The Battle to Mold the American Mind

By David Lantz - Posted at Caffeinated Thoughts:

How do you have a good, even a great, country, without good people?

John Adams, our second president, must have thought about that question. Adams once said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Indeed, President Washington, in his First Inaugural Address, said that “the foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.” Clearly, our Founding Fathers realized that in order to have a good country, the people themselves had to be good.

So just how did the nation set out to help instill this sense of private morality in the people of our country? From presenting Bible stories in the McGuffey Eclectic Readers to printing sermons in the public newspapers, our leaders sought to instill godly principles in the life of our people.

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