This is a rebuttal to Randy Duey’s article “Did Someone Mention Rights?” (I.O., June 23, 2009), on behalf of the readers who know they have God-given inalienable rights as stated in our Constitution. Duey wrote that some people had researched the subject “and were disturbed by what they found and decided to remain silent….”
No way! Many Americans have spoken up and claimed those Rights. Duey stated that the “Founding Fathers…. gave us the U.S. Constitution, which left the door wide open for the monster that rules us today,” and “they knew that no written document has ever, or will ever, prevent government…. from growing into a monster.”
I believe that was the primary reason they studied and debated for so long and read “The Federalist Papers,” trying to provide the people with an outline for a government of self-rule, a “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.” Our Constitution is only an outline for civil government, just as our Ten Commandments are a moral guide. Were they on paper or gold, hung on a wall or made into monuments, they will have no effect on community morality if the people do not use them to guide their lives.
The government et al must surely believe in the existence of our Rights, be they biblical or constitutional, since they continually seek to deny and change them. Our Rights seem to be the most threatening principle there is to the oppressors of our once free Christian nation.
Our constitutional Rights could be compared to the blueprint for a nice new home. The architect’s plans do not make the house; they provide an outline for it. However, if the contractor tore up the plans and each construction worker decided for himself how it would be put together, it would be chaos. The homeowner could be stuck paying for a shack if he had no Rights of Contract. That is what is proposed in Duey’s article.
He claims that Rights were a product of “18th century humanism!” Our Bible warns us, “Woe unto those that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”(Is. 5:20). That is an example of humanism. The article proposed that Rights were not obtained through our Holy Bible and woven into our Constitution. Instead, each person has only the Rights he has the “will and power” to enforce on his contemporaries. Hitler, Stalin and their ilk had the same philosophy. That is humanism, because each individual has his own thoughts and desires, often incompatible with others in the community. In fact, it is actually anarchy!
It was the devil that originally presented to Adam and Eve such denial of all absolutes. And later it was communist, John Dewey, who FDR imported from Russia in the 1940s and made the public school system’s “father of education”. He said, “there is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, there is no room for fixed, natural law, or permanent moral absolutes.”
The past few generations, educated in public school, are taught the principle of “no absolutes,” an example of which is the article that I am herein refuting. I cannot remain silent. And I want to know if other readers accept that our Holy Bible and Constitution are “just a bunch of hooey.”
The most offensive assertion in Duey’s article is that “Rights don’t come from God,” and that “God never instructed us in evil or error and rights thinking is the latter.” Every Christian that has ever read her Bible knows that statement is totally false. The entire Bible is an instruction as to what is Right (to obey Him) and what is wrong (evil or error – to disobey Him).
This concept that “each man does right in his own eyes” (humanism) is an old practice (Deut. 21:9, 13:18, 12:28). On the other hand, God, our Creator, and “Law Giver” (Isa. 33:22; James 4:12) is the only One to give us Rights of any kind. For example: the Right to life (“Thou shall not kill” Ex. 20:13) and the Right to property (“Thou shall not steal” Ex. 20:15). When Jesus refused to answer the interrogations of King Herod and Pontius Pilate (Luke 23:9, Matt. 27:12) He gave us the “Right to remain silent.” That Right did not originate from the Miranda v. Arizona case. The Fifth Amendment Right that no man “shall be compelled…. to be a witness against himself” is also derived from this biblical account.
We can find verses in the Bible to cover every aspect of our lives. Gen. 3:20 and Ex. 20:14 gave us the right to marry and defend that marriage; Mark 16:15 gave us the right to travel and Luke 22:36 gave us the right to keep and bear arms; and Lev. 11: 3, 9, and Deut. 14:6, 9 gave us the right to hunt, fish, and eat clean meat.
The question is whether man can decide what Right his own “will and power” can enforce over his neighbor, or whether our Creator has the authority to give us Rights, intended for our protection from those who would infringe upon our “life, liberty, or happiness.” The only reason Rights are questioned today is because the American citizen has traded them for government privileges and licenses.
From creation and throughout history man has wrestled with laws to govern people within a civilized community. We have great examples of those efforts, including, from the mid-1700s “Commentaries on English Law”, by William Blackstone, which existed prior to our Constitution, and was much of its foundation. Blackstone was a great English judge who used the Bible to support his decisions, primarily the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Here are a few quotes from this work: “…. The first and primary end of human laws is to maintain and regulate these absolute Rights of individuals (p. 209); law exists, as was stated previously, for the definition; and protection of Rights (p. 202).
Samuel Adams, a founding father, said, “The rights of Colonists as Christians…. may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institution of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”
It is sad in America today, where the president curses our Constitution and our Nation, and where so many people openly reject their Constitution and deny their Creator. Yet, many Americans have given their lives for their Rights and for their fellow Americans. Can we spit on their graves by taking such positions? My ancestor, Reverend E. E. Hale, nephew of another rebel, Nathan Hale, gave us a good motto: “I am but one, but I am one! I cannot do everything, but I can do something! What I can do, I ought to do! And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do!”
The real question is not whether we have any Rights, but whether there are men who will defend and exercise them. We already have the Right to have guns, marry, travel, hunt, and fish, yet we go to the State to get the privilege through a license. We have chosen it as the higher authority above God. The legal definition of license is “permission given by the proper authority to do that which is otherwise illegal.” Is then our God not the authority? Is His word illegal? We, the people, have created the monster by giving the state our God-given Inalienable Rights. We did not become an Obama-Nation last November, but every time we gave away our Rights.
And God said, “I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” (Ezek. 22:30)
I ask who else will “stand in the gap” with me and speak up on this issue for God and country?