The Foundation

Noah Webster, who has gone down in history as America's Schoolmaster, once wrote that:

These United States present the first example in modern times of a government founded on its legitimate principles...

Mr. Webster was, of course, a contemporary of the founding fathers, and in point of fact was a founding father, albeit he does not get the same recognition as do some of the premier founding fathers such as Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, et al. Indeed, I've often said of Webster that he is one of the most under-quoted and under-appreciated of our founding generation, which is to say the real "greatest generation," what's-his-name's book title notwithstanding. But there's not a single person in American History who contributed as much to the proper education of American youth as Mr. Webster, who also once stated that "the education of youth is of more consequence than the making of laws or preaching of the Gospel, because it is in a good education that the foundation for law and Gospel rests for its success." And accordingly another epithet that has attended his name throughout the course of our history is that of The Father of American Education. Read that again: The Father of American Education. Yes, American Education should be distinctive from all others. That is, if we want to keep our Constitutional Republican form of government.

Getting back to the intial quote above, Mr. Webster did not simply leave it at that. He was a voluminous writer who spoke 26 languages. As I've written numerous times before he denominated the United States a Federal Representative Republic, each term in the descriptive having a particular meaning and the terms combined having its own distinctive meaning, of course. I'll be writing more about this in upcoming entries.