Loyal To LibertyBeta

[See also The Strategy of Right, Number 1]

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Romans 7:22-8:2

The first law of nature impels people to act against the person who assaults the image of God represented in another. It is right to follow this impulse, because as human beings we are bound and determined (obliged) by God's will to do so. It is our nature. Thus the first right of nature provides the paradigm for the definition of a right, as a natural predisposition to act in accordance with God's will. This predisposition corresponds with our obligation to God and is the same in all who are of the same nature as we. We are disposed to come together (covenant), to agree in the same course of action, which is to say we one and all mutually consent to the performance of it. Properly understood, therefore, such consent is not an arbitrary determination of our will. Rather it is a consequence of our natural inclination to do God's will.

By this consent, we spontaneously form a community. This community of action, which emerges from the executive impulse encoded by God into our nature, is the archetype of the first lawful human societies not strictly arising from procreation. It emerges in the context of bloodshed, by means of a reaction that acknowledges the image of God in others, and therefore recognizes their humanity. It is the shedding of man's blood that gives rise to the reaction, and only in other men. The operation of the first law of nature therefore presumes consanguinity, a community of blood. But though this community includes all humanity, humanity is clearly recognized only after the fact.

We will understand this better after looking more carefully at the Bible's account of God's promulgation of the law of retribution. He says that He will require an accounting for the destruction of human life from every man and beast. At first, the notion of holding the beasts accountable may seem odd. But as in our mind's eye we look more carefully at the scene being called into account, we understand. We are out hunting with a group of others from our village. We all see from a distance a beast crouching to feed upon the body of another beast. We approach the crouching beast from behind, thinking to surprise and slay it for its meat. As we come closer to the scene, we recognize in the lifeless form stretched out upon the ground someone we know to be a man like ourselves, perhaps a son or brother. Apprehension mingles with the excitement of the kill, and we move at once to strike dead the wild beast that seems to feed upon him. Alerted by our sudden move, the creature turns and we note with horror the bloody features of another who seems to all appearances, like one of us. Our blow is falling. Do we stay our hand? It looks like a man, but in the slaying our brother for food, it behaves like a beast. The indignity of it stokes our indignation. As one man we strike and strike, as if to annihilate the shame, pouring his blood, like our brother's, into the cursed ground.

In the Biblical account the promulgation of the first law of nature occurs in consequence of God's proclamation of the dietary dispensation that characterizes human nature after the Great Flood. As a concession to the evil inclinations of humanity, God adds meat to the human diet, and the hunting of beasts for food to the catalogue of human activities. It makes sense then to imagine the application of the law of retribution in the context of the hunt. In that context arises the need to distinguish man from beast, so that hunting does not become an excuse to re-introduce among mankind the untamed violence that contaminated the world before the Great Flood. So by the law of retribution God encodes a check into the nature of man, a telltale sign that flags our recognition of humanity in others and so confirms our own.

This reactive basis for our recognition of common humanity is not, of course, the only one. In the scene we have just imagined, we recognized the victim as someone like ourselves because we were already familiar with them. They came from our community. In this respect, the human community arising from procreation takes precedence over that which forms in reaction to transgressors. It is based upon the positive recognition of humanity in consequence of which the mother, on account of a bond arising from her physical predisposition, acknowledges the humanity of her children and consents to preserve and care for them.

This means that there are two natural principles of human community. One flows directly from the physical predisposition of the human body; the other from our emotional reaction to its destruction. The first defines community in terms of all that is required to produce and preserve the body. The second is defined by what God commands us to do in reaction to a murderous assault upon it. The first conceives community in the context of the law of love which is the principle whereby God rules the universe. The second produces human community in the context of the code, dictated by God's will, whereby man governs man. Obviously, we do not use the word "law" in the same sense in both cases, for the law of love is the consequence of perfect freedom, while the law of man is a reaction against his abuse of its reflection. In a sense, therefore, the law of love is not law at all, at least not in the sense of a rule enforced to constrain wrongdoing. True love can do no wrong, but seeks only to serve and preserve what is good. The good of each particular being consists in that which respects the form and substance of its existence. Love does this, respecting the limits and boundaries of particular being, without which that being's existence becomes inconceivable. As a rule operating in conformity with this respect, love takes on the form of a law, though without any implication of force or constraint. For that which respects the limits and boundaries required for the existence of a particular being frees rather than constrains it, unless particular existence itself be regarded as constraint. But every particular exists by the will of God, which is absolutely free. Therefore the law of love is freedom.

Still, though every man is a particular being, in whom the freedom of God is realized as a fact, each is also a person, which is to say an image of God in whom the freedom of God is only reflected as a possibility. Now a fact is what it is. But a possibility is only what it will be, what the will (understood with reference to the future) determines it to be. So each man experiences the freedom of God as a will determined in such a way as to bring about the possibility; therefore, as a choice suspended among ways of being not yet determined by it. This human experience of the will (with reference to the future)is of course, not identical with that of God, as God is not bound by the prerequisites of human existence, such as time and space. And therein lies the dilemma. For God, the will is being, absolute and unquestionable. But of our humanity the Bard said accurately, "to be or not to be, that is the question." We question that which is, in the will of God, unquestionable, starting with the possibility of our own existence. Like Eve, or Cain or the one who sheds innocent blood, we may choose to act upon a possibility that contradicts the possibility we ourselves represent. The extremes of murder or suicide simply epitomize the enduring dilemma of our special nature: the imperfection of our existence coincides with the perfection of our nature, and vice-versa.

