Sunday, July 26, 2015

Natural Law: With Freedom Comes Responsibility And Acceptance of Our Choices

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ...
That important document that initiated an event and series of events that formed the foundation of the United States of America from thirteen colonies is unique in the historical documents contrived by humans. The decision to create such a document led to five people appointed to produce a draft. On that committee was Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson.
The men on that committee gave the task of writing a draft to Thomas Jefferson, who while was a man of few words when it came to public meetings, but who had a reputation of being able to put down in words what needed to be said. He worked on the draft from June 11th to June 28th in 1776; but before he presented his draft to the Continental Congress, he showed it to John Adams and Benjamin Franklin with whom he had developed a close, personal relationship. They inserted their revisions and then on July 1, 1776, the draft was presented to Congress. It was approved and on July 4th 1776, it was signed by John Hancock and 55 other men at Independence Hall (then known as the Pennsylvania State House), all representing the united colonies who had decided that a formal declaration must be made to the sovereign and parliament of England.
An important segment of that document that rocked the English speaking world, was the reference to the law of nature. That concept was devised by Thomas Jefferson, who used it in a legal argument in 1770:
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.
The basic concept of natural law is consisted of freedom of choice. Natural law in itself is derived from the Creator, which in the Book of Genesis it was described that Adam and Eve was afforded the responsibility of freedom of choice and they chose to defy a warning or mandate. Freedom of choice, like liberty/freedom itself requires a responsibility to accept the consequence of choices.
In a letter to John Manners in 1817, Jefferson wrote:
If God has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness.
What that means is that in the pursuit of happiness a line must be drawn so as to not interfere with another person or persons pursuit of happiness. In that, it goes beyond natural law into the realm of common sense. Jefferson was more clear on this matter when in a letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier:
Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment and enjoyment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that ...the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood.
Jefferson alluded to this in a letter to Archibald Stuart in 1791:
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
In a recent US Supreme Court decision concerning the argument of the legality of same-sex marriage, which should not have been a concern or argument by the federal government, but relegated to the state governments, it was not only a decision that unlawfully bypassed the legislative branch; but also defiance of natural law – a law that is international and an historical tradition. For some, it is a religious doctrine and a taboo provided by the Creator.
That SCOTUS decision was not a landmark victory for three percent of the population, but further testament in how far our nation, its people, and those whom they choose to operate their government have fallen away from the purity of that declaration in July of 1776 and the wisdom of the architects of the US Constitution and its amendments called the Bill of Rights.
We have allowed three percent of the population to counter the will and the rights of a much larger majority. For decades it has been drilled into our society through the education system polluted by those who believe socialism is better than the system devised by the Founders, that has identified our government system as a democracy. If that were true, the three percent that won a social victory via an unlawful decision by the US Supreme Court should never have taken place because the hallmark of democracy is that the majority rules. The truth is that the Founders, especially John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison denounced democracy; embracing instead a constitutional republic based upon rule of law, law of the land. That law of the land is the US Constitution. They derived such a determination by careful study of history, learning from historical mistakes and the reality of what a monarchical rule is truly like.
Those that are zealous in establishing a 'second revolution' are delusional if they have in mind an uprising against a growing tyranny within the present-day governmental system. History shows that the American War of Independence was unique, not only because it was won against the strongest military in the world at the time, but its outcome. History shows us that revolutions have always ended up in chaos, anarchy and trading one tyrant for another. France tried revolution against its monarchy and demonstrated this truth when they traded the monarchy of King Louis for the tyranny of a dictator turned emperor by the name of Napoleon. The same applied to the transfer of the rule of the Czar in Russia to the rule of the Lenin/Stalin dictatorship who committed more cruel acts and tyranny than the history of monarchy in Russia.
What is needed in the United States is an earnest drive to return to what the Founders and architects of our Constitution intended and completed. This can only happen if the People, American society, awakens to the fact that a moral people with family and national values are the ones that will make the necessary change – not the politicians whose majority in control at this time is, to say the least, corrupted. In politics, fingers are pointed when something goes wrong more than viable ideas to solve the problems. The substance of the blame must fall upon the people who allowed a corrupt political organization create a regime by using the weakness of the people and with false hopes of a Utopia that can never exist because of human nature, not because of natural law. It is why in one level or degree, there will always be wars; despite efforts to stave off such negativity and destruction. We must always strive to avoid war, but when it comes we must always be determined to win. Avoiding war through isolation is delusional, and history has shown us the folly of such an ideology.
When the Founders created our nation it was a unique historical event and they hoped that other nations would look upon our system as favorable and adopt it for themselves. The United States was once a role model, despite its wrongful retention of slavery and not allowing lawful citizens to vote regardless of race or gender. While our nation did not always present itself as a good role model, its Constitution and the Bill of Rights were testament of what any nation could achieve, and any people could adopt and protect.
Our nation is failing because of a myriad of deceptions and fallacies, and that failure is not the fault of our Constitution; but in reality it is occurring because we have fallen away from its purpose and that it is the foundation for all laws and regulations of the government - “For the People and By the People”.
If you want to see a clear and rightful reformation to solve the problematic state of our Union, then you must reeducate yourself and understand the Constitution and the motivation and purpose that the Founders used to devise such a great document. The Constitution is only good if it is followed and its wisdom protected generation after generation.
It is a natural progression of technological advancement that changes occur, but that does not mean we should throw away tried-and-proven traditions and concepts, like the Constitution, just because it has been around for over two centuries.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789:
What is true of society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be nor more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.



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