“Can America Lose Its Greatness and Just How Close Are We?”

Jerry Stewart

3 years ago

“Can America Lose Its Greatness?

And Just How Close Are We?”

I believe that there has never been a time in our history when we have been closer to losing our America. What do I mean by that? Listen (read)carefully to this short talk, then let me know what you think.

In 1787, when our 13 colonies were still a part of England, a Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the “Fall of Great Nations”, and one nation in particular – the Athenian Republic, that had fallen over 2,000 years before that.

Almost prophetically, Dr. Tyler said this:

“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequences –

from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from great courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
and from dependency back to bondage.”

When I read this “Nation’s Fall Sequence” I wondered “Is this sequence cycle of greatness true?” So, I set myself on studies of great nations in our world history to see if I could find the truth of the matter, and although some great and powerful nations in history have been overrun by others in military conquests, there are some that have just lost their greatness – yes, there is genuinely a pattern, a sequence that great nations have gone through in history that have lead to their “greatness” downfall.

So, if this historical downfall sequence is a valid historical fact, then the question which “We the People” must be asking ourselves is this –

“Is this statement true for America?

– and if it is –

Just where on that Sequence of Progression

is America?

Where do I see us? I see us way down the list – certainly far down into the APATHY stage of the sequence, with so many Americans quite willing to become a socialistic DEPENDENCY Nation. And some sort of BONDAGE is just around the bend.

And what about our America’s great leaders in our history? Did they see the danger of destruction from the inside? In one speech given by Abraham Lincoln in 1838, before he even became our U.S. President, in a speech to a group of young men in Springfield, Illinois, he was quite clear – he told those listening that

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.

And what about our Founding Fathers? What about Jefferson and Franklin, George Washington, and so many of the others who wrote the rules to direct their new and free nation? Did they fear that our America could see its destruction come from the inside? Interestingly enough, this idea of saving, of preserving our America from the inside, was one thing that our Founding Fathers spent so much time and effort to warn us about. And they did their best to design our Nation’s Laws and Rules in a way that an internal destruction would not, could not, happen. But it is happening in America – right now. Oh, the land will always be here, the buildings, the houses, the roads, the schools, but the heart of America, what those before us have fought and suffered and died for – we are so close to losing it all.

On August 14, 1765, a group of men calling themselves the “Sons of Liberty” gathered in Boston under a large elm tree at the corner of Essex Street and Orange Street to protest the newly enacted British Stamp Act. The tree had become a rallying point, a meeting place for the growing resistance to the rule of Britain over the American Colonies.

The Sons of Liberty concluded that protest by lynching two tax collectors in effigy from that elm tree. From that day forward, that tree became known as the “Liberty Tree.” It was decorated with banners and lanterns. Assemblies were regularly held under it to express views and to vent emotions. A flagstaff was raised within the Tree’s branches and when a yellow marker was placed there it was a sign that the Sons of Liberty were to meet. When the news of the Liberty Tree spread throughout the colonies, local patriots in each of the 13 colonies formed their own “Sons of Liberty” group and they would identify a large tree or erect a pole to be used as their own meeting place.

Now, in those times, holding an unauthorized assembly was dangerous – it carried with it threats of imprisonment or death – but it did not stop those wanting liberty from meeting under that tree – it would not stop the people in their quest for liberty. So, in those years leading up to the Revolutionary War, the British made the Liberty Tree an object of ridicule. British soldiers even tarred and feathered one man and forced him to march in front of the tree. They did this to frighten the people away, to stop their efforts, but the people would not stop in their quest for liberty.

Finally, in 1775, a group of British loyalists cut down that tree and the patriots were given an ultimatum – stop their rebellion or else – but the people would not stop in their quest for liberty.

And their liberty? They fought – they paid the price – they won – there was liberty.

I recently read some pieces written by Thomas Jefferson all the way back then, and what he said about liberty, the defense of liberty is prophetic.