The physician can not arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has laid bold upon the constitution, he can not expel it; but he may check the progress of the evil if he can recognize the symptoms in time.
[31]The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. [32]And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. [33]Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. [34]O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! [35]Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Luke:13:31-35
A fox, not the one pictured here, tested positive for rabies after attacking two people in North Carolina. SERGEI GRITS AP
A rabid fox attacked two people in separate incidents in an Eastern North Carolina county, health officials said.
Brunswick County Health Services said in a news release Friday, June 24, that a fox believed to have attacked two people in the western part of the county tested positive for rabies after being captured and euthanized.
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” 2
From being a republic, Rome was converted into a military empire. The cause of this conversion is of remarkable interest to the people of the United States. This cause is well understood by all students of history, and has been stated in a few masterly sentences by James Anthony Froude:—
“In virtue of their temporal freedom the Romans became the most powerful nation in the known world; and their liberties perished only when Rome became the mistress of conquered races, to whom she was unable or unwilling to extend her privileges…. If there is one lesson which history clearly teaches, it is this, that free nations can not govern subject provinces . If they are unable or unwilling to admit their dependencies to share their own constitution, the constitution itself will fall in pieces from mere incompetence for its duties.”
Rome became imperial because she was unable or unwilling to extend the privileges of her constitution to the nations which she conquered. This was the cause of her imperialism. The result to the Roman people themselves was that “their own liberties perished.” In refusing the privileges of her constitution to the peoples whom she had conquered, Rome denied a fundamental law of her own governmental being, and nothing else could logically follow but ruin of her government, of her constitution; that is, the ruin of the republic of Rome.
To-day the republic of the United States is coursing over the same track to the same goal. But when the tape at the end of the track is reached, the dead line of republican life will have been passed. The nation is riding for a fall just as certainly as did ancient Rome, that other great republic of the West. The one lesson which history teaches, “that free nations can not govern subject provinces,” is now being ignored and scoffed at, as if it were the veriest fairy-tale, totally unworthy of contemplation by reflective and intelligent minds. It is now being seriously urged that this nation is not “unwilling,” but only “unable,” to extend her privileges to the “conquered races.” This inability is said to be caused, not by any inherent weakness or lack upon the part of the conqueror; but because of the conditions and circumstances of the conquered. Precisely the same thing was argued in the Roman times; but such arguments availed nothing to prevent loss of liberty to the people of Rome themselves, and ruin to her constitution. Rome violated a natural law of her being, and all violations of natural law, governmental as well as physical, bring, by nature, punishment upon the transgressor In the Declaration of Independence this nation declared that she “assumed among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitled her.” The very foundation stones of this nation then are laid in natural law. That natural law is “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.” The United States is now engaged in a war, the avowed purpose of which is to deprive a poor people of “liberty,” their “unalienable right.” But the natural law by means of which this nation came into existence and being declares that “to secure this right,”—liberty,—”governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But now, the government of the United States is being “instituted among men,”—the Filipinos,—not to “secure” to them, but to “deprive” them of their “rights.” If this is not the violation of a natural law of our own national being, then there never has been such a thing in the history of the world.
“Goethe compares life to a game at whist, where the cards are dealt out by destiny, and the rules of the game are fixed; subject to these conditions, the players are left to win or lose, according to their skill or want of skill. The life of a nation, like the life of a man, may be prolonged in honor into the fulness of its time, or it may perish prematurely, for want of guidance, by violence or internal disorders. And thus the history of national revolutions is to statesmanship what the pathology of disease is to the art of medicine. The physician can not arrest the coming on of age. Where disease has laid bold upon the constitution, he can not expel it; but he may check the progress of the evil if he can recognize the symptoms in time. He can save life at the cost of an unsound limb. He can tell us how to preserve our health when we have it; he can warn us of the conditions under which particular disorders will have us at disadvantage. And so with nations: amid the endless variety of circumstances there are constant phenomena which give notice of approaching danger; there are courses of action which have uniformly produced the same results; and the wise politicians are those who have learned from experience the real tendencies of things, unmisled by superficial differences , who can shun the rocks where others have been wrecked, or from foresight of what is coming can be cool when the peril is upon them.” 3
In so many ways the times when Rome fell from her lofty estate as a republic and degenerated into a military empire are akin to our own. No historian has discerned this so clearly as Froude PRUS 137.2 – PRUS 140.2
Both people who were attacked are “receiving the necessary rabies vaccinations,” officials
“Health Services and the Animal Protective Services division at the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office are working together to investigate the incidents and inform the community about proactive safety steps they can take wherever they live in the county,” the release said.
Two types of foxes are found in North Carolina: the red fox and the gray fox.
Both are common across all 100 counties, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, but only the gray fox is native to the state. Sightings of the animals have become more common because of the “abundance of food and den sites available to foxes in suburban environments.”
Fox attacks on people are rare, the commission says.
But “any mammal can transmit rabies,” and health officials recommend taking steps to protect yourself and pets from “potentially rabid animals:”
▪ Keep pets up to date on their rabies vaccinations. In North Carolina, pet dogs, cats and ferrets are required by law to be vaccinated when they are 4 months old.
▪ Supervise pets and keep them on a leash when outside.
▪ Do not feed pets outside, as it attracts wildlife.
▪ Do not feed wild animals.
▪ Keep garbage cans secure with wildlife-proof lids.
If bitten or scratched by an animal that could have rabies, health officials say to “clean the wound well with soap and running water for 15 minutes and contact your doctor.” Your doctor will decide if you need rabies vaccinations.
