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Fisher Ames "A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction."
He sat next to George Washington in the pew at St. Paul's Chapel in New York during the religious service following Washington's Presidential Inauguration.

He helped ratify the U.S. Constitution.
His name was Fisher Ames.

Fisher Ames was a Congressman from Massachusetts where, on August 20, 1789, he proposed as the wording of the First Amendment (Annals of Congress, 1:766):

"Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience."
Fisher Ames contrasted MONARCHY with a REPUBLIC (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, Second Series, chp. 7-"Politics," 1844, p. 97; Library of America, 1983):

"Monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom;

whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water."
America's republic was described by Fisher Ames in his articled "Monitor," (The New England Palladium of Boston, 1804 (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston, T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 272):

"We now set out with our experimental project, exactly where Rome failed with hers. We now begin, where she ended."
One of the most famous orators to have served in Congress, Fisher Ames, at the age of 46, was elected Harvard's president, but he declined to serve due to an illness which eventually led to his death.

On July 4, 1808, exactly 32 years to the day after America declared its Independence , Fisher Ames died at the age of 50.
Warning against the deep state temptation of those in power to rig the system to stay in power, Fisher Ames wrote in "Speeches on Mr. Madison's Resolutions" (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston, T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 48):

"To control trade by law, instead of leaving it to the better management of the merchants ... (is) to play the tyrant in the counting house, and in directing the private expenses of our citizens, are employments equally unworthy of discussion."
At the Massachusetts Convention, January 15, 1788, Fisher Ames warned that democracy without morals would eventually reduce the nation to the basest of human passions, swallowing freedom:

"A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction."
Fisher Ames commented in "The Dangers of American Liberty," 1805 (published in Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854, pp. 349):

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty."
"Licentiousness" is defined as: sexually unrestrained; lascivious; libertine; lewd; unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral ... Synonyms: abandoned, profligate.
As Fisher Ames had predicted, the very State he had been a Congressman from - Massachusetts - has moved in the direction of licentiousness.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court, in the 2003 case of Goodridge , necessitated the State recognize same-sex marriage.
Since then, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender agenda began to be taught in schools with sexually explicit materials which a few years earlier would have been prosecuted as pornography.
Individuals not immediately embracing this new agenda are discriminated against; employees fired; businesses sued; attorneys disbarred; adoption agencies penalized; domestic violence increased; churches demonized, hospitals made to provide sex change services; and doctors who expose the health risks of licentious lifestyles are labeled.
Freedom of religion and freedom speech have diminished for those holding biblical morals similar to those held by Fisher Ames.

In an ironic twist, those who have come out of the closet seem determined to shove others into it!
Russell Kirk described Fisher Ames in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2001, chapter 3, p. 81-85):

"As time runs on, Ames grows more intense.

Democracy cannot last ... When property is snatched from hand to hand ... then society submits cravenly to the immorality of rule by the sword ...

Of all the terrors of democracy, the worst is its destruction of moral habits. '

A democratic society will soon find its morals ...the surly companion of its l icentious joys' ... Is there no check upon these excesses? ..."
Russell Kirk continued:

"The press supplies an endless stimulus to popular imagination and passion; the press lives upon heat and coarse drama and incessant restlessness.

'It has inspired ignorance with presumption' ... 'Constitutions,' says Ames, 'are but paper; society is the substratum of government' ...

Like Samuel Johnson, (Ames) finds the key to political decency in private morality."
Aaron McLeod wrote in "Great Conservative Minds: A Condensation of Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind" (October 2005, Alabama Policy Institute, Birmingham, AL, ch. 3, p. 9-10}:

"Ames was pessimistic about the American experiment because he doubted there were sufficient numbers of men with the moral courage and charisma to preserve the country from the passions of the multitudes and the demagogues who master them.

He was convinced that the people as a body cannot reason and are easily swayed by clever speakers and political agents. In his words, 'few can reason, all can feel' ...

Democracy could not last, Ames thundered, 'for despotism lies at the door; when the tyranny of the majority leads to chaos, society will submit to rule by the sword ...'"
Aaron McLeod continued:

"To Ames, what doomed the American experiment was the democratic destruction of morals ...

Ames believed that justice and morality in America would fail, and popular rule cannot support justice, without which moral habits fall away.

Neither the free press nor paper constitutions could safe-guard order from these excesses, for the first is merely a stimulus to popular passion and imagination, while the other is a thin bulwark against corruption.

When old prescription and tradition are dismissed, only naked force matters."
Fisher Ames' predictions were echoed by Britain's Lord Thomas MacCauley, who wrote in 1857 to New York's Democrat Secretary of State, Henry S. Randall:

"Distress ... makes the laborer ... discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million while another cannot get a full meal ...

The day will come when, in the State of New York, a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast ... will choose a Legislature ...

On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith.

On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists ... and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries.

Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working man who hears his children cry for more bread?"
When George Washington died on December 14, 1799. Fisher Ames delivered a eulogy "An Oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington," February 8, 1800.

Ames' famous address was given at Boston's Old South Meeting-House, before the Lieutenant Governor, the Council, and both branches of the Massachusetts Legislature (Boston: Young & Minns, 1800, p. 23). Ames stated:

"Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits ...

It is founded on morals and religion , whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers."

Ames understood that in America:

The COUNTRY is controlled by LAWS >
LAWS are controlled by POLITICIANS >
POLITICIANS are controlled by VOTERS >
VOTERS are controlled by PUBLIC OPINION >
PUBLIC OPINION is controlled by MEDIA (News,
Hollywood, Internet...) & EDUCATION >
so whoever controls MEDIA & EDUCATION ,
controls the COUNTRY.
Similarly, John Adams warned October 11, 1798:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.

Avarice (greed), ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net ...

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Fisher Ames' views reflected George Washington's views.

In a draft of this First Inaugural Address, April 1789, George Washington wrote:

"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God ... prove that the best institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes.

Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power ... overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity:

it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable,

and if I may so express myself,

that no wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."
George Washington made a similar statement in his Farewell Address, September 19, 1796:

"With slight shades of difference, you have the same Religion ...

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.

In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness ...

The mere Politician ... ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity ..."
Washington added:

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle ...

Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government ...

Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
Fisher Ames recommended the Bible, as quoted in the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Bela Bates Edward, editor of Quarterly Observer, Brattleboro, VT: Joseph Steen & Co.; Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.; New York: Lewis Colby, 1851, p. 78):

"No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language."
D. James Kennedy paraphrased the words of Fisher Ames in his address "The Great Deception" (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Coral Ridge Ministries, 1989; 1993, p. 3; Dec. 1, 1992, Ottawa, IL):

"We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We're starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools.

We've become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons.

We're spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book."
In his own words, Fisher Ames expressed that children reading the Bible was necessary for America's free government to continue (The Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston, Vol. XVII, No. 2,8, Jan. 27, 1801, p. 1):

"It has been the custom of late years to put a number of little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons ...

Many books for children are ... injudiciously compiled ... the moral is drawn from the fable they know not why ...

Some of the most admired works of this kind abound with a frothy sort of sentiment ... the chief merit of which consists in shedding tears and giving away money ...

Why then, if these books for children must be retained ... should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book?

Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble.

The reverence for the Sacred Book, that is thus early impressed, lasts long - and probably, if not impressed in infancy never takes firm hold of the mind.

One consideration more is important:

In no book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant - and by teaching all the same book they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith."
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