April 3, 2007 - # 704 www.cacp.info --  www.nccs.info  

 

On America’s Constitution: The foundational Cornerstone of America’s new Constitution, a Constitution with, according to the Founders, a Divine endorsement, was the phrase Jefferson embedded firmly into the Declaration of Independence – “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

            This Cornerstone provided Madison and his fellow Founders with a firm foundation on which they could anchor the four underlying, often unspoken, but fully understood pillars (principles) of liberty, namely: “1. recognizing the existence of natural law (which recognizes the existence of God and acknowledges that God has established a natural order of things for this earth and the people of this earth, with the concept of unalienable rights based on an understanding of natural law); 2. the Constitution is based on the principle that the citizens of a republican nation must be virtuous and moral; 3. the Constitution acknowledges that the people are the true sovereigns in a republican government,; 4. the Constitution was created on the assumption that America would function under a free-market economy, recognizing and protecting property rights.”

            Jefferson’s Cornerstone and the Founder’s four pillars of liberty are what make the Constitution what it is: “a federal government of limited powers, with those powers divided both horizontally and vertically. The horizontal separation of powers is between the bicameral legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, each with checks and balances on the others; the vertical separation is between the federal government and the states.”

 

Source: The Real George Washington, pages 495-497, published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1991