Natural Law, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution

The Founders gave us the Constitution to prescribe a government of laws, which assured certain rights. More importantly, it was not to be a government of men.

Natural Law

The Founders gave us the Constitution to prescribe a government of laws that assured certain rights. More importantly, it was not a government of men (or women or others). This further secured each person’s right to life, liberty, and property.¹ The United States is founded on the premise that the Creator secured our rights as unalienable (not to be given away, taken away, or separated). The Founders also recognized that society would degrade under an improper code. That is, laws not in harmony with a higher law.

This higher law, called “natural law” or “Nature’s Law,” is the ultimate limit for all just and moral laws. This code in our Declaration of Independence is the phrase “to which the laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them …” This is the cornerstone of our rights. The Founders, therefore, believed that the new nation’s laws would preserve and protect the people because these codes came from Natural Law. They also thought that all people, from laborers to professors, would understand this code through reasoning.

The Founders often cited William Blackstone (1723 – 1780) from his famous work, the “Commentaries of the Laws of England.” They highlighted Blackstone’s connection between God and law, the judge’s role, and the English common law analysis.² The following passage from Blackstone’s Commentaries concisely illustrates our connection to Natural Law:

For as God, when he created matter, and endured it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the ... direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the facility of reason to discover the purport of those laws ... Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due ...

William Blackstone

Also often cited was John Locke (1632 – 1704), a famous British philosopher and political thinker. His best-known works are the two treatises “On Civil Government.” Locke often cited the Bible in his writings, including the two treatises, and he wrote: “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

John Locke

The fundamental underlying principle is the harmony of natural law and natural rights—exemplified by Blackstone’s phrase “that we should live honestly.” That is also known as “Thou shalt not steal” or the Golden Rule. The corresponding natural right is individual freedom to obtain private property through honest means. This principle of law and rights was higher than any written law of man. The Constitution of the United States of America enshrined this concept by securing the rights of individuals and legislators within a moral code. The government should not take from the individual without consent, nor should individuals take advantage of the system. As shown in the above quote, Blackstone gives a prime example of the Golden Rule. Thomas Jefferson also exemplified this concept:

Man has been subject by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him … The Moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society … their Maker no having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation.

Thomas Jefferson

Our Constitution is the product of the best reasoning known to man, then and now. We should refocus our efforts on the core principles and the original meanings concerning Natural Law. The Constitution has provided our citizens with more protection of individual rights than any other system on earth. Through individual rights, people can be self-reliant and motivated. Unfortunately, we now find the citizenry becoming less self-sufficient because of excessive legislation and judicial activism. It has become a detestable collectivist woke cult-like cauldron controlled by the puppet strings of the Reincarnated Illuminati.³

The words of yesteryear give us a historical background concerning our departure from the original meanings. To disregard the deliberate choice of words and their natural meaning departs from the first principle of constitutional interpretation. “In expounding the Constitution of the United States,” said Chief Justice Taney in Holmes v. Jennison, 14 U.S. 540, 570-1, “… every word must have its due force and appropriate meaning; for it is evident from the whole instrument, that, no word was unnecessarily used, or needlessly added. The many discussions which have taken place upon the construction of the Constitution, have proved the correctness of this proposition; and shown the high talent, the caution, and the foresight of the illustrious men who framed it. Every word appears to have been weighed with the utmost deliberation and its force and effect to have been fully understood.” — Wright v. the United States, 302 U.S. 583 (1938).

We must also remember that our Constitution included the premise that the people will be virtuous in a Natural Law setting. As we know from history, unrestrained liberty will lead to tyranny. Enter the French Revolution with its unrestricted “liberty, equality, fraternity.” History tells us that the French Revolution was an amoral and atheistic struggle. Likewise, we will lose our Constitution forever if we lose our ethical foundations. With social rot such as moral relativism, situational ethics, dialectics, and promoting perversion, the foundation transforms into quicksand. The slippery slope has been well-lubricated for the past 50 years. Do you feel that we are sinking and about to hit bottom?

The Federalist and God the Father

The crummy postmodern secularist-humanist movement has virtually succeeded in its never-ending quest to drop the concept of God in the public sphere. A prime example is the erasing of our Christian foundations through historical revisionism. It is a common tactic of the secularists to scoff at any presentation of historical facts that point to our God-centered beginnings. This worldview paints a secular picture of our Founding by selectively presenting historical information. Nevertheless, there is clear and convincing proof that we were a nation initially based on Biblical principles.

In the Declaration of Independence, each person’s right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is “...endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.” The 5th and 14th⁴ Amendments to the Constitution replaced “pursuit of happiness” with “property.” Also, see Frederick R. Smith’s The Constitution: Property and Free Markets.

