A California Matter
A nation’s people are responsible for the quality of civil government under which they live. The people themselves determine how much of their individual lives are directed, regulated, controlled, and restrained by the state. The quality of civil government diminishes in proportion to a people’s increasing need for the force of law in the government of their individual lives. The basest form of civil government therefore being the all-powerful state having the rule over a nation of slaves, of individuals having no property in themselves, in their wills, nor in the means of their own livelihoods. Like dependent children, the people require the care, oversight, and superintendence of paternal civil government.
The cornerstone of the government of The United States of America is, uniquely, individual self-government. The individual guided by the Law of Nature and by Nature’s God was the principle of law. Individual self-government in America produced a form of state or civil government which, of all governments in the history of mankind, is the least intrusive into the life, liberty, and property of the individual. For 150 years or so, all matters pertaining to the private and local spheres of government were efficiently and proficiently managed privately and locally.
Shortly after the establishment of the Constitution in 1789, Americans, already softened in character and weakened in their capacity for individual self-government, gradually ceased to exercise their liberty to govern themselves, their homes ,and the means of their livelihoods and then relegated these to the government of those few who, in the name of social or collective good, are always more than happy and willing to advantage themselves with greater and greater power at the expense of the individual.
Individuals, since, have painfully learned what a consuming, voracious appetite the state has for the care of both their private and public lives and for the control of both their individual and local governments. The state grown accustomed to being "all powerful" will not easily relinquish its pretentious powers, but will hold as enemies of the state individuals who challenge the legitimacy of those powers. But the fundamental principles of America, the Law of Nature and The Law of Nations, are divine, absolute, universal, and undeniable, demanding only that the people have the faith and fortitude to execute them.
Households in California which are exercising their liberty to have direct oversight of the education of their own children have been of recent weeks put in a defensive posture; though made adversaries of the state, reasonable home-educating households make adversaries of no one. For the liberty which households have in placing their children in the state’s educational system is the same liberty which causes households not to avail themselves of that system. These decisions are decisions of conscience. No one's conscience is to be imposed upon another’s.
When the state overreaches in its authority and gives itself permission to do harm against an individual's life, liberty, and property, it is the responsibility and duty of the people, under God, to use all lawful means to defend themselves against such offenses. For, ultimately, the divinely ordained purpose of civil government is to secure each one's life, liberty, and property; thus is the quality of civil government measured by the extent to which that security is in fact true.
Californians cannot be at war with the laws of their own making, less they be at war with themselves. If the state has overreached by interfering in local and household governments, then it is only because Californians have consented that the state do so. Once, however, the people are awakened to their own erroneous application of the powers of civil government, it is the responsibility of the people of California to lawfully resist, rescind, amend, or overturn those unjust laws and decisions. Laws are either just or unjust according to the spirit and letter of the Constitution of The United States of America, the supreme law of the land.
Modern America has been separated from its own history for seemingly far too long. The controversies and challenges presently issuing from within the local and national spheres of civil government are the direct consequences of the American people’s ignorance, willful or innocent, of the principles which established this nation and which promote the greatest liberty for the individual and the greatest individual capacity for self-government that the world has ever known.
Courtesy of philomathfoundation.com
Philomath Foundation was founded by Miss Katherine Dang of Pleasanton, California. It is a non-profit, religious foundation established to propagate the ideas of Providential history, self-government, and Christian education through the dissemination of teaching and study materials, American Christian Education seminars, history and government study groups, youth and adult classes, and the encouragement of all in the understanding of the God of Providential history and creation.
About the Founder & President:
"Katherine Dang’s extraordinary contribution to this millennium is to restore the Providential Interpretation of History and to encourage the contemporary Christian to judge of and deal with the affairs of the modern world… As a Chinese American Christian, Miss Dang has become one of the most erudite thinkers and expositors of Christ, His Story, in this age. How gracious God is to raise up a woman whose ancient heritage is China, ‘A complete and unmixed despotism’, and to prepare her to become the foremost American Christian historian since Miss Verna Hall to document and elucidate the Perfect Law of Liberty in the subject of Universal History."
After receiving an undergraduate degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1970, with her faith in Jesus Christ and the Word of God intact, Miss Dang was subsequently introduced to the Biblical principles and reasoning that distinguish America’s Christian history, government and education by Verna Hall and Rosalie Slater of the Foundation for American Christian Education. Subsequently, she began teaching at the pilot school in Hayward, CA under the direction of James Rose. Within the next 25 years, Miss Dang became a Master Teacher of teachers as these principles and ideas were taught, illustrated, and demonstrated in the classroom and later to the 50-member faculty of her own church-school of nearly 800 K-12 grade students. Retiring from the Christian day-school ministry in 1995, she dedicated herself to writing and compiling a four-volume work on Universal History from Creation to the present – the first two volumes of which were published in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Currently, Miss Dang is President of the non-profit religious and educational Philomath Foundation, Founder of Philomath Publications, home school consultant, conference speaker, and author.
Miss Dang teaches groups of home school parents and youth in 14 California cities. When she consults with individual families, parents acknowledge her unique ability to encourage, embolden, and give hope of success because she knows how to cancel the fear of achieving commonly accepted but unreasonable and unbiblical expectations for children. Gifted with the capacity to evaluate a student’s attitudes, disposition, and qualities of thought; equipped with practical curriculum ideas, outlines and resources of her own making; and tested by over 35 years of classroom/counseling experience, Miss Dang simplifies both the Biblical path and the goals for self-education and self-government. She occasionally accepts invitations to teach the philosophy, curriculum and methods of American Christian Education to assemblies throughout the country.
Philomath Foundation is dedicated to advancing the Biblical principles and ideas of American Christian history, government, and education and their applications in today’s world, concentrating specifically on serving the educational needs of the American Christian home and church through:
Adult study groups
Seminars
Curriculum materials, etc.
Consultant services
Courses for youth and adults
In America an education in Biblical principles produced the greatest liberty for the individual the world has ever known. Individual liberty is the basis of individual self-government, the cornerstone of America’s Constitutional Federal Republic. It is the responsibility of the American Christian to restore self-government to each of America’s governmental institutions: the home, the church, and civil government. For, if modern day American Christians will turn away from “faith in the all powerful State” to “belief in the absolute power of God,” they will, again, testify of the power of Christ in the life of the individual.
