Unsurprisingly, I find that most NFL fans approve of
replay—especially when it is their team on the wrong end of a bad call. Don’t
we all wish that there was an “instant replay” for life—a chance for an
“official review” always to get things right?
Of course, “getting it right” means that there is a standard,
much like the rules in the NFL, to which we all are (or should be) held. Despite
notions to the contrary, as we argue and debate the issues of our day,
ultimately each of us relies on such a standard, or some notion of right and
wrong, or fair play, or rules, or morality, or whatever you want to call it.
What’s more, the very foundation of our government depends
upon such a notion. In fact, the foundation of any good government, culture,
society, or virtually any situation where human beings interact with one
another rests upon what used to be called Natural Law.
Our Founding Fathers understood this well. However, the idea
that liberty, good government, and just laws have their roots in Natural Law,
or “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” did not begin with the founding of America . For
millennia many philosophers, politicians, priests, and lay people alike knew
the role that Natural Law should play in the “Governments [that] are instituted
among men.”
Jim Powell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and an expert
in the history of liberty, credits the Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus
Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. to 43 B.C.) with expressing the “principles that
became the bedrock of liberty in the modern world.” Cicero was the leading lawyer of his time,
and Thomas Jefferson credits him not only with influencing the Declaration of
Independence, but also with informing the American understanding of “the common
sense” basis for the right of revolution.
“True law,” as Cicero
called it, is the “one eternal and unchangeable law [that] will be valid for
all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God,
over us all, for he is the author of this law…”
“[The] Law of Nature” wrote English philosopher John Locke
(who also profoundly influenced our Founders), “stands as an eternal rule to
all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other
men’s actions must…be conformable to the Law of Nature, i.e. to the will of
God…”
Sir William Blackstone, another renowned and favorite
English jurist of our Founders, declared in his presuppositional basis for law that,
“These laws laid down by God are the eternal immutable laws of good and
evil…This law of nature dictated by God himself, is of course superior in
obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries,
and at all times: no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this…”
C.S. Lewis concludes that, “Natural Law or Traditional
Morality [whatever one chooses to call it]…is not one among a series of
possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it
is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained.”
Throughout the early colonies, the incorporation of Natural
(or “Divine”) Law was prevalent. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (the
first constitution written in America), as well as similar documents in Rhode
Island and New Haven, specifically mentioned that their civil law rested upon “the
rule of the word of God,” or “all those perfect and most absolute laws of His.”
References to, not vague religious babble, but specific
biblical texts, such as the Ten Commandments, can be found
in the civil law of every original U.S. Colony. It is a fact of history that
throughout our pre-Colonial, Colonial, Revolutionary period and beyond, America ’s
lawmakers and laws were steeped in Natural Law.
Thus we can conclude that from the beginning our government
has been “legislating morality.” All law is rooted in morality. “Laws without
morals are in vain,” said Ben Franklin. Not only that, but as I implied above,
every debate we have is rooted in morality.
It is absurd and ignorant to lament conservative Christian
efforts when it comes to abortion, marriage, and so on as some attempt to
“legislate morality.” The other side is attempting the very same thing! In fact,
the lamenter (whatever his political persuasion) has also taken a moral stand.
Thus, he is like the bank robber who calls the police because his get-away car
gets stolen.
What’s more, those who attack Natural Law (because an attack
on a position that stems from Natural Law is an attack on Natural Law) do so
with arguments that are derived from Natural Law. It is a self-defeating
effort. They are attempting to saw off the limb upon which they are sitting.
As Lewis puts it, “The effort to refute [Natural Law] and
raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There never has
been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of
the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them)
‘ideologies,’ all consist of fragments from [Natural Law] itself, arbitrarily
wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their
isolation, yet still owing to [Natural Law] and to it alone such validity as
they possess.”
Sadly, recent examples of such nonsense come not from
Democrats or their liberal friends in the media, but from self-described
“Orthodox Christians” within the GOP. Michigan GOP representative Justin Amash
recently complained that “We can't legislate morality and force everyone to
agree with us.” It appears that Amash was trying to impress
John Stossel and his gathering of a “thousand young libertarians.”
Stossel likes the fact that “Amash focuses on government
spending.” In addition, conservative author Arthur Brooks implores
republicans to focus on “improving the lives of vulnerable people” through
the appropriate conservative policies instead of “imposing an alien ‘bourgeois’
morality on others.”
Libertarians and their like-minded friends want to focus on government
spending or conservative fiscal policies, but they often fail to realize that
one does not leave morality at the door when entering the realm of economics. If
you want to make the moral arguments in favor of proper (“right and good”)
economic policy (which, of course, are ultimately based in Natural Law), then
you must accept the other moral conclusions (killing a child in the womb is
wrong; marriage is only between a man and a woman) that go along with them.
In other words, it is folly to make moral arguments in favor
of sound fiscal policy, all the while turning a blind eye toward killing
children in the womb or the evils of homosexual behavior.
(See this column on American Thinker.)
(See this column on American Thinker.)
Copyright 2013, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reasonwww.trevorgrantthomas.com
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