FFQF: Lex Rex

See what’s up with today’s FFQF at Meet the Founders blog

Today’s FFQF continues “moral authority.” Where is the basis for the precepts of “religion” and “morality” that America’s founding fathers incessantly spoke of? On what basis did it derive and how is this connected with our form of government?

James McHenry, a signer of the Constitution, had said:

[P]ublic utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience.

The founders believe that the Holy Scriptures were the message of authority– the standard, if you will- by which we could govern ourselves and our nations. This was a radical change from previous philosophy, where it was the rulings of kings, popes, and councils that had authority; whereas in those times past it had been Rex Lex (the king is law), it became Lex Rex (the law is king); (see Samuel Rutherford’s book that explains these apologetics). I love what Alexander Hamilton had to say about this, concerning our own government:

“No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy (agent) is greater than his principal; that the servant is above the master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people; that men, acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.

It is not to be supposed that the Constitution could intend to enable the representatives of the people to substitute their will to that of their constituents. A Constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by judges as fundamental law. If there should happen to be a irreconcilable variance between the two, the Constitution is to be preferred to the statute.” — Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton’s words no longer ring true in our hallways, because our form of government is moving away from Lex Rex and back to Rex Lex, where the “kings” (those in power and those of wealth) have the authority and make and enforce law.

The economic plights of the United States and many nations are on our minds lately. It has become very obvious that our government is no longer a government by “We the People,” don’t you think? Our government has a will of its own. The people of America /the Constitution did not want to issue any “bailouts” for anyone, yet our government has dismissed our concerns and the Constitutional restraints, and did as they pleased. We are rapidly transferring power away from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers.

I found this insightful statement by Horace Greeley (former editor of the New York Tribune).

We have stricken the shackles from… human beings and brought all labourers to a common level, but not so much by the elevation of former slaves as by reducing the whole working population, white and black, to a condition of serfdom. While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by our iniquitous money system we have manipulated a system of oppression which, though more refined, is no less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.– Horace Greeley

So while we still have the appearance of a free government, in all reality, we do not. And this explains a great deal of why things are happening the way they are.

How to resolve this issue? My answer is to re-read the first two quotes I included here, and to do them as one nation again.

FFQF: Moral Authority, From Whence it Comes?

See what’s up with today’s FFQF at Meet the Founders blog

Hercules Mulligan has begun a new theme for a new month. This month it is “moral authority.” What did America’s founding fathers say about the measuring stick for virtue in a free republic? Is it reason as the basis for virtue, that man inherently recognizes that which is good and virtuous? (Answer: no). What did our founders mean when they said virtue was absolutely necessary to maintain a free government?

Here’s something John Adams said:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Benjamin Rush, Adam’s contemporary and known as the “third most influential founder” of the American idea of liberty, said:

By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects. Our Saviour in speaking of it calls it the “Truth” in the abstract. It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published. It contains a faithful representations of all its follies, vices, and crimes.

All systems of religion, morals, and government not founded upon it must perish, and how consoling the thought — it will not only survive the wreck of these systems but the world itself. “The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (in a letter to John Adams, 1807)

and he also said this:

The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty.

I think Hercules Mulligan has chosen a very good theme for the month, especially meaningful in light of a new visitor’s center that has opened in Washington, DC. The visitor center is glaring in its glorification of government and its dismissal of God as the giver of our inalienable rights. As a matter of fact, one of the statements on display at the visitor’s center says:

We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.

That statement reeks of dishonesty and self-gratification. It is not the American form of government that is so great, it is the foundation upon which it stands. Take that away, and our government is NOTHING.

George Washington said:

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

On the contrary, here’s an interesting quote by none other than Joseph Stalin.

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is three-fold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” Joseph Stalin, former dictator of the Soviet Union