Ultimately, the role that government plays in life comes down to one's understanding of the ultimate source of law and human rights. Is law and human rights only from government or is there a higher, more transcendent source of right and wrong on basic issues?
This issue is crucial, especially in the age of big, pervasive government. A Canadian court in Quebec just issued a judicial decision stating that parents do not have ultimate authority over the moral and religious education of their children - that is the exclusive right of the government! Thus, even children educated in private Christian schools must be taught the government's mandated moral and religious education and nothing else!
This is exactly what many liberal educators and liberal politicians would like to see here in the United States (as quoted in the book, What's So Great About Christianity?). If they can control dogma and the education of children, they can absolutely dominate the hearts and minds of people. Of course, this is no different than any totalitarian government, whether it is communist, facist, Islamic or simply evil.
Our Amerian liberties are supposed to guard us against such excesses of government, but such liberties are only as strong as the judges who interpret them. Thus, the advent of judges who no longer feel bound by the intentions of the framers of our Constitution and our government is a threat to the foundation of our nation and the liberties that we have long enjoyed. Without a sense of transcendent right and wrong, human rights become products of government edict that can be given or taken away, rather than immutable rights.
The signers of the Declaration of Independence recognized that in order to justify revolt against government, they had a right to appeal to a higher authority: "we recognize these truths to be self-evident (i.e., obvious to everyone), that all men (mankind generally) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights (rights not subject to the whims or authority of the government) . . . ."
The preface to the U.S. Constitution likewise states that a purpose of the Constitution is to "secure the Blessings of Liberty (i.e., not the government's beneficient grant of liberty)." The preface to the Bill of Rights emphasizes that a purpose of those rights is to prevent the "unconstitutional abuse of its powers" by the federal government.
We are unfortunately in an age where the clear rule of law set forth at the beginning of this nation and long protected by American courts is subject to the political agenda of our leaders and their judges. No longer can we be certain that the basic freedoms we have enjoyed (such as the freedom to educate our children as we choose, to worship as we choose, to advocate for causes that we choose, to criticize and hold accountable those in power) will continue. This requires vigilence. We cannot assume that those in power will do what is constitutional. When those in power can act to preserve their authority by violating consitutional rights, we can expect power to be abused.
In trial courts, when witnesses were sworn, they used to be required (there were exceptions for people of other religious persuasions) to place a hand on a Bible in order to swear by something higher than themselves to tell the truth. The thinking was that the Bible reminded people of a greater/ultimate accountability and of a greater/higher need to tell the truth. We have lost that custom and court oaths now are almost meaningless.
Similarly, our government and political leaders have lost any sense of a transcendent God and transcendent right and wrong. Instead, the mindset now is that right and wrong is only determined by government. This is a natural consequence of Darwinian thinking. This is the same mindset of any authoritarian government. In China, violation of any law, no matter how immoral the law or how violative of basic rights, is cause for severe punishment, because the government is the only source of law - there is no higher law, there is no such thing as basic human rights.
Without any understanding or appreciation of a higher law, there is NO BASIS for the United States to criticize human rights in any other nation, there is NO BASIS to criticize ethnic cleansing or any other monumental destruction of people and rights, because the only ultimate authority is the government itself. Thus, the United States government does not have any "right" to tell others how to live beyond its borders.
Inherently, for government anywhere to have ligitimacy, it must follow historic, commonly accepted human rights, including a basic understanding of the rights of families (including childrearing and education), rights of speech, press, voting, religion (including rights of conversion to other religious faiths), judical recourse, and the following of a rule of law that applies equally to those in power. Thankfully, the framers of our government clearly understood this. Hopefully, our present government and judicial officers will continue to understand this, unlike our Canadian neighbors who have lost their way.
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