To understand this better, we must remember that in its origins the word "perfection" refers to something finished or complete. Because we are made in the image of God, freedom is in our nature. But in the absolute sense, freedom must include every possibility, including the possibility that denies or contradicts the image of God in us. (When Eve ate the forbidden fruit, she chose to act as if her likeness to God required something other than what God had already provided. Her intention was Godly i.e., consistent with God's intention for her. But by substituting herself for God as the agent of that intention, she effectively denied its fulfillment, because only God could provide the substance required for it. In like manner, Cain sought in his sacrifice to acknowledge his dependence upon God, as his Godliness required of him. But by the murder of his brother, he ends up denying the unity with God that is the cause of that dependency, especially in those who like himself are persons, and who therefore represent the image of God.) If we refrain from the choice that denies God's will for us, the freedom that is in our nature seems to us to remain unfulfilled. Our nature seems to us imperfect. But If we exercise the choice, though we seem to fulfill the freedom inherent in our nature, we actually deny the will of God that alone makes this freedom appear possible for us in the first place. The dilemma is resolved only when we forego trying to remedy our seeming imperfection in our own way, and trust instead that God's will coincides with our perfection. Our trust is rewarded with the appearance of Christ, the one whose appearance in human form proves the coincidence of God's will with our seeming imperfection, thereby opening our eyes to the Godly perfection God first offered and still intends for us.

According to the Biblical account, the origin of nature as we now know it is the human decision to complete our freedom of choice by denying God's choice for our freedom. Thanks to this choice, we live in the context of sin, evil and death. Having denied the presence of God within us, we must be constrained by force to respect the will of God for us, which is to say for our existence, life and good. We live therefore under the law that takes account of our inveterate inclination to sin and that relies upon the force of retribution to discourage and repress the destructive actions occasioned by it.

Thus arises the need for external government, for which the first law of nature supplies the wherewithal. This comes in the form of a natural community that arises in response to transgression, as people of goodwill come together, all motivated to provide for this response. This covenant community of goodwill is the seed which, properly cultivated by reason, becomes a civil society. Proper cultivation involves first of all the recognition that righteous passion alone cannot subdue those whose fatal prowess has already dispatched at least one victim. People of goodwill must therefore provide against this prowess, outfitting and preparing themselves effectively to prosecute wrongdoers. The will to repress and discourage their wrong actions (to govern their unruly behavior) must be armed with an instrument devised to achieve the intended result. The different powers of government, and the organizations instituted to apply them supply this instrument.

This discussion sheds light on the true origin and characteristics of government based upon consent. As derived from the natural law of retribution, government is an external institution that emerges from the consent (common feeling or inclination) of people of good will (that is, God's will) who come together (covenant) to execute his commands, in order to repress and discourage wrongdoers. The consent from which the just powers of government are derived is not a passive token of agreement, but an active acceptance of responsibility for the constitution of those powers. This is in harmony with the language commonly used to signify the development and confirmation of consent, such as "I move that such and such be done," "I second the motion," and "The motion carries." All this language signifies that consent is a continuous activity, reminiscent of the steps required to gather and make successful use of a militia or army in defense of the community.

The reason for the title of this series of essays should now be apparent. The very concept of government derived from the Bible's first law of our nature takes shape in the context of offensive action, undertaken by people of goodwill against those whose actions conclusively demonstrate their opposite disposition (bad will). By putting into practice the will of God, the people of goodwill literally exercise the right. For this purpose they form themselves into a body, that is, constitute civil society and government, just as an army (in the Latin, exercitus ) forms itself for war. Now in warfare, strategy is the planning that clarifies the aims and objectives of the exercise, and that organizes and directs its movements to achieve them. Right (in Latin jus, from which we say justice) as Madison wrote "is the end of government. It is the end of civil society." As the general must think through and implement the strategy whereby his army may achieve its goal in battle, so those responsible for the conduct of government must think through the strategy whereby people of goodwill may win victory for right.

In light of all this, a question to ponder: How can anyone who claims to approach government from a Biblical perspective offer leadership that removes the issue of right, as God establishes it, from its proper position as the strategic goal and aim of all political action?

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Abraham Lincoln spoke these words to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois in 1838. They have been much on my mind lately. The election victory of a man like Barack Obama, with views that contradict all the self-evident truths our Constitution is based upon, portends the suicide of democratic self-government. Now the Republicans have elected a national chairman whose utter indifference to those same principles confirms the suicide of the Republican Party. Consider the following exchange:

WALLACE: You are one of the co-founders of something called the Republican Leadership Council...

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: ... which supports candidates who favor abortion and gay rights.

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: Does the GOP need to do a better job of reaching out to people who hold those views?

STEELE: I think — I think that's an important opportunity for us, absolutely, because within our party we do have those who have that view as well as outside.

And my partnership with Christy Todd Whitman was an effort to hopefully build a bridge between moderates and conservatives in the party. I'm a pro-life Roman Catholic conservative, always have been.

WALLACE: You also support a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

STEELE: That's right. And the reality of it is this, because I don't think we should muck around with the Constitution. We can deal with that at the state level, OK? That's my personal view.

But the reality of it is the party has to recognize the diversity of opinion that's out there. And we're not going to get everyone to agree with the — Ronald Reagan said it best. If you agree with me 80 percent of the time, I think that's good enough. I mean, I think we can move forward on that 80 percent.

