Last week, while pondering America's ever growing and divisive political divide, I retrieved the 11th volume of Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization - The Age of Napoleon" from my library. The first third of this 900-page tome is the history of the French Revolution. It tells how Napoleon rose to power and became emperor following the revolution's reign of terror when the Seine River literally ran dark with the blood of the thousands who were guillotined - often only because those guillotined were of the wrong political party or were rich or had royal blood.

I thought as I read it I could be reading today's newspaper on the events unfolding today all across America - events unthinkable only a few years ago. Could these current events lead to a second American revolution? Could the Potomac River become America's Seine? We all hope not. But revolutions often follow when a government rejects God and subjects subjects to the "wisdom of man."

The French Revolution was inspired by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and the first of several waves of French revolutionaries attempted to establish their new government on the same principles established by the Founding Fathers.

But there was one major difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. God! God influenced America's Founders and helped George Washington win an unwinnable war. But the French revolutionaries left God out of their efforts. In fact they set out to destroy God in France. The godless revolutionaries sent many of the priests to the guillotine and then confiscated all Church property and made all remaining clergy employees of the state.

Could this happen here? Many do not want to believe it could happen but it has happened before and a few believe it is happening here today. They see it as they watch the relentless implementation of the progressive movement's efforts to cut off all ties to America's God, its foundational documents, and its Founding Fathers - proclaiming those documents outdated and the founders out of date.

Many of my generation now fear they have lived through the "golden years" of America's civilization. Yes, my generation had their challenges, and many, like our ancestors paid a heavy price to reach America. People seeking liberty still do. Look at America's southern border where those who live in Mexico under economic bondage and often fear for their lives, will do almost anything to escape their current way of life - even give up their life to live free.

Has America been the world's Utopia? For our ancestors it was. For the worlds enslaved today it still is. Why? Because of God's Influence in the Making of America! The principles embedded in America's governing documents are the principles of liberty Moses brought down off Mt Sinai. These documents have allowed America to cure many of the ills of society - not all, but many - slavery being one. Unfortunately many of the leaders of the descendents of those freed have rejected those principles and are leading their people back into bondage with the government, like the French under Napoleon, being their taskmaster.

Is there such a thing as a Utopia? Yes, I think there is! And America came close to the following definition of a Utopian civilization until corruption began to destroy its lofty goals from within with the people unwittingly being led down that same path of greed and envy the French followed when they followed their own French Pied Piper, Robespierre, down into self- destruction.

The Durants provide a description of a Utopian civilization:: "A people given social order by government, law, religion, morals, customs, and education, and left sufficiently free to invent and experiment, to develop friendships, clarity, and love, and to beget art, literature, science, and philosophy." This was America until the progressives began to change it.

Will America's modern patriots be able to restore America to its near Utopian civilization? I think they will but it will take much effort by the few who, like Patrick Henry, will rise up and say "Give me liberty or give me death" while being led by a modern-day George Washington.

Donald Conkey, a retired agricultural economist, lives in Woodstock.