As we know, the Declaration of Independence directly acknowledges Divine Providence, while the Constitution does not. However, your author respectfully submits that it is not a mere coincidence that many elements of the Constitution reflect Biblical law. The Constitution also includes a specific reference to the Deity:

… done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty-seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names…

The postmodern secular humanists will argue that the Constitution could have avoided the words “Year of our Lord,” but such a reference was “ritualistic,” not religious. This term for dating documents was “the standard for most documents of the period.” Nevertheless, the Year of Our Lord (Jesus Christ) was translated in Latin to Anno Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, or shorthand to Anno Domini, and abbreviated to “A.D.,” which is the conventional numbering of years in the Gregorian Calendar. The A.D. reference is in use throughout the Western hemisphere and Europe. It is also the standard system for commercial transactions in the rest of the world. Used for many centuries without question, the initials B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. complements and completes formal documents.

Sadly, postmodern secular humanists resist the reference to Christianity in the Calendar. Their “Common Era” refers to the conventional numbering of years (in the Julian and Gregorian calendars) but is still based on the traditionally established year of the birth of Jesus Christ. This movement desires to substitute B.C./A.D. with B.C.E./C.E. Ted Turner does not even like B.C.E. and C.E. because that still refers to the birth of Jesus Christ. “Why don’t we broadcasters make it our goal to get the world at peace by the year 2000? Let us make it the year zero -- B.P. and A.P. Before Peace and After Peace,” he was reported to have said.

Another essential element of the Constitution linking it to Divine Providence is in Article 1, section 7. Here, the Constitution exempts Sunday as a day to count within which the president may veto legislation. If the Framers wanted to strip every vestige of God from the Constitution, why did they include this reference to an apparent religious observance?

While the Ted Turner-type Reincarnated Illuminati worldview may have succeeded in virtually ending the knowledge of our humble faith and common sense from the Founding, we still have original works at our disposal. They have not yet been able to ban good books, but they sure make it a chore to find such works. The secularization of our founding documents aside, we still have original works at our disposal. “Publius” was the pseudonym used for the 85 essays called the Federalist Papers. The Federalist appeared in New York newspapers beginning on October 27, 1787, addressed “To the People of the State of New York.” At the height of the series, Publius’s three or four new essays appeared every week until the last paper (No. 85), published on May 28, 1788.

In the Federalist Papers, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison make a passionate and compelling argument to ratify the new Constitution. Since the Federalist is (was?) the most used document in the study and analysis of the Constitution, it is proper to reproduce those paragraphs that invoke Divine Providence. Also, see Frederick R. Smith Speaks The Debate on the Constitution.

The Federalist No. 2

Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence

Independent Journal

Wednesday, October 31, 1787 [John Jay]

Observing that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories has often given me pleasure. Still, that one connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western Sons of Liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

The Federalist No. 20

The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union (continued)

New York Packet

Tuesday, December 11, 1787 [James Madison, with Alexander Hamilton]

The true patriots have long bewailed the fatal tendency of these vices, and have made no less than four regular experiments by extraordinary assemblies, convened for the special purpose, to apply a remedy. As many times has their laudable zeal found it impossible to unite the public councils in reforming the known, the acknowledged, the fatal evils of the existing Constitution. Let us pause, my fellow-citizens, for one moment, over this melancholy and monitory lesson of history; and with the tear that drops for the calamities brought on mankind by their adverse opinions and selfish passions, let our gratitude mingle an ejaculation to Heaven, for the propitious concord which has distinguished the consultations for our political happiness.

The Federalist No. 37

Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government

Daily Advertiser

Friday, January 11, 1788 [James Madison]

The experience of ages, with the continued and combined labors of the most enlightened legislatures and jurists, has been equally unsuccessful in delineating the several objects and limits of different codes of laws and different tribunals of justice. The precise extent of the common law, and the statute law, the maritime law, the ecclesiastical law, the law of corporations, and other local laws and customs, remains still to be clearly and finally established in Great Britain, where accuracy in such subjects has been more industriously pursued than in any other part of the world. The jurisdiction of her several courts, general and local, of law, of equity, of admiralty, etc., is not less a source of frequent and intricate discussions, sufficiently denoting the indeterminate limits by which they are respectively circumscribed. All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them. But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas. Hence it must happen that however accurately objects may be discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the discrimination may be considered, the definition of them may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the terms in which it is delivered. And this unavoidable inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined. When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated.

Would it be wonderful if, under the pressure of all these difficulties, the convention should have been forced into some deviations from that artificial structure and regular symmetry which an abstract view of the subject might lead an ingenious theorist to bestow on a Constitution planned in his closet or in his imagination? The real wonder is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted, and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.

The Federalist No. 43

The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered (continued)

Independent Journal

Wednesday, January 23, 1788 [James Madison]

The first question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed. Perhaps, also, an answer may be found without searching beyond the principles of the compact itself. It has been heretofore noted among the defects of the Confederation, that in many of the States it had received no higher sanction than a mere legislative ratification. The principle of reciprocality seems to require that its obligation on the other States should be reduced to the same standard. A compact between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of legislative authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas, which this paragraph exhibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which the same motives dictate.