So there are some 80-percent issues out there that we can work with those within our party and outside our party and create a new bridge and a new opportunity. That was my involvement with the RLC, and I'm very happy about that.

WALLACE: But just to press on this...

STEELE: Yep.

WALLACE: ... if you believe — if someone believes in a woman's right to choose, if someone believes in gay civil rights, where's the 80 percent agreement with the Republican Party?

STEELE: It could be — it could be on our — on economics.

WALLACE: No, but I'm talking about on those issues.

STEELE: Well, you know, see — now, Chris, you've just defined — you've just defined the world in which there are issues. You've just narrowed — you've just narrowed my scope to two issues.

WALLACE: No, I'm just saying on those issues, is there 80 percent agreement?

STEELE: Well, if there — if that's the 20 percent they disagree with us on, let's work on the 80 percent where they agree with us. That's my point.

I'm not going to allow anyone to define the issues for us and say, "Well, these are the only two issues that really matter." There's a whole range of issues out there in which we can address the American people and the American people can come to our table.

Michael Steele proudly proclaims his role in founding an organization dedicated to supporting candidates who favor abortion and gay "rights." Though he calls himself a "pro-life Roman Catholic conservative" the new GOP chair shows no sympathy with the reasoning that justifies the moral views associated with the label. In his world, some people feel one way, some people another, with no sense or reason for what they do. Though he later declares "you don't give up on your basic principles," and speaks of "the core principles of this party" he cavalierly belittles the issue of respect for the unalienable right to life, an issue that directly involves the core principles of justice the United States is founded upon. Steele speaks of the deepest issues of moral concern with all the blithe indifference of a confirmed moral relativist. This attitude is characteristically liberal, not conservative. Its appearance in him tends to destroy the credibility of his conservative claims.

Are no issues more important than others? Was Abe Lincoln wrong when he broke with the Whig politicians who professed to oppose slavery, but supported slaveholders' rights? Was he wrong when he opposed the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision depriving enslaved black Americans of the right to escape their oppressors? Would Steele chide Lincoln for wanting to "muck around with the Constitution" rather than "deal with that [slavery] at the state level." How can it be that the black American's unalienable right to liberty must be decided as a matter of national principle, but the unalienable right to life of every mother's child can be left to the will and whim of majorities at the State level?

Lincoln thought the issue of unalienable right involved in slavery so important that it justified a grievous war, even if that war continued "until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword." What then of the unalienable right to life, and the millions of lives taken by gruesome abortion? Michael Steele apparently thinks that such issues of principle aren't worth losing a vote over. So Lincoln must have been mad or evil to ask so many to risk and lose their lives.

But if Lincoln was wrong, what about G. W. Bush? After 9/11 he embarked on a war against the practitioners of terror declaring that "It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." He said that the terrorists "hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." He saw them as "the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."

Bush appeared to believe, as Lincoln did, that the defense of unalienable rights deserves the highest priority, especially against those who are "sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions." But now it seems the Republican Party has abandoned that sense of priority. Now it seems, the rows of white crosses in our military cemeteries do not mark the graves of those who gave all for truths that deserved their all. Rather they mark the graves of patriot suckers who went all in with the odds at twenty percent, for issues that shouldn't stand in the way of winning the next election.

The Republican Party was once the party of national principle, rallying those who sought to preserve the truthful sense of justice that gave every person a claim to government based upon consent, government constrained to act within limits defined by right, not might. Contrary to the malicious caricatures used to malign their positions, this was the source of the Republican preference for limited government, not greedy selfishness and calculation. Politicians lie when they promise a government that provides for our needs. But even if they could fulfill the promise, the concentration of power and control assembled to achieve such a result would crush the rights and therefore the initiative and enterprise of the people. Consider the devastating effects of welfare on the family structure, work ethic and general moral character of the communities government claims to help. (I do this at length in my book entitled Masters of the Dream.) Is it an accident that politicians seeking that kind of pervasive control over the nation take positions on critical moral issues that encourage selfish hedonism and moral lassitude? People preoccupied with themselves, and their endlessly clamoring passions, give up the firm character needed to sustain their liberty. They then pose few obstacles to ambitious elites who manipulate their fearful desires in order to distract from the degradation of their spirit, fortitude and courage. Thus does government of, by and for the people perish from the earth.

The people who claim to agree with the Republican preference for limited government, but who reject the moral principles that justify it, are either woefully ignorant or skillfully disingenuous. The experience of the last twenty years suggests that it's the latter. The very people who abandoned the principles of liberty when it comes to protecting the unalienable right to life have now supinely surrendered to the march of socialist economic policies that will consolidate government control of the economy and put liberty on the path to extinction. They falsely declare their readiness to defend every leaf and branch of economic freedom while quietly collaborating with the liberal assault on our national principles, an assault that will destroy such freedom at its root.

