As a youngster in the early 1960s, I noticed an ideology in the aspirations of Americans, including the story of a brave uncle who was gunned down near Roanne as the U.S. Army pushed the Germans north through France in World War II.

Well less than a decade later, my dad earned his Purple Heart by helping the Army in its attempt to push the Chinese out of Korea. I haven't the space to elaborate on a host of other relatives, including my own military sons, who like most servicemen and woman unwittingly exemplify the American ideology which was clearly echoed by a single phrase in President Kennedy's Inaugural address of Jan. 20, 1961. The phrase was, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." More than just good speech writing, it was the personification of an attitude that sought the good of the greater whole. That spirit was present at our country's inception and successful maturation as a nation; and rightly so, because freedom, like grace, is not a blank check, but is one side of a two-sided coin - with responsibility indelibly embossed on the other side. To assuage that truth is to deny true patriotism.

Herein lies the rub: the great disconnect with many in our present-day generation of historical revisionists and the get-your-freedom-and-grace-for-nothing crowd. You know, those who are so militant about their "feelings oriented" causes they make the religious look like mild mannered pilgrims at a Native American maize party!

Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I have noticed a fascinating correlation between the now failing health of this giant oak we call America, and the separation of its mighty root system that appears to be contributing to its slow death.

For the sake of younger readership Mr. Editor, please indulge my brief historical synopsis. Speaking strictly now of contemporary America, the judiciary began severing the American people from their religious roots by dismissing school prayer in 1962. No more public school Bible reading would follow in 1963.

As Lyndon Johnson was getting accustomed to the presidency after Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam war escalated as domestic demonstrators marched against the Asian conflict and for racial equality. Circa 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated, and petrol was 30 cents a gallon. The war reached its escalation the same year Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy succumbed to the assassins' bullets, both in 1968.

In a subsequent separation of the United States from its religious beliefs was the legalization of "no fault" divorce, commencing Jan. 1, 1970, in California; other states soon followed, mushrooming the divorce rate and the feminization of poverty. In 1972 Watergate agitated to the surface of our national laundry. The U.S., in another severance of its religious roots, legally declared war on the unborn by sanctioning abortion in 1973. In 1974 Richard Nixon resigned. Then, 444 Americans were hijacked, creating the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979.

In the 1980s the courts began removing the Ten Commandments and Crches from public display. When thou shalt not kill exited the public square, the guns entered. It seems nature abhors a vacuum. Ironically, Congress prays when they gather. Why, then, the legal revocation of invocations at school convocations - perhaps a separation ruse

When Desert Storm blew into the Persian Gulf in 1990, our churches filled up again as scores implored the Almighty for the safety of family members 7,000 miles away. Double-ditto for supplication as Sept. 11, 2001, played out.

Fast forward to 2013: the U.S. in another repudiation of its religious moorings told gay soldiers to "come out" and more gay couples to wed, a flippant renouncing of convention against the honorable traditions of two centuries old United States institutions: Marriage and the military. That, contrary to the legislative approval in at least 33 states that had already defined marriage "between one man and one woman." Federal judges again to the rescue, who in a recent usurpation of "a government of the people, by the people, for the people" deemed the traditional marriage laws unconstitutional in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia and Kentucky. Are the Feds really "deriving their powers from the consent of the governed"?

In 2014, millions are here illegally, millions are unemployed, and millions have had their health care canceled due to the Affordable Care Act. We are over a trillion in debt, just to the Chinese, and we are still trying to peacefully extricate ourselves from wars in Islamic countries. Families are broken, with wife, child, drug and alcohol abuse, as prevalent as obesity; wherein Americans gastronomically anesthetize themselves. As Dr. Phil might ask, "How's that working for you?" Which begs the question, "How long, once a tree's core roots have been severed, before the next powerful storm unearths it to its death?"

In light of all of this, there are still those who are looking for some hope and change through a lone man instead of a corporate return to our profound spiritual and moral creeds. And after all this, there are still those who excoriate our faith in God, which has been a well-documented historical trust ... "A very present help in times of trouble."

Ironically, the same unshakable faith that enabled America's Founders to break from an oppressive British empire thus founding a country with the greatest freedoms and constitution ever written. Is the same religion now being castigated as the bane of freedom and a weapon of "mass obstruction" to the happiness of the LGBT community? A group, whose pubescent historical naivete insists on kicking earthward the faith-fortified liberty-ladder that raised all of us! Don't they realize, our freedom was woven together, along with our faith, into a finely embroidered context, and the indiscriminate attempt to remove certain threads is to unravel the beauty and strength of the whole? And contrary to their unprepossessing hysteria, American religion does not seek an odious marginalization of classes of people, only their embrace of marginal causes, that carelessly seek, not the good of the whole, but the narcissistic exaggerations of the few.

Adhere to your religious convictions America, they are based on the greatest story ever told, from the most published book ever sold!

Dan Cooper is a Post Falls resident.