Analysis

Deists and Enslaved People

Often, we hear the collectivist dog whistle that the Founders were deists and enslavers. First, let’s address the slavery issue.

Of course, the evil and vile Caustic Cancel Culture Program projects its detestable collectivist venom to extinguish any historical figure in any way linked to the peculiar institution. And by extension, the entire U.S.A. gets a dose of poison. As an actual vaccine (not a crummy mRNA body-wreaking therapy) to address that particularly lethal ideology variant, please see Frederick R. Smith Speaks The Sin of Slavery.

Concerning the deist thing, it is the same old argument. The intellectual giants with pea brains go into warp drive, invoking their secular sermons. It’s about the lack of the word Jesus in the founding documents, the wall of separation, and round and round and round it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows. Foremost, this anti-God cult has a corner on the hypocrisy market. They poke us in the eye with their religion of Humanism. Furthermore, the same Kool-Aid TM pushers have no problem with other countries with an established religion. Hint—female legacy “news” correspondents covering their faces and heads while in a foreign nation with a particular established religion. There is never a complaint there, but they say only the U.S.A. will vanquish faith.

For a Fabulous Fauchi tested and approved efficacious booster shot, check out Frederick R. Smith Speaks McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader.

The Worshiped Wall of Separation

Some friends of your author express concern about too much “Americanism.” Others say that some of the Founders were deists or members of secret (or not-so-secret) organizations. Indeed, it is a topic worthy of debate. Regardless, the Founder’s framework supplied us with one of the greatest (but sadly now waining) nations in the history of humankind. The following text can best summarize the issue of religious freedom (or no religion) from the dust cover of Philip Hamburger’s book Separation of Church and State:

In a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom, Philip Hamburger argues that the separation of church and state has no historical foundation in the First Amendment. The detailed evidence assembled here shows that eighteenth-century Americans almost never invoked this principle. Although Thomas Jefferson and others retrospectively claimed that the First Amendment separated church and state, separation became part of American constitutional law only much later.

Hamburger shows that separation became a constitutional freedom largely through fear and prejudice. Jefferson supported separation out of hostility to the Federalist clergy of New England. Nativist Protestants (ranging from nineteenth-century Know Nothings to twentieth-century members of the K.K.K.) adopted the principle of separation to restrict the role of Catholics in public life. Gradually, these Protestants were joined by theologically liberal, anti-Christian secularists, who hoped that separation would limit Christianity and all other distinct religions. Eventually, a wide range of men and women called for separation. Almost all of these Americans feared ecclesiastical authority, particularly that of the Catholic Church, and, in response to their fears, they increasingly perceived religious liberty to require a separation of church from state. American religious liberty was thus redefined and even transformed. In the process, the First Amendment was often used as an instrument of intolerance and discrimination.

The above is from Frederick R. Smith Speaks The Constitution Clarified. Meanwhile, as shown below from the New York Post on October 18, 2021, we witness even more crummy-woke hyper hypocrisy:

Hundreds of churches across Virginia began airing a political ad featuring Vice President Kamala Harris urging viewers to vote for Terry McAuliffe for governor ... raising questions about the legality of the advertisement being aired in houses of worship. The video advertisement, first obtained by CNN, is set to be aired in 300 churches across the state from Oct. 17 through Nov. 2. The vice president is the star of the ad, in which she calls McAuliffe ‘the leader Virginia needs at this moment.’

As your author despises both major parties, it is essential to point out the mad machine’s virtual acceptance of a Democrat pontificating in churches—quite the opposite when a Republican does the same thing.

Anti-WOKE Bonus

As shown above, the Reincarnated Illuminati have assaulted our Constitution in concert with their WOKE puppets. Now we hear that the WOKE folk claim classical music is racist. Beethoven - Symphony No. 9, sung by 10,000 Japanese, is an excellent repellant. Play often, play loud, and play in your auto (with open windows). That will take care of the WOKE infection, just like when Dorothy threw water on the wicked witch of the West.

The Reincarnated Illiumani and their mad machine media can go pound sand.

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1. The word “happiness” was a substitute for property, as property and its possession are the basis of English common law. So, the Declaration of Independence was the people’s authority to protest sovereign control. Because of this, it declares: WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights to the Constitution was ratified on December 15, 1791. Within it, the 5th Amendment states: No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

2. Alfred the Great (871-899) writings framed the English Common Law and developed his legal code based on the Ten Commandments.

3. WOKE = Willfully Ordering the Killing of Entrepreneurship. Also see Welcome To Your New World Order: A Rundown Of Woke Insanity Amid The Newest Cultural Revolution. As a side note, the WOKE folk despise that we use this word. Let’s use it often.

4. The 14th Amendment, Section 1 - All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.