Michael Steele represents and speaks for them. Even their supposed pragmatism is deceptive. Steele quotes Reagan about people who "agree with me 80 percent of the time." Steele says "I think that's good enough. I mean I think we can move forward on that 80 percent." But what people is he talking about? On the immigration issue, for instance, 80 or ninety percent of the American people oppose the amnesty approach and want our borders secure and our immigration laws enforced. But in 2008 the Republican Party chose a standard bearer who disagreed with them, siding instead with globalists and economic special interests, who doubtless agreed with McCain on this "80 percent issue" though opposed by 80 percent of the people. A similar majority of the people opposed the failed 700 billion dollar bank bailout, but the Republicans in the Congress abandoned them, siding instead with the globalists and economic special interests who doubtless agree with the Congress on this "80 percent issue" though opposed by 80 percent of the people. Steele speaks for the 80 percent, alright, but its 80 percent of the arrogant, self-serving power and money elite who seem intent on toppling government of by and for the people.

The bailout represented a giant leap into socialism for America, but the Michael Steele Republicans hadn't the backbone to stand against it. Now that socialism is underway, they hope to win votes by posturing as the opponents of the pork-laden stimulus plans intended in fact to consolidate the dependency of our people upon government largess. But when the real crunch comes, I suspect the "80 percenters" will once again find a way reluctantly, regretfully, predictably to surrender. Steele says his business is winning, but how can the GOP win when it refuses to fight for and represent a winning majority of the people on issue after issue? There is a victory to be won, but only by leaders who will stand 100 percent for America's principles, America's sovereignty, and American freedom.

The Michael Steele Republicans are the obstacle to this victory. How long shall we indulge them with this two-party charade? The two parties actually cooperate to serve one goal- a controlling power elite that can run rough shod over the majority on any issues that contradict its will to power. Though the Republicans claim to battle for the things so many believe, their purported display of political martial arts has become a predictable routine of bluster, retreat and surrender. Tragically, steel is exactly what they lack. They're not fighting the Democrats. They're dancing with them, and it's a dance of death for liberty, for conscience and for truth.

With the election of Michael Steele as Chairman of the RNC the Republican Party invites comment on its handling of the race issue in American politics. Unfortunately, the timing and circumstances of the selection of the GOP's first black American national chairman highlight the party's pathetic mimicry of the Democrats, and its betrayal of professed principles in this area, as in every other.

The Republicans professed to be the party that affirmed the common identity of all Americans. While the Democrats promoted race-based approaches, they claimed to uphold Martin Luther King's dream that people should be treated with respect for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. They even sought to distance themselves from the very concept of race, choosing instead to refer to "Heritage groups", as if they understood and accepted the insight that we will never get beyond racism until we have rejected the inhuman idea of grouping people according to physical characteristics rather than common heritage, history and shared moral ideas.

In practice, however, the party's treatment of black Americans has been entirely driven by race-based political calculation and expediency, and the assumption that the black vote is forever beyond its grasp. Black Republicans have been mainly valued for their usefulness as political ornaments and votive offerings, which come in handy when needed to project a reassuring image of "diversity". This means, of course, that when the GOP establishment looks at a black American, all they see is race, and even that only in terms of crassly political considerations. Thus it happens that they hustle up the first black American chairman of the national GOP in predictable response to the fad of frenzied adulation surrounding Barack Obama, the first "black" to occupy the White House.

If they were at all serious about their professed principles, the Republicans would have rejected the notion that Obama represents or has anything to do with the Black American "heritage group", since he does not share, or even reflect in his background and views, the heritage that defines it. Rather than rushing to match one black skin with another, they would have looked for someone who represents the common heritage of all Americans, defined in the moral and historical terms that really constitute a basis for human community. In this respect, the first priority would have been to put forward a Party spokesman who ably and unmistakably articulates the principles that define the American heritage- the ones succinctly summarized in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that affirm that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…" beginning with the right to life.

To be sure, in certain quarters GOP propagandists have been at pains to tout Michael Steele's purportedly "pro-life" identity. Unfortunately, the audiences specially targeted for this emphasis reveal the calculations of political expediency that motivate it. The Party seeks desperately to shore up its decrepit credibility with sincerely pro-life voters, many of whom saw through the lie that ascribed pro-life convictions to the Party's foredoomed 2008 Presidential nominee, John McCain. In this regard, however, the gesture of Steele's selection to be Party chair seems equally foredoomed. Consider this exchange (now in circulation around the internet) from an interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, October 28, 2006.

MR. RUSSERT: ...Mr. Steele, if you're United States Senator, would you vote for a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I don't — vote for a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion? I think we'd have to have that get to the Supreme Court, wouldn't we? I haven't seen that bill proposed. I don't think...

MR. RUSSERT: That's been introduced in the Senate.

LT. GOV. STEELE: I don't think anyone's going to propose that this day.

MR. RUSSERT: So you wouldn't do that?

LT. GOV. STEELE: No.

MR. RUSSERT: Would, would you encourage — would you hope the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I think that that's a matter that's going to rightly belong to the courts to decide ultimately whether or not that, that issue should be addressed. The, the Court has taken a position, which I agree, stare decisis, which means that the law is as it is and, and so this is a matter that's ultimately going to be adjudicated at the states. We're seeing that. The states are beginning to decide for themselves on, on this and a host of other issues. And the Supreme Court would ultimately decide that.

MR. RUSSERT: But you hope that the Court keeps Roe v. Wade in place?

LT. GOV. STEELE: I think the Court will evaluate the law as society progresses, as the Court is supposed to do.

MR. RUSSERT: But what's your position? Do you want them to sustain it or overturn it?

LT. GOV. STEELE: Well, I think, I think, I think Roe vs. Wade, Roe vs. Wade is a, is a matter that should've been left to the states to decide, ultimately. But it, it is where it is today, and the courts will ultimately decide whether or not this, this gets addressed by the states, goes back to the states in some form or they overturn it outright.

