No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Part 1

“Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.” ~ John F. Kennedy

This is the first of an eight-part series to review history, and I hope it provides a better understanding of why America and Canada are facing the trials and tribulation of 2026. Fair warning, my direct approach at times may seem to be harsh, but I am confident CFP/AFP readers can handle the unvarnished truth as I understand it.

I am midway through my 80th trip around the sun, so that entitles me to remove the sugar coating and call things as I see them (the only entitlement I claim). As always, I will lean heavily on historic men and women who are and were far wiser than me. In my view, little new is happening regarding the human condition and the foibles we have had for thousands of years are just as prevalent today as anytime in human history.

I believe, the United States of America and Canada are on the cusp of some really bad things happening. More important, sadly President Trump doesn’t have enough time left in office to fix all that needs to be fixed in America, and I don’t know who Canadians can look to for help.

“No good deed goes unpunished.” ~ Ancient idiom

This ancient idiom refers to the reality that sometimes good intentions result in negative consequences. History is resplendent with examples of this reality and by the end of this series I hope readers will see the applicability to North America’s current situation.

I hope we can all agree that what we call western civilization is based on the foundation of Christianity. The first Christians were reformed Jews who accepted the teachings of Jesus Christ and took up the challenge of spreading the Word of our Lord. Because Christianity was founded, to a great extent, from Jewish roots, Christians have accepted Jewish history as recorded in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. That is why we maintain, to this day, that western civilization has fundamentally always followed Judeo-Christian values.

For the first 1,050 years, Christianity was the Roman Catholic Church, until the Eastern Orthodox broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054. Then in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses, and the first Protestant Church appeared to challenge Catholicism. Then in 1687 the age of enlightenment began and culminated with the establishment of the United States of America in North America and the French Revolution in Europe.

For the next 200 years, what we call western civilization was unquestionably a Judeo-Christian based culture. A culture that followed the tenets of the Jewish Ten Commandments plus the requirement that Jesus taught us, “Treat our neighbors as ourselves.” These tenants were the basis of all laws, even in the various monarchies throughout Europe, and of course were the foundation of the United States Constitution.

Western civilization is a Christian society. Members of western civilization have a common set of values which is the basis of all interactions with each other. We trust each other because of our common Judeo-Christian values.

We also trust each other because the founders of the United States and Canada were natives of or descendants of the western European Christian nations. We have mutual ancestry and heritage.

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.” ~ John Adams

Since the beginning of modern western civilization, the vast majority of advances in education, science, and technology are the result of the freedoms in western civilization. Without western civilization much more of the world would be what we refer to as the Third World. Maximum human ingenuity required an environment where innovation was rewarded in way previously unheard of before western civilization appeared on the planet.

Now that the fundamentals are laid out, we have common ground to look at what has happened to change the world we live in today. Without Christianity and Judeo-Christian values as a standard, there will be no free world.

“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.” ~ John Adams

In Part 2, I will address factors that started civilization down the slippery slope we now find ourselves on.