American Minute with Bill Federer: Deconstructing California: From Christian Founding to Shutting Down Churches!

George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel 1984:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered …

Nothing exists except an endless present in which The Party is always right.”

Called “deconstruction” or “cancel culture,” George Orwell described the process where “The Party” falsifies or erases the nation’s past to alter the trajectory of the nation’s future:

“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past.”

Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall described this:

“Along with our higher education came a debunking contest … a sort of national sport …

It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate …

Debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations.”

The book, A People’s History of the United States (1980), written by socialist author Howard Zinn, is of this debunking genre.

In a revealing turnabout, author Mary Grabar wrote Debunking Howard Zinn in 2019.

Deconstruction, involves is a type of gene-replacement therapy for a culture, selectively re-editing or ridiculing past individuals or events in order to advance a future political agenda.

Karl Marx is attributed with stating:

“The first battlefield is history rewriting”

and

“Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily persuaded.”

Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the communist People’s Republic of China, who orchestrated Mao Zedong killing an estimated 20 million.

Zhou Enlai stated:

“One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.”

President Donald J. Trump stated, July 3, 2020:

“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.

Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials …

One of their political weapons is ‘Cancel Culture’ — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.

This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America …”

Karl Marx is attributed with the narcissist statement:

“Accuse others of what you do.”

It is called “psychological projection,” where hateful people accuse their opponents of being hateful.

It is like an autoimmune disease injected into the body politic.

Socialists have used this gaslighting tactic in overthrowing nations, as President Trump explained:

“Our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains.

The radical view of American history is a web of lies — all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured, every motive is twisted, every fact is distorted, and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition …

No person who remains quiet at the destruction of this resplendent heritage can possibly lead us to a better future.”

Islamic leaders have used a similar practice in their conquest of infidel lands:

“Abu’l-Hayyaj al-Asadi told that ‘Ali (b. Abu Talib) said to him …

Do not leave an image without obliterating it, or a high grave without leveling it.” (Hadith Bk 4, No. 2115)

Socialist have used the tactic:

California is deconstructing its history, with socialist-leaning government officials allowing violent Antifa-type groups to pull down statues of its founders, including missionary Junípero Serra.

California was founded with churches, and went on to become one of the most prosperous places on Earth.

Now, California is closing down churches, restricting businesses, experiencing record numbers of people leaving, and has become the most in debt state in America.

What is the real history?

In 1535, Hernán Cortés explored the Baja California Peninsula, sailing the Sea of Cortés and founding the city of La Paz.

In 1539, Francisco de Ulloa sailed around the Cedros Islands off the coast of Baja California.

He was the first to call it “California,” a name taken from a heroic romance novel, Amadis de Gallia, published by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo around 1510.

In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo is believed to be the first European to actually explore the California coast.

Landing at San Diego Bay, then sailing around the channel islands, he claimed “the Island of California” for Spain.

He came ashore at San Pedro bay, which became the port of Los Angeles.

In 1579, Sir Francis Drake, sailing for England’s Virgin Queen Elizabeth I, explored up the coast of California on his voyage to circumnavigate the globe.

Drake anchored north of San Francisco at Drake’s Bay.

In 1595, Spanish explorer Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno, on his galleon San Agustin, sailed from the Philippines, named for King Philip II of Spain, to map the coasts of Oregon and California, down to Acapulco, Mexico.

In 1769, the first Spanish missions were founded in California by Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra, whose statue is in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

Most of the original cities in California were founded as Spanish Christian missions:

1769 San Diego de Alcalá (grew into San Diego, CA, cultivated the first olives in California)

1770 San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo (grew into Carmel, CA)

1771 San Antonio de Padua (grew into Monterey County, CA)

1771 San Gabriel (grew into San Gabriel, CA, began California’s citrus industry)

1772 San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (grew into San Luis Obispo, CA)

1776 San Francisco de Asís (oldest surviving structure in San Francisco, CA)

1776 San Juan Capistrano (grew into San Juan Capistrano, CA, produced California’s first wine)

1777 Santa Clara de Asís (grew into Santa Clara, CA)

1782 San Buenaventura (grew into Ventura, CA)

1786 Santa Barbara (grew into Santa Barbara, CA)

1787 La Purísima Concepción (grew into Lompoc, CA)

1791 Santa Cruz (meaning Holy Cross, grew into Santa Cruz, CA)

1791 Nuestra Señora de la Soledad (grew into Soledad, CA)

1797 San José (grew into Fremont, CA)

1797 San Juan Bautista (grew into San Juan Bautista, CA, restored with help from the Hearst Foundation)

1797 San Miguel Arcángel (grew into San Miguel, CA)

1797 San Fernando Rey de España (grew into Mission Hills district of Los Angeles)

1798 San Luis Rey de Francia (grew into Oceanside, CA, first California Pepper Tree planted)

1804 Santa Inés (Danish town of Solvang built around mission)

1808 Sacramento Valley and River were christened after the “Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ,” the Catholic communion – Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