MR. RUSSERT: Is is your desire to keep it in place?

LT. GOV. STEELE: My desire is that we follow what stare decisis is at this point, yes.

http://aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=943&posts=16

It's hard to decide which is more impressive, Steele's grasp of the details of the most important items on the pro-life agenda, or the depth and firmness of his convictions in support of them. Clearly Steele is the leader the Republicans need to inspire and motivate pro-life voters: someone courageously ready to hold his breath until the Supreme Court hands the issue back to the states for decision. Surely that kind of fortitude harkens back to the days when the Republican Party grasped the nettle of the slavery issue. It recalls to mind Lincoln's firm rejection of his opponent Stephen Douglas's stance that he didn't care whether slavery was voted up or voted down, so long as it was decided by "popular sovereignty" at the state level. Of course Douglass was not a Republican, so Michael Steele must be...

Perhaps the RNC is auditioning for a walk-on in an episode of "Psych" (the detective spoof on the USA Network.) It certainly requires psychic abilities to decipher the clues they followed to find Michael Steele guilty of pro-life convictions. Far from showing, or even faintly suggesting, that the GOP means to return to its principled roots, the RNC's choice is of a piece with the pattern of cynical maneuvering and barely disguised deception that characterized the GOP's 2008 Presidential campaign. Anyone who truly seeks to support the things the Republicans used to stand for should find another home. The problem is that the two-party system has no such home on the market and is in any case too morally bankrupt to finance the purchase. Like the early homesteaders who developed America in the first place, those who want a political home for America's principles will have to build it anew. I suggest a good place to start: http://aipnews.com/.

[Note: This is the first installment of the serialized presentation of a work in progress. From time to time new installments will appear under the same title. At the beginning of each installment a link to the preceding one will appear, so that readers can catch up or refresh their memory as needed.]

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. 25 But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:22-25)

Among those I call the moral conservatives there is much anguished discussion these days about what to do in the face of the evident exaltation of evil Barak Obama represents. All the moral capital "piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil," and the subsequent century of racial injustice and legalized humiliation, Obama now puts in service to the destruction of innocent human life; the suppression of the natural right and characteristics of family life; and the subversion of the form of government required to preserve our life in liberty.

People who care about these essential goods are right to grieve and to raise their cries to heaven from hearts broken and heavy laden. They are not only right, but also wise, who understand that the prayer (that is, the one who prays) must be prepared to be the instrument through which God answers prayers. Such preparedness, as the apostle says, lies first in the willingness to reform our lives in accordance with God's will; to remember as best we can, and in all that we do, the example that, in Christ, God sets before us. Then, following that example, we must offer and give our lives to fulfill God's will, giving the life that ends in order to gain life that doesn't.

This is not only an admonition. It is the key to understanding the strategy of action that wins God's blessing in the deed, and thereby plugs us into the power for good it represents. When we get right with God, and seek to do right according to His will, we are in the right as we act. Others are obliged to respect the right we exercise (i.e., put into practice.) In the strict sense, therefore what they respect is not "our" right but the will of God which accounts for what we do. The right belongs to God, not to us. It passes to us in and through God's act of creation, in the way that He shares His being with us so as to form and constitute our nature. Our unalienable rights arise from the specific requirements of maintaining ourselves in this way of being, which is right for us because it makes our existence possible. Such rights are called "unalienable" because we cannot lose or surrender them without contradicting the distinctive way of being that makes us what we are. Without them we become, as it were, strangers to ourselves, alien to our own identity.

This accounts for the dehumanizing effects characteristic of institutions such as slavery and serfdom. But it also makes clear that this degradation of humanity arises from the failure to respect those aspects of human being that announce a presence in each man and woman that transcends humanity. The key effect of this presence is life itself. Life appears in the form, shape and physical constitution of the body, but we each of us experience life as feelings that perceive, and therefore lie beyond such things. Life appears in feelings. But we, each of us, are conscious of life as thought that observes and therefore lies beyond these feelings. Life appears in thought, but we have knowledge of life as being that lies beyond our thoughts, and therefore beyond the appearances of life that come to us through the mediation of any of our faculties. Whatever we experience, however deeply we feel, however much we think we observe and seem to know, something of life escapes us even as, with certainty, we hold it in our grasp.

The Bible's account of our creation explains this irony of our existence with the simple truth that we are, in the very essence or intention of our existence, that which we appear to be. But this is true only because that which we appear to be determines at every moment what we are. We are made in the image and likeness (that is the appearance and activity) of God, who is the being that in and of itself determines the appearance of all things. We therefore represent that which is within, and yet forever lies beyond, what we are.

In the literal sense, our existence is paradoxical. In the practical sense, this means that whenever we deal with a human being, we are dealing as well with the being that lies beyond humanity. In ancient times, actors held before themselves a mask (in the Latin, persona) of the character they were supposed to represent. Like actors playing a part, human beings carry about the image, and act like the character, they represent. As they do they call upon the resources of the individual carrying the part, whose body, feelings and mind inform the representation. In this analogy, God is both the actor and the character he plays, while we are the person (mask) He carries. We are the mask of His being, our existence the veil through which He appears in the nature of the universe that conforms to the character we are supposed by Him to be.

