More Insight from Dr. Benjamin Rush

This comment was so relevant I wanted to elevate it to a primary post. Barney Barnes was my Chief of Staff at the Sheriff’s Office (every sheriff needs a Barney), but also very learned in ethical and historical principles. Enjoy his post…

Dr. Benjamin Rush was among the most accomplished and distinguished of our Founding Fathers. Dr Rush once quipped…I have alternately been called an Aristocrat and a Democrat. I am neither. I am a Christocrat.

A most remarkable man indeed, he served in Continental Army as Surgeon General after having signed the Declaration of Independence. He also assisted Benjamin Franklin in writing the Pennsylvania Constitution and in establishing the very first American anti-slave society. These two “Benjamins” were quite a dynamic duo. While Franklin founded the first hospital Rush established the first free medical clinic.

Benjamin Rush is one of many Founders who cause me to pause and muse in wonderment at the quality and quanity of the fruit of their lives. He certainly understood the center piece that individual virtue must occupy for a “self governed” people to retain their individual liberties.

As a principle promoter of the American Sunday School Union he walked his talk just as he had done as a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He knew all too well that young people must have these values infused into them in order for the Republic to survive.

He stated his case well in a 1798 work “Essays”…I know there is an objection among many people to teaching children doctrines of any kind, because they are liable to be controverted. But let us not be wiser than our Maker. If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into all the world would not have been necessary.

Americans everywhere would be well served in reviewing, and perhaps learning for the first time, the great reservoir of truth from which our Founders drank…inspiring, refreshing, and compelling them all.

Keep your powder dry,

Barney

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