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(Wasn't sure if this should be placed into ASB or not)

Benjamin Rush is one of my favorite American founders. With his many contraindications (He owned a slave while being a member of Pennsylvania Abolition Society) and eccentric religious views he's fascinating to read on. That said one of his ideas in particuler was notable for it's sheer boldness.

In 1793 he wrote an essay advocating for the establishment of a cabinet level "Peace Office"

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N25938.0001.001/1:7.8?rgn=div2;view=fulltext

Some of his ideas though seem like they'd be struck down as unconstitutional, he seems to be advocating a religious requirement.

The plan of this office is as follows:

I. Let a Secretary of the Peace be appointed to preside in this office, who shall be perfectly free from all the present absurd and vulgar European preju|dices upon the subject of government; let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian, for the prin|ciples of republicanism and Christianity are no less friendly to universal and perpetual peace, than they are to universal and equal liberty.

...

III. Let every family in the United States be fur|nished at the public expense, by the Secretary of this office, with a copy of an American edition of the BIBLE. This measure has become the more necessary in our country, since the banishment of the bible, as a school-book, from most of the schools in the United States.

...

IV. Let the following sentence be inscribed in letters of gold over the doors of every State and Court house in the United States.

THE SON OF MAN CAME INTO THE WORLD, NOT TO DESTROY MEN'S LIVES, BUT TO SAVE THEM

He also seems to be advocating an early public school system.

II. Let a power be given to this Secretary to esta|blish and maintain free-schools in every city, village and township of the United States; and let him be made responsible for the talents, principles, and morals, of all his schoolmasters. Let the youth of our country be carefully instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind: the Christian religion should be preferred to all others; for it belongs to this religion exclusively to teach us not only to cultivate peace with men, but to forgive, nay more—to love our very enemies. It belongs to it further to teach us that the Supreme Being alone pos|sesses a power to take away human life, and that we rebel against his laws, whenever we undertake to execute death in any way whatever upon any of his creatures.

Yet more seem difficult to contemplate in a forntier society.

V. To inspire a veneration for human life, and an horror at the shedding of human blood, let all those laws be repealed which authorise juries, judges, sheriffs, or hangmen to assume the resentments of individuals and to commit murder in cold blood in any case whatever. Until this reformation in our code of penal jurisprudence takes place, it will be in vain to attempt to introduce universal and perpetual peace in our country.

VI. To subdue that passion for war, which educa|tion, added to human depravity, have made universal, a familiarity with the instruments of death, as well as all military shows, should be carefully avoided. For which reason, militia laws should every where be repealed, and military dresses and military titles should be laid aside: reviews tend to lessen the horrors of a battle by connecting them with the charms of order; militia laws generate idleness and vice, and thereby produce the wars they are said to prevent; military dresses fascinate the minds of young men, and lead them from serious and useful professions; were there no uniforms, there would pro|bably be no armies; lastly, military titles feed vanity, and keep up ideas in the mind which lessen a sense of the folly and miseries of war.

and his last idea seems straight out of a fever dream.

In order more deeply to affect the minds of the citi|zens of the United States with the blessings of peace, by contrasting them with the evils of war, let the follow|ing inscriptions be painted upon the sign, which is placed over the door of the War Office.

  • 1. An office for butchering the human species.
  • 2. A Widow and Orphan making office
    • 3. A broken bone making office.
    • 4. A Wooden leg making office.
    • 5. An office for creating public and private vices.
    • 6. An office for creating a public debt.
    • 7. An office for creating speculators, stock Jobbers, and Bankrupts.
    • 8. An office for creating famine.
    • 9 An office for creating pestilential diseases.
    • 10. An office for creating poverty, and the destruc|tion of liberty, and national happiness.
    In the lobby of this office let there be painted re|presentations of all the common military instruments of death, also human skulls, broken bones, unburied and putrifying dead bodies, hospitals crouded with sick and wounded Soldiers, villages on fire, mothers in besieged towns eating the flesh of their children, ships sinking in the ocean, rivers dyed with blood, and extensive plains without a tree or fence, or any other object, but the ruins of deserted farm houses.

    Above this group of woeful figures,—let the following words be inserted, in red characters to re|present human blood, "NATIONAL GLORY."
So, two questions here which might be ASB.

1.Was there any possibility of getting any of Rush's ideas listed made into law?
2. Assuming that somehow some of his proposals did make it into law, what would be the impact on society?
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