In this respect, too, the Biblical account makes sense. After the flood, God lays down the first law of our nature as we know it, when He says to mankind "And for your life's blood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from his fellow man (brother) I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever pours out the blood of a man, in recompense his blood shall be poured out, for I made man in the image of God." (Genesis 9:5-6) Because each man is a person (an image of God, supported or upheld up Him), God commands retribution for murder. When one human being assaults another, he attacks God. But God is the substance (the upholder) of the attacker's person too. His attack upon another is therefore substantially the same as an attack upon himself. God's declaration of retribution simply reflects this fact.

The flare of indignation we feel on account of murder constitutes the executive power that God intends for the enforcement of the commandment of retribution. Indignation moves us to do what God commands; to carry out what the murderer has begun (which is the annihilation of his own life.) Because it is God's command, we are in the right as we execute it. We have the right to shed the murderer's blood. The first law of nature therefore gives rise to a right of nature, a right of way to the result foreseen in God's will. As it opens to us we are drawn towards this will. We feel strongly inclined to act against the one who violates another's person (image of God).

By this paradigm of right, particular rights are not passive goods stored in our possession. They are active responsibilities, reflected in the emotional forces that incline our will toward action in response to God's commands. As we shall see, this difference has profound implications for the strategy of right. As executors of God's will, we are not supposed, in the first instance, to act in defense of our rights. We act to do God's will. If opposed when we do so, we stand on our rights in defense of our action. We resist whatever denies or draws us from God's right of way. Since the ground of rights is our responsibility to God, we cannot exercise those rights while sitting by the roadside, oblivious to wrongdoing. Nor can we do so by standing aside, letting wrongdoers have their way so long as they leave us in peace. Rights arise in the context of our positive commitment to right action. They are warrants for action, not writs of entitlement.

Unless they accept the degrading premise of racism (that physical traits alone are a valid basis for identifying human communities), I cannot understand why people would assume that I should take pride in the election of Barak Obama simply because we both have dark skin. Because he takes the position that it's right to slaughter innocent human beings by abortion, I believe he represents the antithesis of decent conscience. Like the southern slaveholders in the nineteenth century, he accepts the view that a human being's most basic rights may be disregarded simply because another human being considers his physical characteristics or stage of human development inferior. Of course people like Obama aim at a more violently immoral result than the southern slaveholders. Whether from moral sentiment or selfish interest, the advocates of slavery supported a system that at the very least regarded the death of a slave as a regrettable, though sometimes necessary, waste of capital Those who support the abortion industry work to perpetuate a system that builds capital by wasting the lives of innocent human beings in the uttermost condition of helplessness.

People who wrote handbooks on slave husbandry actually gave advice to slaveholders about keeping the slaves healthy and strong for work. The abortion industry thrives on the development of more convenient and reliable methods of extermination. Its advocates fight hard to make sure potential clients are not exposed to any information that might interfere with the decision to devote new victims to the slaughter.

Slaveholders had to develop all manner of human relationships with their slaves, some of which involved genuine emotional attachment on both sides. The abortion industry depends on the denial of the emotional bond that is the paradigm of loving human relations, that between a mother and her child; and it implies the denial and irrelevance of the scarcely less fundamental tie that ought to bind a father to his offspring.

People pretend to scoff and take umbrage at anyone who dares to mention Obama and Hitler in the same breath. Yet the "good liberals" who staff the surgical killing fields that masquerade as medical facilities suppress the personhood of innocents in the womb with the same officious ruthlessness that characterized the "good Germans" who suppressed the humanity of the Jews, gypsies and other groups they regarded as inferior and consigned to the death camps. And the "choice" honored by pro-abortion slogans has about as much to do with freedom as the "work" honored by the slogan that reigned over Auschwitz and Buchenwald, "Arbeit Macht Frei."

Far from any feeling of pride, I can feel only shame at the thought that someone now occupies the White House who in his rise to power consolidated the dedication of his most hard core devotees by boldly defending the murder of newborn children who survive intended slaughter, on the grounds that respecting their indisputable right to life would somehow interfere with their mothers' "right" to the dead, dismembered little carcass they pay the abortionist to deliver.

Far from any feeling of pride, I feel only revulsion, and I cringe at the thought that anyone would identify me with a man who promotes evil more hard hearted and spiritually corrupting than that which claimed the liberty and blighted the lives of my forbears. I know that God forgives those who repent of the sin of abortion, even as he takes to his bosom the intended victims of their mistake. But as for those who defend the sin; who lure others into believing it has the sanction of right; who make the piled remains of tiny human beings the landfill on which to construct their edifice of profit and political power; as for these workers of iniquity I know that Christ rejects them ("...depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity." Luke 13:37) and for them our father God reserves only annihilation, ("…destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity." Proverbs 21:15)

Yet I also feel terrible grief at the sight of so many who rejoice in the triumph of evil that Obama represents because they have been deceived and manipulated into believing that he somehow represents a vindication of all the years of suffering, sorrow and outcast oppression experienced by Americans whose heritage includes the bitter reality of slavery, abuse and unjust discrimination. How can the generations beaten, hounded and murdered on account of the rejection of God ordained human equality be vindicated by the elevation to power of a man who champions that rejection, not just for one group or another, but for all human beings too young and inarticulate to defend themselves? How can the generations denied opportunity and a just recompense for their talent and labor be vindicated by the adulation given to a man who promotes as lawful, and would impose by law, the ultimate denial of opportunity and all justice to the posterity which represents the renewal of mankind's hope in this and every generation?

