Saturday, 26 April 2008
The brilliance of the Founding Fathers was in recognizing that people get their rights from God because each of us are a part of God. Then we, in turn, can delegate our responsibilities that derive from such rights as we have to some governmental entity to operate on our behalf. The key here is that under natural law, NO GOVERNMENT CAN HAVE ANY RIGHT TO DO ANY THING THAT I DO NOT HAVE AS A CITIZEN.
For example, I have a right to keep my house from burning down. Because I have that right I can delegate that right to a fire department along with other citizens because a fire department can do a much better job of dealing with a house on fire than I can on my own. I have the right to personal safety inside my sacred space so I can delegate certain responsibilities to a police department to insure public safety, or a military entity, etc.
There is a big difference between a right and a privilege. Rights derive from my sacred space as a part of the ALL THAT IS that is God. Privileges derive from my life within a society. I have a right to life. I do not have a right to drive on a public highway without a driver's license because that road does not belong to me. It belongs to our society and to use it is a privilege that derives from that society.
The predominant form of government in the world in their day was that of Royalty. In that kind of government, the idea of where rights come from is reversed. The king gets the rights from God, and then gives them to the king's subjects, as the king so desires. Even today that form of government is predominant throughout much of the world, especially in the Muslim world where the word "king" is replaced by "mullah" or "sheik" and Sharia law (which derives not from natural law, but is a body of religious law from these people's interpretation of the Qur'an.)
The Founding Fathers of America were products of the Enlightenment era that began in France. They were deists who have very little use for religion - especially Christianity. This comes as a big shock to what has now become the predominant culture in America.
Unfortunately, getting other people to behave in enlightened ways, and accepting enlightened values is not so easy. Today in our country, few people understand what our Founding Fathers vision was all about. As a result we have activist judges and legislators making laws that do not reflect America's founding principles, and administrators from the President on down who completely abuse the powers they were intended to have.
When the FDA raids health food stores to take supplements off the shelves, or police invade a community and take away ALL the children without any evidence of abuse, our government is NOT ACTING upon these founding principles. Because I have no right to tell you what kind of supplements to take, or how many spouses you can have, I cannot give such rights to any government. Therefore, the government cannot morally have these "rights" either. If they take them upon themselves anyway, our Founding Fathers said it would be at the peril of our country's survival and that is exactly what is happening.
These immoral laws intrude on our personal freedoms and upset the balance that derives from natural law. This creates a citizenry that does not trust their government and that is a very great danger and precisely what the Founding Fathers of America warned against.