UNDERSTANDING
CONSTITUTION PARTY PHILOSOPHY
THROUGH THE PREAMBLE
TO OUR PLATFORM
PART 7 of 7
“The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law, administered by representatives who are Constitutionally elected by the citizens. In such a Republic all Life, Liberty and Property are protected because law rules.”
The Constitution is the law of the land. That law has a moral foundation in both the Laws of Nature and the Laws of Nature’s God. We’ve seen through history and we are currently witnessing the consequences of abandoning this solid foundation in whole.
But what of abandoning the foundation in part?
Our closest ally in political building is the Libertarian Party. The fundamental difference between our two parties is the foundation of American jurisprudence: Biblical principles or evolutionary principles? Consequently, these premises form the philosophy of liberty upon which the U.S. Constitution is based. As described above, the Constitution Party recognizes the same self-evident truths articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
The LP, while recognizing that man has natural rights, remains silent on the question of a Creator (or rights giver) choosing instead to base their entire philosophy of government on human philosophers and reason. In short, the LP has built a party whose philosophy of liberty is based on the authority of the Laws of Nature alone. This platform has attracted Christians and Atheists alike as well as many who embrace anarchy and its various philosophical forms.
As Blackstone observed both the natural law discovered by man’s reason and the revealed law of the Bible were one and the same thing, but the revealed law was most reliable because it is the moral law given by God himself, rather than what man through his fallible reason imagines or guesses the law to be. He made it clear that all legitimate laws rest on these two foundations.
In contrast, to the LP, man’s reason, despite its passions, prejudices, perceptions and intemperance is perfectible and capable of discerning right from wrong to a sufficient degree that basing a nation’s foundation of law upon it would secure liberty to all people.
An analysis of abortion, one of the most divisive issues in the liberty movement – indeed the nation, demonstrates the logical application of these two competing philosophies.
Man’s reasoning, especially over the past 30 years has come to justify the termination of a growing life inside of a woman so long as she chooses to do so because she has been deemed as having a natural “right” to control her body. The libertarian non-aggression principle says she cannot be “forced” to give birth. Some rationalize that the growing embryo or fetus is not really a life. Some say the mother’s right to control her body is paramount…etc.
Because the life being terminated was Created equal to the life of the mother and everyone else, it has an unalienable, divinely endowed right to live. Government cannot legitimately sanction the violation of this innocent’s life. Using the law to permit murder is no different than using the law to legalize plunder.
This demonstrates that abandoning the authority of the Laws of Nature’s God in favor of man’s reason alone removes the secure foundation for liberty – the right to life. Even if man believes he can “justify” abortion, the Laws of Revelation makes it clear that unjustly destroying a human life is murder. This absolute moral law removes any question of right and wrong in this circumstance and remains a firm foundation for liberty.
Self-evident Truth
When we remove God, we are inevitably left with the rule of men. The rule of elites, the rule of experts. In these people, we must place ultimate trust to carry forth their duties and protect liberty. In the Kentucky Resolutions, 1798, Jefferson insisted that:
“confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism – free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go … In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his Templeton Address of 1983:
More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
“Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval…
…But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’
When our civil laws are not based on God’s absolute moral law, but rather the law as man imagines it to be, a conflict – as in the justification for abortion – will inevitably result. As Frederic Bastiat opined in his 19th century work, The Law:
“In the first place, it erases from everyone’s conscience the distinction between justice and injustice. No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”
Our laws are not respected in America, because they are no longer respectable. This has created a society deeply divided and conflicted, having lost its moral compass. America’s social, political and economic problems stem from our turning away from the tried and true path of liberty articulated in the founding documents. Consequently, we face being swallowed up by the chains of tyranny that has been the destiny of most of the people of the world throughout history.
End Notes:
[1] Citizen Soldier
[3] A Living Constitution or Fundamental Law?
[4] The Darwinization of Law in America