1817 San Rafael Arcángel (grew into San Francisco Bay area, had the first hospital in California)

1823 San Francisco Solano (grew into Sonoma, CA)

Prior to the Spanish Christian Missions, the Indian culture regarded manual labor as the role of women, as it was considered degrading for men.

Spanish Christian Missionaries taught men to work in industry and introduced into California irrigation and oranges, grapes, apples, peaches, pears, and figs.

Spanish Christian Missions introduced the Indians to the wheeled cart, which had been in existence in Mesopotamia since the 4th millennium BC, and the wheelbarrow, which was invented in China in the 2nd century BC.

Technologically, native inhabitants had an existence somewhere between the stone age and the bronze age. Spanish Missionaries introduced cattle, oxen, sheep, horses, mules, burros, goats and swine.

Missionaries built foundries, introducing Indians to the Iron Age with blacksmith furnaces smelting and fashioning iron into nails, crosses, gates, hinges, and cannons.

Spain lost California to Mexico in 1821, but instead of giving people rights and freedoms, Mexico set up a monarchy with Augustin Iturbide as Emperor.

Iturbide was executed, and Mexico adopted a Federal Constitution in 1824.

In 1833, General Santa Anna became President and, together with his Vice-President Gomez Farias, instituted anti-clerical Mexican Secularization Acts.

He took all Christian Mission property away from the Catholic Church and sold it to political insiders who supported his government.

In 1834, General Santa Anna suspended Mexico’s Constitution and declared himself dictator, stating to U.S. minister to Mexico, Joel R. Poinsett:

“A hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty … a despotism is the proper government for them.”

When several Mexican States opposed Santa Anna, he sent his army and crushed the resistance.

Santa Anna’s ruthless actions precipitated the Texas War of Independence, 1836, and the Mexican-American War, 1846.

After the wars, California was purchased by the United States with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848.

In 1849, workers in California building a sawmill for John Sutter on the south fork of the American River, discovered gold.

Soon prospectors, called “Forty-Niners,” arrived.

California became the 31st State on September 9, 1850.

California’s Constitution, which prohibited slavery, stated:

“We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom … do establish this Constitution.”

Regarding California’s Catholic Missions, the U.S. Board of Land Commissioners wrote, as recorded in W.W. Robinson’s book, Land in California (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948, p. 28):

“The Missions were intended … to be temporary … It was supposed that within that period of time the Indians would be sufficiently instructed in Christianity and the arts of civilized life.”

On May 23, 1862, President Lincoln restored all 21 California Missions taken by anti-clerical Mexican Secularization Acts back to the Catholic Church:

“I grant unto the … Bishop of Monterrey … in trust for the religious purposes … the tracts of land described in the foregoing survey.”

Spanish Missions were an integral part of California’s history.

In 2004, the ACLU, similar to Santa Anna’s Secularization Acts, pressured Los Angeles County to remove a tiny cross from its county seal.

In 2014, the County restored the cross.

The ACLU, with an Orwellian fixation to expunge official public acknowledgement of the state’s Christian founding, brought a lawsuit, and in 2016, U.S. District Judge Christina A. Snyder ruled to remove the cross.

Many citizens are concerned that California may be demonstrating what Massachusetts colonial leader Cotton Mather wrote in Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702:

“Religion begat prosperity, and the daughter devoured the mother.”

Methodist founder John Wesley left a sober warning July 2, 1789:

“Christianity, true Scriptural Christianity, has a tendency in the process of time to destroy itself.

For wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of things, must beget riches!

And riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive to Christianity. Wherever it generally prevails, it ultimately saps its own foundation.”

Deuteronomy 6:10-12:

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities … houses filled with all kinds of good things … olive groves …

then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord.”