Customer Reviews

Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems, and Speeches

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Our form of government has been the most lasting, widespread innovation in modern history. As wonderful as that is, in many ways it is even more wonderful to return to the frame of mind and the values that engendered this invention.

Although (as Bill Bennett rightly points out) our founding Fathers (and Mothers) often fell far short of their own ideals and were profoundly skeptical about the potential of people to do the right thing, they also aspired to a kind of virtue on Earth that combined true nobility of spirit and deed with good relations towards others.

Bennett has put these ideals into the following categories: patriotism and courage; love and courtship; civility and friendship; education of the head and heart; industry and frugality; justice; and piety. You can dip your inquisitive toe into any of these, whenever you want. .... I suggest that in addition to buying a copy for yourself, that you plan to give this book as a gift to your children and grandchildren as they reach the age when they will begin to make important moral choices for themselves. .... In most cases, I felt like the material here was stating timeless principles that do apply today ....

Bennett does a nice job as editor in explaining the context of each passage. His love of these people, these ideals, and these words is obvious. It will move you. And hopefully inspire you to follow the good advice in those words.

Nicely done, Bill Bennett! This is a good use of history . . . to help us learn not to repeat the mistakes of the past needlessly.

I started listening to the audio tape some time ago in the car, and was initially somewhat ambivalent about the program. However, within fifteen minutes, I was thoroughly engaged, and fifteen minutes after that, wiping held-back tears from the corners of my eyes, wondering if "Nathaniel" (as in Hale) would be a good name for my future son.

Our forefathers, with courage and genius, created the most immitated society the world has ever known. How proud and fortunate this audio book makes one feel. I'm committed to listening to it with my teenage nieces and nephews on a "captive" drive sometime. It'll be a great topic for discussion.

As a military man who joined to serve his country and nothing more, this book is a breath of life giving air. To know that I am not the only one who feels the need to give all to this country. Mr. Bennett does an outstanding job pointing out the easily missed down falls of modern day society without ever calling out a single name or pointing fingers. WE ARE ALL responsible and just as guilty as the next for the decisions that have been made concerning American Morality. And Mr. Bennett makes that point abundantly clear. I just barely got through his introduction when pride and fear began to overwhelm me. This country is in trouble and as he says in his book "it may not have all the answers but it is a step in the right direction. Thank You Mr. Bennett for reminding me that I am an American and I have the right to stand for what is right. And I too gladly give of my time and life if required in service to this great nation.

This is like the Americana version of Bennett's previous excellent compilations, THE BOOK OF VIRTUES and THE MORAL COMPASS. In the first incredible book, Virtue's, Bennett takes the reader on a journey that spans the globe and bridges time with stories of virtue from ancient Rome to the modern world, and writings from Aesop to Yeats; and the Moral Compass is predominantly poems and fables. OUR SACRED HONOR, as the dust jacket directs, is filled with "Words of advice from the Founders in stories, letters, poems and speeches."

This volume contains the same basic structure as Bennett's previous works. Seven chapters expose the reader to a compilation of our Founders thoughts and examples of Patriotism and Courage, Love and Courtship, Civility and Friendship, Education of the Head and Heart, Industry and Frugality, Justice, and finally, Piety. Like we have come to expect from Bennett's work, upon closing this book, the reader will doubtless come away, a better person. As you read the wisdom of our Founders, self-examination becomes eminent.

There will be those who may choose to "kill the messenger" and shun this work citing Bennett as a "hypocrite" due to his indiscretions, but these short sighted and shallow individuals are ignoring a simple fact, Bennett, as a writer, or perhaps more specifically, a compiler of existing writings, is second to no one. His brilliant works are like a road map for the journey of life, and this fine book lives up completely to the high standard we've come to expect.

Buy this book. Read it with your children. Teach them the important lessons in life they are not getting from our school system. You will be rewarded a thousand times over from the price of this book.

Monty Rainey
www.juntosociety.com

This book was a gift from my uncle, and one that I was thrilled to receive. I have a passion for learning about the Founders and the War that defined the way we live today. The author brings out the best quotes, poems, and letters from the most influential men in American history. Their level of devotion is unparalleled throughout the world. I find it most admirable that these men relied on God for their wisdom and through prayer and faith they pledged their "sacred honor" to the cause. I am only a high school student, but I understand that these values apply to everyone in every class. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for God or guidance.

A fabulous collection of great thoughts, words, and people that every American should know, honor, and emulate. It left me somewhat embarrassed of the present state of affairs among our elected officials. No one can read this without gaining more respect, pride, and admiration of our predecessors. An excellent book.

