Guess Who Rejects America's Founding Ideas- By Alan Keyes
During the GOP primary season, people vying to be the Republican nominee for this or that office in most parts of the county will routinely give pro-forma respect to the republican ideas of America’s founders and posture as champions of the Constitution framed in light of those ideas. Especially when attacking their Democratic opponents, most will pose as champions of liberty, free enterprise and limited government. Such posturing makes sense as a matter of purely selfish political calculation since the overwhelming majority of the GOP’s voter base consists of pro-American patriots (as evidenced by the conservative tone of the GOP platform).
Yet despite the rhetoric they cynically deploy to manipulate their party’s pro-American constituency, these days most GOP politicians are pressured into acting on an understanding of politics that fundamentally rejects the republican concepts of the founders. As I have elsewhere discussed, America’s founders acted on the assumption that justice is the end or aim of human society and government.
“It may accurately be said that the people most responsible for the American founding were obsessed with justice. They saw it as the overriding purpose of political life, to which the freeways of passion would ultimately be forced to submit. But if, by deliberation, people recognize and submit to its requirements, their freedom of choice becomes the basis for government, rather than forced submission. The extent and degree of their self-determination with respect to the requirements of justice establishes the extent of individual freedom in their society. In this respect, the more good individuals are willing to do of their own volition, the less the force of government will be called upon to do for them. Conversely, the less justice they reflect in their individual choices, the more the force of government will be called upon to dictate and impose upon their actions. Freedom depends on individual responsibility. ”
As stated in the Declaration of Independence, the republican ideas of America’s founders start from the premise that human beings are creatures of God, naturally governed by laws that reflect the will of their Creator. They are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, which are the routines of natural conscience (i.e., knowledge inherent in the way they are made; the special information by which the activities that correspond to their particular way of being are revealed; the program or choreography of the movements by which God intends to dance His way through their existence) by which reason promulgates those laws to all humanity. As they are translated into action, the routines of natural conscience constitute the exercise of natural liberty in which each and every human being peacefully does and/or enjoys all that the Creator’s law for their nature makes it necessary and appropriate for them to do or to enjoy.
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