“Do not try to catch any wild animal that bites or scratches you. Call animal control immediately to capture the animal for rabies testing,” officials say. “If the animal is someone’s pet, get the owner’s name and address and provide them to the animal control officer.”
The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of great general principles, as well as a recital of certain specific grievances. It was never written to meet the exigencies of one particular time or people. No nation prior to this one had ever declared it as a principle good for all mankind that all men are created equal, or that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. None of the great nations of Europe ever taught or ever believed these precepts. They were born simultaneously with the American Republic. They constituted her christening robe and her birthright, peculiarly her own, and the first infant cry of her national life. That nation of the old world which has ever been the foremost in promulgating doctrines of freedom and liberty did not believe these things, for she it was who fought them. She did not even believe them in their most limited sense for her most limited self,-the isle of England, as distinguished from colony and dependency. Much less, therefore, did she consider them as divine and immortal truths, applicable to all times and places, and worthy of being the basis of government among men in every kindred and nation and tongue and tribe and people.
Well has Charles Sumner said:—
“The words that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed are sacred words, full of life-giving energy. Not simply national independence was here proclaimed, but also the primal rights of all mankind. Then and there appeared the angel of human liberation, speaking and acting at once with heaven-born strength, breaking bolts, unloosing bonds, and opening prison doors; always ranging on its mighty errand, wherever there are any, no matter of what country or race, who struggle for rights denied; now cheering Garibaldi at Naples, as it had cheered Washington in the snows of Valley Forge, and especially visiting all who are downtrodden, whispering that there is none so poor as to be without rights which every man is bound to respect, none so degraded as to be beneath its beneficent reach, none so lofty as to be above its restraining power; while before it despotism and oligarchy fall on their faces, like the image of Dagon, and the people everywhere begin to govern themselves.”
And again he says:—
“These words in the Declaration of Independence were not uttered in vain. Do you suppose them idle? Do you suppose them mere phrase or generality? No such thing. They are living words, by which this country is solemnly bound, and from which it can never escape until they are fulfilled. Your statutes can not contain any limitation which inflicts an indignity upon any portion of the human family.”
And yet again:—
“The Declaration of Independence is the twofold promise; first, that all are equal in rights, and secondly, that just government stands only on the consent of the governed, being the two great political commandments on which hang all laws and constitutions. Keep these truly, and you will keep all. Write them in your statutes; write them in your hearts. This is the great and only final settlement of all existing questions. To this sublime consecration of the Republic let us aspire.”
In liberty, therefore, was the nation conceived; to these two propositions was it sacredly dedicated and solemnly sealed in the blood of its noblest sons. As the Bible declares that all men are equal before the Lord i.e ., that God is no respecter of persons, so the Declaration affirms that all men are equal before the law , and that this equality is their own unalienable and primal right. The Declaration does not mean that all men are equal in all respects. But it does mean and it does say that they are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And in this it recognizes the nobility of man as the creation of God, and makes no exception or distinction in favor of any human caste or human lineage.
“Obviously, men are not born equal in physical strength or in mental capacity, in beauty of form or in health of body. Diversity or inequality in these respects is the law of creation. But this inequality is in no particular inconsistent with complete civil or political equality.
“The equality declared by our fathers in 1776, and made the fundamental law of Massachusetts in 1780, was equality before the law . Its object was to efface all political or civil distinctions, and to abolish all institutions founded upon birth . ‘All men are created equal,’ says the Declaration of Independence. ‘All men are born free and equal,’ says the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. These are not vain words. Within the sphere of their influence, no person can be created , no person can be born , with civil or political privileges not enjoyed equally by all his fellow citizens; nor can any institutions be established, recognizing distinctions of birth. Here is the great charter of every human being drawing vital breath upon this soil, whatever may be his conditions, and whoever may be his parents. He may be poor, weak, humble, or black; he may be of Caucasian, Jewish, Indian, or Ethiopian race; he may be born of French, German, English, or Irish extraction; but before the constitution of Massachusetts all these distinctions disappear. He is not poor, weak, humble, or black; nor is he Caucasian, Jew, Indian, or Ethiopian; nor is he French, German, English, or Irish; he is a man , the equal of all his fellow-men…. To some it the state may allot higher duties, according to higher capacities; but it welcomes all to its equal hospitable board. The state, imitating the divine justice, is no respecter of persons.” 2
This is the true doctrine of civil government, this is the Bible doctrine for civil government.
There is still another principle in the Declaration of Independence which is worthy of notice here. The doctrine of the nations of medieval times was that “might makes right.” If a nation possessed enough arbitrary power and physical force to accomplish a certain end, no matter how criminally aggressive, no matter how tyrannical or despotic that end might be, the power to do was always supposed to prove the rightfulness of the thing done. And back of this time, in the dawn of European history, in the days of the Roman Republic, that nation had held to the doctrine of ” Vox Populi vox Dei ,”—”The voice of the people is the voice of God;” in other words, the Roman doctrine was that if the majority of the people approved of a thing, it must be right.
But the Declaration of Independence, with one simple yet sweeping statement, disowns, disclaims, and discards both the Roman and the medieval theories, and substitutes in their place a principle beyond comparison with them for its lofty and holy teachings. In the last paragraph of that immortal document it is written that these United Colonies as free and independent States “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.” PRUS 11.1 – PRUS 13.3
SOUTH CAROLINA
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