Welcome to Call to Decision 

American Minute with Bill Federer

 September 20

 Fisher Ames helped ratify the U.S. Constitution.

 He sat beside George Washington during the service at St. Paul's
 Chapel following Washington's Inauguration.

 Fisher Ames authored the final House language of the First Amendment.


 At age 46, Fisher Ames was elected Harvard's president, but declined
 due to an illness which led to his death on July 4, 1808.

 An orator, Fisher Ames stated no one could be eloquent "without being
 a constant reader of the Bible and an admirer of the purity and
 sublimity of its language."

 In January 1788, Fisher Ames stated:

 "The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which
 the...ignorant believe to be liberty."

 In his Dangers of American Liberty, February 1805, Fisher Ames warned
 that democracy without morals would eventually reduce the nation to
 the basest of human passions, swallowing freedom:

 "A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its
 own destruction."

 In Palladium Magazine, SEPTEMBER 20, 1789, Fisher Ames wrote:

 "We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education.

 We're starting to put more textbooks into our schools...containing
 fables and moral lessons...

 We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should
 be the principal text in our schools."

 Fischer Ames concluded:

 "The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other
 manmade book."