This Fourth of July, Remember Freemasonry.

I once read a hypothetical along the lines of "What if Freemasons really did plot to create a new world order, and it began with America?"  When one truly puts some thought to it, the similarities are intriguing.

Freemasonry practices a social order with no classes and no lifetime rulers, save for those who've been duly nominated or elected.  It teaches that all men are creatures of the Great Architect, created equally, with all due right to live their own lives as they see fit.  It teaches that men should be able to choose their own religion, speak their own mind, associate with whom they wish, and that they should be able to do so all without fear of government reprisal or punishment.

In his book Solomon's Builders: Freemasons, Founding Fathers and the Secrets of Washington D.C., author Christopher Hoddap does an excellent job showing just how America and it's socio-political orders are concisely modeled after Masonic governance and structure.  I strongly recommended this book to anyone wishing further insight on the matter.

It's no secret that many of our nation's founders were Freemasons, most notably George Washington, whose portrait hangs in most every American Lodge.  Washington is quoted as saying, "The grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race."  It takes little faith to believe that his status as a Master Mason influenced his views on this matter, which are reflected in how he governed and influenced early America.

As any Mason could tell you, eight of the principle signers of the Declaration of Independence were Brothers.  Twenty-eight of the forty signers of the Constitution were or became Freemasons.  The Boston Tea Party was planned at the Green Dragon Tavern, which, coincidentally, was also where the area Brothers met to hold Lodge.  There can be no doubt that Freemasonry, more than any other organization or belief system, is to thank for the freedoms we now enjoy.

Whatever its airs of mystery and images of skulls, pyramids, and all-seeing eyes, Freemasonry's most radical, even dangerous, idea was the encouragement of different faiths within a single nation. Early in his first term, Washington communicated these ideals in a letter to the congregation of a Rhode Island synagogue: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens..." In other words, in this new nation minority religions were not just guests at the table, but full householders.

Washington and other early American Freemasons rejected a European past in which one overarching authority regulated the exchange of ideas. And this outlook is found in one of the greatest symbols associated with Freemasonry: The eye-and-pyramid of the Great Seal of the United States, familiar today from the back of the dollar bill. The Great Seal's design began on July 4th, 1776, on an order from the Continental Congress and under the direction of Benjamin Franklin (another Freemason), Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. The Latin maxim that surrounds the unfinished pyramid—Annuit Coeptis Novus Ordo Seclorum—can be roughly, if poetically, translated as: "God Smiles on Our New Order of the Ages." It is Masonic philosophy to the core: The pyramid, or worldly achievement, is incomplete without the blessing of Providence. And this polity of man and God, as Masonry saw it, required a break with the religious order of the Old World and a renewed search for universal truth. In its symbols and ideas, Masonry conveyed a sense that something new was being born in America: that the individual's conscience was beyond denominational affiliation or government command

The many freedoms we enjoy, be they speech, association, religion, or the others outlined in our Constitution, have their roots in Masonry and its principles.  Dare I say, were it not for Freemasonry, America as we know it wouldn't exist.  We'd likely still be subject to the whims of a ruler by inheritance, forced to worship with whichever body of belief they chose, our adorations aimed at whichever deity or deities they desired.  Thanks to Freemasonry, we don't have to be subject to monarchical whims of far-off royalty.  Nor are we subject to the religious edicts of Rabbi or Reverend, Pope or Patriarch, Mullah or Maharishi.

Thanks to Masonry and its influence on our founders, we are free.  Please remember that this Fourth of July.