As the children of those generations of bondage and tears lift up this golden calf of pride for the world's applause they reject, like the children of Israel, the will and heart of the very God of Justice who made provision for their deliverance from floggings and unrequited toil, from contumely and searing humiliation. I grieve because I fear that like the Israelites of old, this generation prepares for itself a trial of renewed oppression, a place by the rivers of Babylon where they will learn again from hardship to seek the mercy of God by the only path that finds him- the path marked out by the true Messiah who best exemplified respect for his righteousness and obedience to his will. His is the heart from which we know the truth their new, false prophet of unity and hope cast down by the wayside in his rise to notoriety: real love and hope would rather lose all to preserve respect for God's true gift of life than preside, by its destruction, over a nation departed from his knowledge and headed for calamity.

"For the LORD knows the way of the just: but the way of the unjust shall perish." (Psalms 1:6)

Here follows an email exchange occasioned by my article Obama's Vain Beginning (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=86830). I thought it might be of interest.

January 24, 2009

Dear Dr. Keyes,

just read your commentary, Obama's vain beginning. No wonder you can't get elected to ANYTHING. Please do keep speaking on behalf of right wing and Republican causes.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX

PS: How are you doing with your latest birth certificate court case? With your sore record of failure, I'm not surprised you want a piece of this highly unlikely action. Oh, I know, suddenly defense of the Constitution is the morally correct position to take. . . (I don't recall any outrage from you during the 8 years that Mr. Bush trampled upon the Constitution)

January 24, 2009

Dear XXXXX,

My thanks for your carefully thought out and reasoned response to my article. It has much in common with the speeches of the man you admire and obviously seek to imitate. By the way, long before I ever heard of Obama I was speaking out against the dangers of a cavalier attitude toward the Constitution. (see, for instance the WND article "The dangers of Physical Safety", June 17 2002 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=14266, and on the same theme the article entitled Taking Advantage, December 1, 2001 http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=11860) Your information is clearly on a par with your careful consideration of the arguments I made in Obama's Vain Beginning. It may come as a shock, but some of us care more for truth than for party or political success.

Alan Keyes

January 25, 2009

Yes Dr. Keyes, the truth is so important to you. Is that why you are willing to accept as true anything Christianity or Catholicism proclaim as "the truth" without offering one single shred of evidence? This is why people cannot take you seriously. As rightfully reasoned and logical as you are on many issues, your insistence that your religious views are true, providing neither empirical evidence nor sound logical footing leaves you sounding, well, kinda crazy. But, as I've requested in my earlier e-mail, please do continue to speak out for right wing, Republican AND evangelical causes. Thanking you in advance, XXXXXX

January 25, 2009

Dear Mr. XXXXX,

Do you mean to say that the mere fact that I am a Christian and a Catholic allows you to conclude that I believe things that are untrue? Is truth confined to what can be empirically proven? What is the empirical basis for the assertion of human equality? What is the empirical evidence for the notion that it is unjust to enslave others, or to kill them in order to take their property? Science cannot, on its own terms, establish the truth of any moral precepts, yet without them decent human life cannot be sustained. Is it crazy to believe there is a difference beyond right and wrong, though science cannot empirically establish what it is? What is unreasonable is the notion that we must limit the claim of truth to what science can establish, when science cannot establish the basis even for the simple assertion that every human life has intrinsic worth, a fact that few if any human beings deny when their own life is threatened with extinction.

Moreover, from a scientific point of view, nothing we say about the past can be established with scientific certainty. Did Julius Caesar actually exist? All we have as proof is human testimony, and what this testimony says is the residue of his existence (coins, statues, etc.) But similar testimony, and similar residue would prove the existence of the goddess Venus. In the strict sense, science deals only with data gathered under rigorously controlled conditions, and recorded with scrupulous integrity. But until very recently (in historical terms) people had very little conception of such data, much less the instruments needed to record and report it with integrity. Is it unreasonable and crazy, therefore, to form convictions based on historical evidence?

Even in what some people regard as the scientific realm, conclusions owe more to imaginative speculation than to scientifically established facts. Did dinosaurs walk the earth? What we have as proof is a residue that imagination works upon in order to reconstruct the form, shape and likely composition of creatures no one has actually observed. Is the belief in dinosaurs crazy, or is it a reasonable conviction? But if the existence of dinosaurs can be accepted as somehow rational despite the imaginative reasoning involved in asserting that fossils are evidence of their existence, then it is reasonable to look at the world around us and reach conclusions based on the fact that we can reasonably assume that objects as we observe them now are related to objects in the past by a structure that relates cause and effect, form and substance in some way that corresponds to the rules that govern our perception and understanding. We can assume, for instance , that the size, shape and material strength of a bone indicate and limit its probable function in the body of a creature we know only from its fossilized remains.

If such rational inference is reasonable in the context of fossils, of archaeological and geological evidence, what then of the evidence we see all around us in structures more complex than any humanly fashioned constructions. The archaeologist unearths what appear to be artificial constructions. Based on the assumption that they were produced by beings with a level of intelligence that corresponds to their complexity, and the harmony of form and function he observes in them, he posits the existence of an ancient civilization, inhabited by intelligent beings with a certain level of knowledge.

