It is also important to note that even though the Founders believed the Rights of the people came from God, they did not insist that every citizen believe in God; they simply saw no way to justify those natural moral Rights unless there was a God.
Hence, they set up a form of government that would recognize and protect God-given Rights without establishing a government religion or creating an environment of intolerance. This was important to the founders because they considered religious freedom to be an “unalienable Right”, even though they didn’t specify it in the Declaration of Independence. (They did so in the First Amendment to the Constitution.)
“Congress shall make no law…”
After Thomas Jefferson identified the Moral Law as the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, James Madison and other Founding Fathers legislated those laws and “unalienable Rights” in the Constitution. The First Amendment, of course, is the one that deals with religion. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (See the complete Constitution: Appendix II.)
The key point is this: while the First Amendment clearly forbids the federal government from establishing a national religion, it does not prohibit the government from establishing a national morality: it clearly implies that it is wrong for Congress to establish a religion or to prohibit the free exercise of religion; it also implies that any congressional attempt to abridge the freedom of speech, the press, or assembly is morally wrong. The Founding Fathers obviously were convinced that it would be immoral for Congress to restrict these freedoms. In other words, they believed these freedoms were morally right and needed to be protected through legislation.
Legislating Morality, by Dr. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, pp. 21-22.
Of course, this flies in the face of the “You can’t legislate morality” crowd, and it also should start you on the road to understanding that the “secular” humanism favored by many today is not value neutral, nor is it amoral. The context in which we understand morals and law today is flawed because too many fail to realize that the discussion is not really about whether we will have moral law or amoral law; it is about whose morals will inform our law.
Because of the obfuscation made possible in part by the committed efforts of humanists to prevent the judeo-christian ethic from informing society in its most formative years, many people now lack the understanding to critically examine the world around them and the reasons underlying popular opinions and attitudes. Euphemistic phrases have also contributed to the popular, but shallow, perceptions that abound today.
Today murder is sanctioned by “choice”. Compassion is practiced with the money and resources of others, and often creates unwitting victims rather than providing any help beyond the next check. Cities do everything they can to prevent or limit lawful firearm ownership and suffer from horrific crimes…committed with guns, and never see the disconnect. Permissiveness is the order of the day, and yet the enablers fret over the manifested consequences. “Tolerance!’ becomes the battle cry for those least likely to practice it. The whim of the human heart becomes the ultimate expression. Everything is permitted and nothing denied. And yet their answer that comes when the damage is surveyed…the damage from the permissive approach is “Not enough freedom! You must give us more power!”
At times, it reminds me of a person in a small boat at anchor, who cuts the anchor line because they can’t see the purpose for it, then they get bent out of shape when they realize they’re headed for the rocks, but they would sooner see themselves wrecked than bother with the restraint that an anchor offers. It is easy to see where this ends. In many ways, we’re already starting to live it. The question remains: “What are you going to do about it? Fiddle while Rome burns, or pick up a bucket, and get busy?”
Inspired by my good friend, Rosetta the Racist, by his latest post at the H2.
Another great post. The absence of morals from law isn’t amoral, it is immoral.
I’ll be over here waiting on the stupid to show up.
BIC, your link to the blog of your friend Rosetta the Racist is garbled. I was able to decipher it anyway, but anyone who can’t decipher the link won’t miss much.
Here is the money quote from your post: “(The First Amendment) does not prohibit the government from establishing a national morality.”
On the other hand, I’m not aware of anything in the Constitution that ALLOWS the government to establish a “national morality.” The trend in American culture certainly has been to recognize that fact, and to grant citizens more freedom to choose for themselves what constitutes a “moral” life.
When we talk about legislating morality, the question quickly boils down to (as BIC put it) “WHOSE morals will inform our law.”
Yesterday on another blog we were discussing the issues of Griswold vs. Connecticut, in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law forbidding the use of contraceptives! This wasn’t back in the dark ages either – it was 1966! The State must have considered contraceptive use to be “immoral,” and therefore forbade it to everyone, and battled to keep that statute all the way to the Supreme Court. The Catholic Church still clings to this position, although it seems that even a majority of Catholics now practice this particular form of immorality.
American politicians once considered alcohol use to be sufficiently “immoral” to pass a constitutional amendment forbidding it. Prohibiting that particular “immoral” behavior proved to be an abject failure.
And proving Graychin’s corollary to Godwin’s law, let me point out that Sharia law is just one more attempt to legislate “morality.” But again – WHOSE morality? (Isn’t limiting discussions of morality to Judeo-Christian morality ipso facto an “establishment” of religion?)
So we find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. On the one horn, we find that having recognized a God-given right to privacy leads to some private conduct that many of us us would consider to be immoral – cohabitation of sexual partners without benefit of marriage, divorce, homosexual conduct, contraception, consumption of alcohol and marijuana, abortion… the list seems to go on and on. Every one of these now commonplace behaviors was once or still is illegal. (Notice though, how much of the newly-legal “immoral” behavior concerns sex and reproduction – intensely PRIVATE matters. Interesting…)
On the other horn, we can take the “originalist” approach, and preserve in amber our understanding of Eighteenth-Century thought about regulation of private conduct.
Our Constitution does not provide for national referendums. (The Founders didn’t trust the people THAT much – they didn’t even want the limited number of people allowed to vote to be permitted to elect their own senators and president.) But if there WERE a national referendum on the matters I mentioned above (cohabitation, contraception etc.), how do you think Americans would vote? I think that some of that private conduct might go back to being legislated away again. But most of it would remain legal.
