Observations©

By Donald S. Conkey

Date: January 17, 2008 - # 8803 - Title: The First Principle of Free Government (810)

Every American has a vital stake in the election of our new president who will take office almost exactly a year from today. Who that individual is will set the course for America during the course of his/her term of office – and beyond, perhaps for many years to come.

            The people doctrine of thirds will affect this election as it has affected all previous elections beginning with the Revolutionary War. There is a third who want the government to guarantee security from the cradle to the grave, another third who wants to return to the Founder’s principles of freedom they embedded deep in America’s foundational documents, and the third third that have yet to decide what they want in a president. This election is going to be decisive and the people are still deeply divided.

            This column is the first of 12 monthly columns I expect to write this year on 28 principles of free government the Founders embedded into America’s foundational documents. Dr. Cleon Skousen, in his book, “The 5000 Year Leap,” discusses these 28 primary principles of liberty and where the Founders found these principles they rooted in their documents of freedom.

            But, you ask, what is a principle? Webster’s defines a principle as “a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine or assumption.” True principles, like mathematical principles, are eternal. The Founders searched long and hard to find these true principles of liberty.

            Their first principle for free government was: “The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.”

            But how many know what Natural Law is? Thomas Jefferson did. He understood it so well he made ‘Natural Law’ the cornerstone principle for all other principles of America’s freedoms and liberties they entrenched into their documents. He declared this principle of “Natural Law” in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence with these words “…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, …”

            But where did Jefferson and his fellow Founders learn enough about Natural Law to make it the cornerstone principle of their historic documents? They learned about Natural Law from the Roman (joint consul with Caesar) Marcus Tullius Cicero whose books The Republic and The Laws influenced the Founders nearly as much as did the Bible’s “perfect laws of liberty.” The Founders were enamored by Cicero’s ability to cut through the political astigmatism and philosophical errors of Plato, Aristotle and Greek philosophy that would shape the religious thinking that later led to the dark ages and justified Roman Civil Law as the governing law of the church dominated state governments the Founders found so reprehensible. 

            Cicero defined Natural Law as “true law” by stating: “True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions…. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We can not be freed form its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it [personal agency]…. And there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment.”

            Jefferson had learned from Cicero that “The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is eternal, that it cannot be altered, or repealed, nor can it be abandoned by legislators or the people themselves, even when they pretend to do so, as happens so often today. This was a monumental discovery for the Founders, one they used as their founding principle for freedom and liberty.

            The Founders, especially Jefferson, learned from Cicero’s astute understanding of Natural Law that those rights endowed by the Creator, unalienable rights, are based on Natural Law as are the unalienable duties of all free people, duties many would like to ignore today but do so at their own risk.

Other concepts of Natural Law include Habeas Corpus, Limited Government, Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, Self-Preservation, the right to Contract, Justice by Reparation, Bearing Arms, and No Taxation without Representation. Skousen named 22 rights and 20 duties in his books, many of which are ignored by our government today.

Now, as you determine who you will vote for this year you may want to look for the candidate who has a solid and unbending understanding of Natural Law, and how Natural Law affects your liberties.

And please – cast your vote wisely February 5.