July 4, 2010
FROM THE ARCHIVES: DEBAUCHERY AND DESPOTISM
Samuel Adams - The Declaration Revisited (Mark Alexander, July 3, 2003, townhall.com)[A]dams would reserve his fieriest denunciations for this week's 11th Circuit Appeals Court conclusion that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore strayed into constitutional impermissibility by placing a monument depicting the Ten Commandments as "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," in his state's Supreme Court rotunda. Of this legal commemoration of our law's foundation, that court declared: "Any notion of high government officials being above the law did not save ... [state's rights proponents] from having to obey federal-court orders, and it will not save ... [Moore] from having to comply with the court order in this case. ... If necessary, the court order will be enforced. The rule of law will prevail."
Adams would note that this decision is most emphatically the opposite of the rule of law. He wrote of that first Independence Day, 227 long years ago, "We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient." He would note that Moore's appeal is going to the Supreme Court, where a relief engraved with the Ten Commandments appropriately appears above the Justices' bench and court sessions begin with the proclamation, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court." He would remind that the First Amendment states plainly: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
On this greatest of threats to our liberty, Adams would recall the words of his fellow Founders: "The Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all." (George Washington) "...[T]he danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day." (Joseph Story) "The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." (Thomas Jefferson).
But what would Adams do? [...]
He would advise, "Since private and public Vices, are in reality, though not always apparently, so nearly connected, of how much Importance, how necessary is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our ancestors for these great purposes be encouraged by the government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when Knowledge is diffus'd and Virtue is preserv'd. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauch'd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
He would counsel that religious liberty requires faith-minded (and faithful) defenders, as "...Our enemies have made it an object, to eradicate from the minds of the people in general a sense of true religion and virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them." And he would caution remembering which are first principles: "...[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
The Founders were just Deists though...pretty nearly atheists.... [originally posted: 2003-07-04]
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