The authors of the Declaration of Independence were making a legal case for the separation of the American States from Great Britain.  They declared God as the Supreme Judge, the nations of the world as the jury, and Natural Law along with Revealed Law as the theory of law for judging the case.  Then they presented the facts and argued that the facts demanded separation from Great Britain.

The Founders carefully worded the Declaration with the thought in mind that they would eventually be forming a new government.  They knew that the principles defined in the Declaration would be influential.

The Founders defined the world as being judged by God, “the Supreme Judge of the World.”  They stated that God orders the human world by two sets of law, “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”  

The Laws of Nature are natural law.  Natural Law essentially means reasonableness.  The problem with reasonableness, the Founders knew, is that things that are reasonable to one person are not reasonable to another.  Revealed Law, the laws declared by prophets speaking for Nature’s God, provide arbitration.  Revealed Law, the Founders knew, is necessary because it provides a standard for reasonableness.  In the new US government Natural Law must be the rule, and Revealed Law must provide a standard.   Both are necessary, yet neither can dominate.  The Founders also knew that Revealed Law cannot be the highest law in government, because when it becomes the highest law the church and state are one, and that is not good for the state or for the church.   Effectively, Natural Law and Revealed Law provided a system of checks and balances. 

The Founders argued that “all men are created equal.”  In earlier governments, such as the Roman Empire, different classes existed and different laws applied to the different classes.  This created a legal mess.  Likewise with the British government, there were the royal class and the peasant class.  The Founders state early in the document that classes are an artificial construct, unnecessary and messy.  In the US government, we should not have different classes with different laws.  Of course, in reality we do.  We have protected groups we call minorities, and minorities have a different set of laws than non-minorities.

The Founders declared that all men are endowed by God with certain (absolute) unalienable Rights.  A right is something that is granted by a group or individual.  We don’t own land, we own rights to land.  Land rights are granted by individuals or groups and are validated and supported by society according to a set of conventions we call law.  God grants some very specific rights to everyone regardless of who they are.   Those rights should not be taken away by any human action, and anyone who tries to do so is guilty of a crime before God.  The potential victim may defend themselves to protect their rights, according to God’s Natural Law.

Among our God-given rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  “Pursuit” means a career or hobby or occupation.  It is a thing we do, so “the pursuit of happiness” is our ongoing occupation of self-betterment.  “Liberty” is our freedom to choose, especially with respect conscience.  For someone to try to take our life, deny us the right to act according to conscience, or to try to prevent us from bettering ourselves is to commit a natural crime against us. 

If a government commits a natural crime against us, we have the right “to alter or abolish it.”

Then in the Declaration the Founders present a list of facts which are complaints.  Each of the complaints describes a government  committing natural crimes.  From this list we can get some idea of what natural crimes a government can commit. 

For example: “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”  To restate this as a positive:  The nation needs wholesome laws that server the pubic good.  Government must assent to those laws.  If government does not, the government is in violation of natural law and the people have the right to correct or remove the government.

Another example:  “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:  … for imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: … For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: …”   In our current federal government we are required to pay taxes to cover the current President’s campaign debt in the form of the so called “Stimulus Package.”  This was ramrodded through by an ultraliberal President and a liberal dominated Congress, contrary to reasonableness and against the will of the people.  Likewise, the current US government is trying to shift us to a more socialist form of government, also against our will.  Unfortunately, we must wait until 2010 before we begin correcting our representatives and fixing the damage done to our government.  Fortunately, we do have mechanisms for fixing those things, and I anticipate that things will begin changing in 2010.

The last three words in the Declaration are “our sacred Honor.”  They were pledging that their faith in Nature’s God, the Supreme Judge of the World, would is also their faith in the Declaration.   They were not pursuing a business venture.  They were declaring a holy war.   Their belief in their cause was the same as their faith in God.  In the language of the day, they were making an oath, because an oath is not just a promise or vow.  An oath is a swearing that one’s actions are based in one’s faith in God. 

These principles define the core values of the United States.  God is the supreme ruler of all.  Natural Law moderated by Revealed Law is the basis of all our laws, and at the same time, no church cannot rule the state and the state cannot run a church.  Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are rights that no person or government may attempt to take away from without facing our just self defense.  Government is obligated to behave or face removal or alteration.  An individual’s support for the US should be the same as one’s faith in God, which means that the US government must be required to follow a very high moral standard.  

The core values of the US form a type of Deism.  In classic religious Deism, the individual believes in God in some form, but does not recognize the words of prophets as coming from God.  In the American Deism,  the US government recognizes God as supreme, yet the government does not recognize any covenant of prophecy as if it came directly from God.  The only laws of God that the government formally recognizes are Natural Laws.  As one Founder put it, the US government  “renders unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”

The above principles are part of classic Liberalism.  Over time many people believed it wise to act as conservators for those principles.  They were the classic Conservatives.  When we talk about modern political conservativism and liberalism, we aren’t usually talking about classic Conservativism and Liberalism, although today, modern political conservativism seems to come closer to the original ideals.

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