We have had the debacle of the Branch Davidians in Texas, another group in Wyoming and another in Montana. We have people like those who bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the high schoolers who bombed and shot their classmates at Columbine High School. This was both preceded and followed by shootings of classmates and teachers by students all across America. The United States has rocked and reeled from the epidemic volume  of drug abuse by even very young teenagers and older people. Since 1963, we had had a markedly increasing rate of all kinds of crimes, from purse-snatchings and muggings to murders and multiple murders.

The United States is still a great nation, and thousands apply for residency visas here every year, but by comparison to just a couple of generations ago, personal safety is nowhere near what it used to be. I can remember when it was very safe to live miles from the nearest neighbor and to leave the door unlocked when you went to town. Today living in the open country away from neighbors is dangerous — even if you have a cellular phone because criminals know that with surprise on their sides, the likelihood is that they can do or get whatever they want and be long gone before anyone discovers the crime has been committed. Few with criminal intent have any remorse if some innocent person gets killed in the process of them getting what they want.

But a recent travel program showed how in a certain African city, both illiteracy and crime are low because on nearly every street corner, there is a shaman teaching children to read utilizing primarily the writings of the founder of their religion.
These students are not attending compulsory school until they reach a certain age or grade, either, but because they want to learn.
My mind goes back to the early days of the United States when eager children went to the community church and were taught “Readin’, ’Ritin’ and ’Rithmetic” either by the pastor, his wife or grown daughter or some other person the people trusted with the important responsibility of raising their children.

Was it a perfect system? Hardly, but parents staunchly defended their rights to oversee their children's education. And children did learn to read, write, compose and do mathematics with reasonable speed and accuracy. Sure there were those who needed special education and didn't get it. Yes, all too often there were racial prejudices and children who had no chance to go to formal school of any kind, or only limited access to books. But look at Abraham Lincoln who had to borrow books and write his lessons on the back of a shovel with charcoal. Or son of slaves, George Washington Carver. who gave us peanut butter and plastics.

But in America, one thing children learned and memorized at an early age.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything....
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
4. Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy...
5. Honor thy Father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
6. Thou shalt not kill.
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8. Thou shalt not steal.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife...nor anything that is thy neighbor's.

These kids had a firm foundation on solid values. There is virtually no real religion that does not embrace most of the concepts to be found in the Bible's Ten Commandments
If the United States wants to reduce the crime AND maintain the freedoms that have made this the most sought-after country to reside in, we have to repudiate the John Deweys, the Benjamin Spocks, the Anti-Christian Lawyers Union (ACLU, legally, American Civil Liberties Union), the Bill Clintons and all the rest of those who, while demanding THEIR right to be heard, want to deny yours and mine.

We have to get the Bible, the Ten Commandments and prayer to the Living God Almighty back in our schools and courtrooms.

The other alternative is Stalin-era Soviet-style Communism, in which only the governing rulers were allowed to violate the rights, property and lives of the rest of the people. But since the collapse of that system, we have had a rampant rise in personal crime and ethnic warfare comparable to what the U. S. has experienced since the O'Hare decision.
Let us each contact our U. S. Congressional delegation and demand that the second half of the First Amendment be strengthened by a new Constitutional Amendment. “Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion NOR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF.”

Historically, the first Thirteen colonies did have a state favored religion, a “Christian” denomination they preferred. But Congress was forbidden, as the lawmaking body of national government, from establishing a national religion. The concept worked well until the O'Hare case when the Supreme Court unconstitutionally took it upon themselves to “...prohibit the free exercise thereof.”  And, just as I predicted on the day I first heard of the O'Hare verdict, “By the time one generation grows up with no prayer or Bible reading in the schools, they won't be able to build jails fast enough to keep them [the criminals] all in.” I also predicted that with each passing year that students had one less Bible influence in the schools there would be a noticeable, incremental increase in crime. Crime statistics bear out this as solid fact, today.