Following is the first of four blogs comprising a graduation speech delivered by Miss Dang to the Class of 2008 of American Christian Academy Extension Campus in California.

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.

Secondly, Christ would have the nations know they are by God’s making His, and He by right "is the governor among the nations," Psalms 22:28. For it is God who rules and overrules in all the affairs of men and nations. God is the supreme judge, king, and lawgiver among and above all the nations and pretenders to God’s authority in the earth. The interests of the nations are His interests, and it is in the interest of His Providence — His perfection, His wisdom, and His justice — to permit or prevent the rise and fall of nations.

"And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. . ." Acts 17: 26–27

God is nowhere far from any one individual nor any one nation. Each nation has a providential history; each nation is given its own light to witness; each nation has its own testimony of the One True God so that no nation is, nor shall be, with an excuse for unbelief. He is working in each and every nation all at once, for He has established them all for His purposes, for the good of mankind, and for the glory of His Son, for the glory of Christ’s power to make men and nations free from bondage and slavery.

God governs the nations by teaching: of a Creator in Nature itself; of the care of Providence in the riches of the earth; of personal life, liberty, and property in self-evident truths written upon the heart of every individual; of misery in disobedience; of tyranny in slavery; of sin in dying and death; and of liberty in the power of Christ in the life of the individual.

Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World, has come, and His Spirit has entered the life of the individual believer. The world is not the same as in the Pagan Era. The darkness of that heathen era is slowly, gradually being dispelled by the dawning light of Christ’s Gospel of Light, Life and Liberty. When the individual receives Christ, the individual receives the internal abiding and residence of Christ’s Spirit, which is the Spirit of Liberty.

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
II Corinthians 3:17

The increase of Christ’s spiritual liberty within the individual has a political expression in the natural increase of local self-government within a nation. That nation is blessed with its own internal peace, prosperity and independence whose people are governed internally by Christ.

(to be continued)