What
is "The American Dream?" Is it to make payments on a house
for 30 years and have half your income taken by the government?
What motivated the Founding
Fathers? What caused them to risk so much?
Few people today have heard the
phrase "Vine
& Fig Tree," but it sums up the
American Dream as it was dreamed 200 years ago. It is a phrase
from the prophet Micah, the idea of everyone owning property and
enjoying the fruits of their labor without fear of theft or political
oppression, of sitting peacefully under your "Vine
& Fig Tree."
A few highly-educated scholars and historians might recognize the
phrase, but you would draw a blank from the "man on the
street." A few people living in New York might have a glimmer of
recognition. The prophecy from Isaiah, Micah's contemporary, is
memorialized in a
United Nations garden. Needless to say, our idea of "Vine
& Fig Tree" did not come from
the U.N.
Nor did any Americans in the past get the "Vine
& Fig Tree" idea from the United Nations. And
the interesting thing is, many Americans once had the "Vine
& Fig Tree" idea. The Bible was better
understood by most Americans 200 years ago than it is today.
This page is a growing collection of references to a by-gone
ideal.
- The Puritans and Micah's
Holy Mountain
- From Democracy in America.
-
- England's Conquest
of Canada
- From George Bancroft's History of the United States
-
- The Bramble vs. the Fig
Tree
- Thomas Paine's critique of the king in Common Sense
-
- George
Washington's Vine & Fig Tree
Longings.
- A collection of references.
-
- Slavery vs.Vine
& Fig Tree
- James Madison's hopes
-
- A
Slave is Baptized (off site)
- Musings of the baptizer from Annals of the Poor. Containing
The Dairyman's Daughter, (with considerable additions) The Negro
Servant, and The young Cottager. By the Reverend Legh
Richmond, A.M. Rector of Turvey, Bedforshire; and Chaplain of His
Royal Highness the Duke of Kent and Strathern, 1815 (See page
154.)
-
- Anti-Federalist
No. 85 (off site)
- Concluding Remarks- Evils Under Confederation Exaggerated;
Constitution Must Be Drastically Revised Before Adoption
-
- Shall
Liberty or Empire be Sought- - Patrick Henry (off site)
- From a speech made on June 5, 1788, in the
Virginia Convention,
called to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
-
- The Polish De
Tocqueville
- Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz findsVine
& Fig Tree in his American travels.
-
- The Scotch De
Tocqueville
- Finds plenty of land, little aristocracy, and every man under
his Vine & Fig Tree.
-
- The French Opposition
to Communist Dictatorship
- With all his talk about Vine & Fig
Tree, French writer Pierre Joseph Proudhon
alienates Marx.
-
- Abraham Lincoln's
Overthrow of America's Vine & Fig
Tree Vision
- Lincoln was an archist
(Mark 10:42-45).
-
- Lyndon Baines Johnson?
- At least his speechwriter knew about Micah's vision.
-
- Jimmy Carter: The
Truth is Out There
- Can a Democrat be a Christian?
-
- Ronald Reagan Hijacks
Micah
- Can a Republican be a Christian?
-
- Micah vs. The United
Nations
- George Bush (41) speaks of "Vine &
Fig Tree" more than Reagan and Carter
Remarkably, references to Micah's vision seem to be on the
increase. The references to "Vine
& Fig Tree" and "Swords
into Plowshares" in the 20th century vastly
exceed the number of references in the 19th, even though the 20th
was incomparably more violent and warlike. It has become almost
trendy for politicians to speak of "Swords
into Plowshares." Many of these references are
to Isaiah's parallel prophecy, so they are not catalogued here.
next: Introduction: The Nature
of Government
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