During the time I worked on that effort, I got to know a number of the IADB staff. One of them who was born in  Spain, married an American wife, and now lives in the US, told me that in his opinion there was one particular thing that made America unique. It was that unlike any other country America was founded on the principal that all Governmental power was derived from the people. In most countries, he said, the opposite was the case.

I am not enough a student of International Political Science to know how accurate that conversation was. But I do believe in the first part, that is that the premise of the American experiment was that Governmental power was “derived from” not “established for”.

Quoting from the Declaration of Independence, a document which will be often quoted today, July 4th, but not paid enough attention to:

“”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

As a second generation American, all of my grandparents were born in Europe, I remain thankful to be a small part of this continuing attempt to expand the barriers to freedom that America has and continues to represent. I continue to believe that freedom is at its most basic not “freedom from” but “freedom to”.

While I worry that currently we are losing our way a bit, like most American’s for these over 200 years, I remain optimistic that the experiment will continue unabated.

Happy July 4th to all friends of liberty.

The area is really beautiful this time of year, the B&B is very nice (out of town so pretty quiet), we enjoyed walking around a bit late this afternoon and early evening and plan to be battlefield tourists the next two days.

One side note, the ice cream at Kirwin’s, which I am happy to report was started before I was born, an increasingly unlikely situation, and which evidently is a chain, was very good.

We noticed that in the sort-of-farm next door there were two chickens and a horse. It turns out that the two chickens belonged to the neighbor’s first wife and thus we learned the backstory here, in the outskirts of Gettysburg.

Evidently when the owners of the B&B moved in, the neighbor, his wife, and two high school age daughters lived next door. When the two daughters graduated from high school, they went away to college never to return. Some period of time after they left, the wife left and the husband remained living alone.

But not for long.

Less than a year later, a woman moved in. They evidently met on-line and she moved here from Phoenix. Shortly after she moved in, they got married and she bought two chickens (those two chickens).

However, less than a year later, she left also, they believe back to Phoenix where her family was which she missed. The chickens, and the husband, remain.

Ellen and I cannot wait for tomorrow to begin with that as the intro to our time in Gettysburg. How could the what seems like infinite ghost tours talk about that was any more interesting than that. I would rather go over to the next door house and get a tour by the husband.

My personal opinion is that faith is just that, faith. To me, faith does not have to be ‘proven’ by the historicity of religious texts or disproven by the lack of same. My interest has pretty much nothing to do with my Jewish beliefs, but rather curiosity as to whether the historic record is consistent or inconsistent, or has any evidence at all, related to the Bible as history. There has been a lot of new information collected over the last twenty years and the ability to interpret the material already collected has increased enormously. Thus there is lots to read and think about.

Over time, my interests stray a bit from that original focus and have moved to early Christianity and on to the middle ages and Islam, covering what I call the three major Abrahamic religions. When I talk about, and I guess write about, these thoughts I do find myself more cautious when discussing Christianity or Islam, since as a Jew I sometimes feel how my thoughts will be taken, which I try to always disassociate with faith and belief, may be misinterpreted.

A discussion about the Edict of Milan after the jump …

In any event, recently I received an email from the National Defense University, a wonderful institution about their Empires series, http://www.nationalwarcollege.org/EMPIRES/index.htm,  To quote from their web page “The purpose of the “Empires” series is simply to take a sophisticated and explicitly historical look at the experience of past imperial powers, always with an eye towards the United States’ current “imperial” issues.”.

While I intend to attend as many of these as I can, sadly I will not be able to attend the next one because of schedule conflicts.

Since I am easily distracted, I used the excuse of the email to look at past meetings in the series, then looked at the materials from those lectures, then looked at web pages about the topics in the materials, and on and on.

One of the lectures talked about Constantine. Ah-ha, a truly significant figure in Christian history. In fact, I suspect an underestimated such figure. One of the acts that he did was to issue what was called the Edict of Milan in 313. This Edict legalized the worship of Christianity explicitly but the wording was actually an interesting expression of religious freedom. It was issued in the name of Constantinus, Constantine, and Licinius, emperors nominally of the East and West, an organization established by Diocletian before Constantine.

The quote below is from one of the lectures, the emphasis was from the original speaker.

“We, Constantinus and Licinius the Emperors, having met in concord in Milan and having set in order everything which pertains to the common good and public security, are of the opinion that among the various things which we preceived would profit men, or which should be set in order, the first was to be found in the vultivation of religion: we should therefore give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire, so that by this means whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be gracious and favourable to us and to all who have been placed under our authority. Therefore we are of the opinion that the following decision is in accordance with sound and true reasoning: that no one who has given his mental assent to the Christian persuasion or to any other which he feels suitable to him should be compelled to deny his conviction, so that the Supreme Godhead (“Summa Divinitas”), whose worship we freely observe, can assist us in all things with his wonted favour and benevolence.”

To me, it sounds amazingly modern.