Malcolm Cutchins: It only takes a generation to lose the real meaning of our heritage

Kudos to Hobby Lobby for their excellent July 4th full page ad in this newspaper with quotes from five of our early presidents, three of our Founding Fathers, and three of our Supreme Court justices, a couple of congressmen and two Supreme Court rulings. There were two observations each about education and by foreigners. These quotations emphasize principles about our country that are severely threatened by recent political “change.” It behooves us all to learn much more about our nation’s true history before the distortions (or complete omissions) totally replace the foundations that built this great country.

These ads have appeared in a large number of newspapers around the country. It would be interesting to know how few of the quotes are used in current history books.

Two years ago on July 5, I wrote in this column: “It is recorded that John Adams’ told his wife Abigail, on July 17, 1775, ‘Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.’ We must remain vigilant against trends toward socialism, loss of religious freedom, over-taxation, thinking only of government solutions, and other subtle threats that endanger our liberty.”

Singer Ray Charles, who died in 2004, was quoted in Time Magazine in reference to his opinion of the severity of loss of sight versus loss of hearing. (He lost his sight early in life to glaucoma.) To learn that a blind man concludes that his disability was “better” than being deaf, is quite profound.

The real history of our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage is there for us to both see and hear.

The real meanings of our Constitution and other founding documents are there for us to both see and hear even though obscured by obtuse court decisions and false claims. But it only takes one generation to lose the real meanings, and we are well on the way to doing so because too many among us have developed moral myopia and are “turning a deaf ear” to the truth.

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In the “Seasonal Forests” part of the DVD set “Planet Earth,” visual documentation of the fantastic Tiger Forest is given. (This DVD is often shown on the Discovery channel as well.) This forest consists of the northernmost trees on the planet. That’s one-third of all the trees with which our planet is blessed. The narrator notes the silence of the huge area (snow-covered conifers absorb sound and don’t support much animal life).

Perhaps the silence is representative of the publicity not given to such forests by the environmentalist-controlled media and those who are pushing for destructive global-warming taxation. This forest affects positively our entire globe’s atmosphere. While it is very important to hear, for example, about the loss of rainforests, this other-side-of-the-story needs to also be heard.

I’m sure that for every gloom and doom scenario of our planet’s demise, there are two or more hopeful ones, the latter shunned deliberately in order to fool the public and build a “consensus” that can be used to beat up on those who dissent to such economy-destructive taxes.

Dr. Malcolm Cutchins is an emeritus professor of engineering of Auburn University and writes a weekly column for The Opelika-Auburn News.