If what the archaeologist does is not crazy, but falls somewhere in the realm of acceptable scientific activity, why is it crazy to observe a world filled with objects of unfathomed complexity, where form and function are in harmony to a degree that each advance of our strictly scientific knowledge consistently confirms, and reach the conclusion that a being exists whose intelligence corresponds to the nature of the world we thus experience? If this is crazy, then the whole endeavor of science itself is also crazy, with nothing more to justify its truth than the perishable little benefits we may momentarily derive from the gadgets that are the side effects of its discoveries.

In the end it is unscientific to believe that science explains everything, or even the most important things.

By the way, I haven't been a Republican for some time, ever since the Party's leadership proved beyond doubt that they have no respect for the principles they claim to uphold. I belong now to America's Independent Party. You can check it out at www.AIPnews.com.

Alan Keyes

Now comes the report that Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions has produced a video featuring dozens of celebrities shown pledging their service to Barak Obama.

In an article I recently co-authored with John Haskins we pointed out that "When despotic governments prevail… loyalty is the result of personal fealty… In effect this makes the power of government the personal property of the ruler (res privata.) But under the Constitutional form of government, government power is a public possession (res publica) belonging to the people as a whole… Loyalty to the Constitution takes the place of personal fealty as the focal point of the people's respect for law."

With this in mind, the supposedly positive and lighthearted tone of the pledging video belies the deadly serious implications of encouraging people to pledge allegiance to Obama. I believe this is one more bit of evidence that the "change" Obama means to effect is a regime change. However, contrary to the cuddly assumptions of so-called liberal rhetoric, this is not progress toward hope and unity but retrogression, back to the days of monarchic and oligarchic despotism; back to the days when some were raised to glory and others raised to serve them; back to the days when the eras of political life were marked, not by the rise and fall of parties and their numbers in the legislature, but by the rise and fall of dynasties and the family names that titled them.

A change in the focus of allegiance marks the transition from one form of government to another. For example, as the Roman Republic declined the focus of allegiance shifted from the republic, (as established by the conjoint authority of "the Senate and the People of Rome", Senatus Populus Que Romanum, or SPQR) to the name and family of an individual, Caesar. The shift did not take place all at once, but gradually as the result of political competition that escalated into civil unrest and eventually civil war. The different parties to the conflicts organized themselves around leaders- Sulla, Pompey, Julius Caesar, Brutus, Marc Antony, Octavian who became Augustus Caesar), whose forces pledged loyalty to the individuals they followed in battle. The forces that prevailed in battle at any given moment dictated the terms of civic life. Though they continued formally to speak and act in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome, not the authority of the Republic, but the superiority of their armed forces determined the law.

Under the Republic, force alone did not establish Roman rule because no effective force could be brought to bear until and unless the Senate (those well-endowed but few in number) and the People (greater in numbers but otherwise inadequately endowed) worked together. Therefore, the law, in both its content and its administration, had to satisfy both, at least to the extent necessary to keep them in harness. Each of the component elements of effective power had to get its due, or at the very least believe that this was so. In this sense, justice (giving to each what is due) emerges as the prerequisite of co-operation, and therefore the basis for the law which structures and disciplines that co-operation.

But as the Roman rule expanded, success increased the size and complexity of the Roman population. No longer of one condition, the people as a whole ceased to be energetic enough to assert a common view of what was owed to them. The multitude of forces gathered round leaders like Julius Caesar (their armies) replaced the Roman multitude in the balance of justice, so that whoever owned their loyalty could supply the defect of power once supplied by the joint resolve of the Senate and the People. In order to rule, one no longer had to take account of this resolve, so long as he was sure of the resolve of those who owed their loyalty to him.

The American founders took lessons from the fate of the Roman Republic that led them to adopt an understanding of justice more truthful and comprehensive than that of ancient Rome. American justice starts from the premise that God took care of the most important distribution when he created us equal in nature and endowed with unalienable rights that reflect his will for our humanity. As I have argued elsewhere, Obama represents elite forces in America that have abandoned this understanding, turning their back on the principles of the American Declaration of Independence. Indeed, the trend toward this abandonment can be seen as far back as the New Deal, which represented a concept of political life that reflected a purely distributive idea of justice more like that of ancient Rome.

Now the velvet propaganda media of this would be dictator's celebrity claque invites us to take the next step toward the re-establishment of archaic political imperialism, to return to the Dark Ages of personal fealty and political fiefdoms. As if we are clueless enough to forget that these go hand in hand with serfdom, indentured service and slavery. In this context, Obama's stated goal of establishing a domestic security force as large as the military; and his push for compulsory national service take on a properly ominous hue. (In itself, the idea of universal service is not, in my view, objectionable. The idea of such service in the context of personal pledges to Obama raises the specter of the Nazi Party's Hitler-Jugend (Hitler Youth), the Soviet Union's Komsomol (Communist Youth League), and other such factors of totalitarian dictatorship.)

Perhaps because he is not a descendant of the enslaved, Obama doesn't mind the thought of returning to the ideas and approaches that comfortably accommodated serfdom and slavery. Perhaps because of his socialist views and Communist associates, he feels no discomfort at the prospect of American versions of their collectivizing machinery. I cannot but hope that there are many like myself who remember the oaths that bind us to the Constitution, and the pledge we once took in our classrooms every day, of allegiance to the American flag, and the Republic for which it stands. I fear the days are coming when we shall have to do more than chatter in order to prove true to that allegiance. But with God's help, and Christ's courage, we shall endure all things.