This book gave me a renewed appreciation of the men and women who risked everything they owned and their very lives to establish this great country. Our Sacred Honor should be required reading for every high school student. The letters from wives to husbands brought tears to my eyes and made me realize how wise and caring these people were -- not just for themselves, but for all of us who would follow them. One letter of Thomas Jefferson gives special light on what he meant by "the separation of church and state."

This is an excellent resource for teaching your kids that America was founded on Christian Principals by God Fearing men. Provides PROOF that the American History texbooks are lying when they call our founding fathers Diests. Many, if not most of them were in fact devoted Christians.

William Bennett has outdone himself in this remarkable book, and once again given us a look into our past and our historical beginnings. Never have I been so moved as by the understanding I have been able to acquire from this book. After an in depth life long review of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Federalist Papers. Along with Bennetts other books this is one of the grand finales in getting a clear cut foundation by which to understand this great experiment called America. And unfrotunately to really see just how far we have fallen of track compared to where we could be, if we had statesmen like these remarkable men today. I am awe inspired by them at every turn for their intelligence, humanity, moral certainty and political will in regards to founding a young nation. And in their desire to base it upon the highest moral, ethical, political and civil standards. I feel only saddness about the shame that now confronts my country and what we have allowed to happen to our most respected offices. I now more than ever call for impeachment as the only solution. Keep up the great work Mr. Bennett.

It is one thing for an ordinary American citizen to blindly give a one-sided analysis of the virtues of our founding fathers and the decay in our culture that has followed in their wake as a result of lacking the courage of their convictions. And it is quite another for a learned scholar to do so without seeing any connection whatsoever between the lack of strength in their convictions and the remaining unresolved issues of our day.

In the preface, the author assured us that this would not be a collection of patriotic homilies, yet by failing to see the straight-line connection between the rationalizations and hypocrisy of our founding fathers and those being used today to justify policies and practices that would shame a nation of savages, and make our founding fathers roll over in their graves, that is exactly what this book reduces to. Worse yet, the abstract ideas and cherished principles of the founding fathers today are "parroted" even as they are being undermined and used for cheap ideological purposes by the very people who claim to hold them dearest.

Judging by how much the political party that makes a "special claim" on the virtues of the founding fathers deviates from the sacred principles espoused by the founders, it is not just a cruel ironic joke to suggest that if either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence were put to members of this party for a vote today, neither would pass. In fact, even as we gear up for the 2012 Presidential election we see several candidates misusing the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence for cheap and questionable ideological purposes, some clearly without ever having read them?

No one can argue that the men who founded this nation were in many ways extraordinary human beings. But in other ways the strength they needed to live up to the virtues they possessed (that the author here speaks so glowingly of), also failed them even in their own times. And the fact of the matter is that they did not struggle nearly as much with them as the author would have us believe? There is no need to rehearse their many failures and contradictions on issues such as slavery, genocide of Native Americans, religious intolerance, and their own interpersonal failings. These have all been carefully chronicled by more objective historians elsewhere.

What seems a bit incongruous if not disingenuous is the fact that this author fails to see that the blind spots in the virtues of our founding fathers (that he dismissed with a single wave of the hand in the introduction) are exactly the same blind spots we see today. Except that they have been enlarged, gained ground and given an ideological character that itself is disturbing and has taken on a grotesque life of its own, in our times.

The things I am speaking of specifically are the economic greed of our founding fathers --most of them were land speculators with pretentions and affectations of British high society. And their racist attitudes -- all were white supremacists, and Indian haters. Plus it does not take much reading between the lines of the Constitution to see that it was basically a social contract only between adult landowning white Christian men, period. The appeals to nature was a veiled reference to the inferiority of all the nonwhite races.

These were not small matters even in the 1776-1787 time frame; today they loom even larger. Had our founding fathers had the strength of their convictions and their virtues, and led the way, maybe we would not still be grappling with issues such as racism as still our nations number one problem - that is, next to greed and political corruption. Also, maybe Native Americans would not still be living in abject squalor on "Indian Reservations." Nor would our much herald "checks and balances" be in trouble of being overthrown by corrupt political arrangements that have fatally compromised them with large sums of money from agribusiness/Wall Street bankers/military/pharma/Prison industrial complex used to buy off our elected politicians at will.

As our nation reels at the same time that it rapidly slides into decline, it is not just the virtues of our founding fathers that looms large, but it is also their hypocrisy and failure to deal with the burning moral issues of their own time that loom even larger today. It is their lack of virtue that is being enshrined everyday in American intolerance, lack of civility, greed, racism, demagoguery, disrespect for the environment, and of all things, religious intolerance.

Virtues are meaningless in a social vacuum and only as abstractions. Two stars