dewey view of education, progressivism, and relativism.

In Europe, this had already taken place with the wide-spread adoption and excitement surrounding Hegel‘s view of history. History was considered matters of the past. But, “what is significant is that we are now going into the future. What truly matters is that these old things are left in the past and we now progress into a brave new world of promise.” In this improved world, “the government is to bring about these courageous further steps of progress.”

But this is a very distorted view of history. History is cumulative. History has led up to this very moment.

In the Spielberg movie, Amistad, the lead Mende tribesman was brought before the United States Supreme Court. He was asked what he wanted to do and why he was doing it His answer not only summed up their decision but summed up a view and understanding of history that all of us should share: “My ancestors lived so that I might stand in this moment.”

This incisive understanding of history and respect for the facts of history will also help us in understanding our moment, in understanding our present battles.

What happened in The Civil War

Brian then takes a deep dive into exploring one of the most common misunderstandings of Abraham Lincoln, his commitments, and the real nature of the Civil War. Many think that the Civil War was about suppressing the slave states rights to own slaves. But that is not the case.

In fact, Lincoln’s position on states rights was exactly the opposite. Lincoln was fighting for the right of FREE states to exercise their duty within their jurisdictions to protect the lives of those under their authority. Once that ability was established, then the Senate could consider what laws ought to apply to all the states. That would eventually happen in the13th and 14th amendments, but it was not possible if free states were not even allowed to abolish slavery!

Several actions by the federal government were actually preventing the rights of the free states to be exercised within their borders. The Fugitive Slave Law, the Kansas Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott Decision, all infringed on the rights of free states to exercise their duty under natural law to protect those who could not protect themselves (the same basis that individual states would later use to ban abortion).

Even though free states could say that they were free states, according to the federal government, a slave was never legally free until he or she crossed the Canadian border. The most odious of these offenses against free states is the blatantly pro-slavery Dred Scott Decision, which explicitly said that states could not ensure freedom or protect the lives of slaves inside their jurisdictions.

This was actually the same action of the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions: proclaiming it as federal law that one could own another human being, and that one was free to kill a human being whom they claim to own. States were not free to ban this principle of deadly ownership of human beings.

Roe and Doe specifically prohibited pro-life states from enacting their laws. This was a direct assault on the nature of the Constitution and the authority of the States. In addition, it assumed the authority of the United States Senate to both speak for, and then impose federal law on the several states. The nature of the United States Constitution was trampled by the Dred Scott Decision in slavery, was trampled by Roe and Doe and by the abortion culture which they unleashed.