I believe in God-given (or Natural) law, and God-given (or Natural) rights. I believe “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” – and NOT from God by Divine Right of Kings. I also believe that human beings are improvable if not perfectible, and that through decades and centuries, we stumble in the direction of greater good, perhaps moving in that direction as a nation following the lead of subtle voice of God. The progress isn’t continuous, and not every person improves at the same rate as the nation as a whole. But in just the past 150 years we have abolished slavery, admitted women to full citizenship, abolished de jure racial segregation and discrimination, and even legalized contraception! Durn libruls!
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I know that my optimistic view of America’s gradual progress is heresy to those of you who believe that we are all on the way to Hell in a handbasket. But that’s because I trust the people to find their own morality more than I trust ANYONE ELSE to decide for the rest of us what is “moral” in our private conduct.
(I have no idea what firearm ownership has to do with the subject at hand. Perhaps it is an example of the way that the select few who would decide on “morality” might stretch the concept to cover whatever subject they might happen to concern themselves with.)
My comment is awaiting moderation? Did I do something naughty?
I’m not sure what happened.
I was in Court all morning, and when I got to the office, I found you in Mod, Chin.
Lots of this going around in WordPress. Tex says it happened to him on my blog, then Huck and I had a problem on Alfie’s blog.
Well, that didn’t take too long.
You apologize yet, shithead?
Tards!!!!! Come and get it!
Graychin,
That was a verbose post – some good, some not so good.
But in just the past 150 years we have abolished slavery, admitted women to full citizenship, abolished de jure racial segregation and discrimination, and even legalized contraception! Durn libruls!
You sure do take a load of credit where most of the responsibility shared. For instance, 150 years ago, your type would have been an anathema to most of the nation, yet the nation was for the most part demanding an abolishment of slavery – and many, if not most of those were Christian.
I think people forget that for every one Southerner, there were four from the North – and unlike now, far more people “religious” then, than now.
Now let’s talk about what your form of secular humanism has brought us. We’ve got legalized abortion, where in NYC, for every two black babies born, three are aborted.
We’ve got one in four adults with an incurable STD, one in two under 25 years of age. We’ve got HIV which was spread though predominantly homosexual behavior, then intravenous drug use. We are getting close to one in two children born out of wedlock.
Our public school systems are war zones, and in your hometown, one in fourteen children graduating from a public school can pass a college class without remedial work.
Our culture has become immoral, vulgar, and rude. I can’t turn on a network with children in the room anymore.
In addition, those godless countries that I must assume you would like America to follow killed over 100MM during the 20th century alone.
I won’t even mention how much we’ve spent on letting government play little god – where elitists like you believe only they wise enough to determine what’s best for everyone.
This short list only touches on the things “durn librals” have ruined in 40 short years.
Durn librals is right…
But Tex, the only morals you are allowed to pass judgment on are your own! Graychin said so!
(I have no idea what firearm ownership has to do with the subject at hand. Perhaps it is an example of the way that the select few who would decide on “morality” might stretch the concept to cover whatever subject they might happen to concern themselves with.)
Probably because it wouldn’t occur to you that by drafting and enacting the Second Amendment, the Framers were guaranteeing yet another freedom that they considered morally right and important enough to protect…just as it wouldn’t occur to Rutherford that outright bans on gun ownership and restrictions that are so strict as to act as all but an outright ban, such as the ones proposed by Mayor Daley after the decision in McDonald was announced are, by their very nature immoral, and have the effect of denying law-abiding citizens the right to effective self defense that equals the odds with a criminal element that has no use or concern for gun bans.
BIC, is my throwaway final remark on gun ownership and morality your only rebuttal to my long comment?
Another point – I was taught that it is a sin to harm our own bodies, which are of course temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I would argue that smoking is a grievous sin, as is gluttony when it causes a person to become morbidly obese.
In the interest of legislating morality, shouldn’t all tobacco products be banned? And what coercive action does a government have a duty to take to in order to correct the behavior of people who are morbidly obese?
One more time – it’s all about WHOSE morality, isn’t it?
BIC, is my throwaway final remark on gun ownership and morality your only rebuttal to my long comment?
The rest of your long comment was self-congratulatory clapptrap and codswallop that didn’t merit my time or attention, especially in light of the fact that Tex had already stated what needed saying about it.
Another point – I was taught that it is a sin to harm our own bodies, which are of course temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I would argue that smoking is a grievous sin, as is gluttony when it causes a person to become morbidly obese.
In the interest of legislating morality, shouldn’t all tobacco products be banned? And what coercive action does a government have a duty to take to in order to correct the behavior of people who are morbidly obese?
One more time – it’s all about WHOSE morality, isn’t it?
This is why I love posting excepts. It demonstrates how well commenters think, or in your case, don’t think, about the ideas presented.
If the Bill of Rights represents a concerted effort on the part of the Framers to guarantee rights that are moral, then they also represent a consensus on what are shared moral values, believed to be such based on a shared understanding of what the grantor of those rights believed to be moral. Those unalienable rights were not rooted in sectarian differences that exist under a larger philosophical and religious aegis; they were rooted in the commonalities that exist under that aegis.
If you weren’t so busy focusing on trying to find and assert an “exception that ate the rule” argument to every proposition advanced, then you might realize that. But then doing so might make you question the propriety of a vocal and obnoxious minority demanding that it get change to institutions, culture, and law, when the majority have, and had every right to rely upon the fixed norms that the minority refuses to understand and desires to change, even though there is no shortage of places for them to go where they could live in a society that embraces their values and requires them to change nothing.
In the United States, a “public morality” is based upon a consensus of the governed, implemented through legislature crafted by their elected Congressional representatives and verified through the judiciary.
Many of the problems involved result from interpretations (regulations) imposed by the Executive Branch – the most political of the various components.
General agreement on restrictions usually requires much adjustment and remains an ongoing process. The public good is not served when public policy is determined by self-appointed regulators who ignore the expressed desires of their employers (the voters).