The Declaration of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

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 quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

The Legacy of the Declaration of Independence

This Sunday, July 4th, we will once again celebrate our nation’s founding, marking the day in 1776 that the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence.


The Declaration of Independence was intended to be an official statement explaining why the 13 American colonies had declared their independence from Great Britain. In the years following its passage, however, this statement of principles about the rights of man grew to mean much more.

America became the only country in history founded, as Leo Strauss explained, “in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles,” by which he meant crass, power politics. Instead, America was founded on a set of clearly expressed “self-evident” truths. Thomas Jefferson said the Declaration was “intended to be an expression of the American mind,” and indeed, no document since has so succinctly and so eloquently spelled out the spirit of America.

Our country has evolved out of the timeless truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence to develop a distinct character and set of values that distinguishes us from even other Western democracies.

This holiday, it is worth taking a look at how several key phrases from the Declaration of Independence have served as definitional statements about the aspirations of America, and how those words of our Founding Fathers’ have affected America in the 234 years since they were written.

“…all men are created equal”
The Founding Fathers who authored the Declaration were the first people in the history of the world ever to express our natural equality as a principle of government in such an unqualified way. Though neither the Constitution that followed nor the Founders personally quite fulfilled the promise of those words, it has since been the project of our country to accomplish them.
America came though to recognize that we are not all literally equal—we are born with different capabilities and attributes, and to different stations in life—the words of the founders capture the truth that we must treat each other as equals. We are “created equal” in the sense that all men (and, we now recognize, all women) have the same natural rights, granted to them by God. We are all the same under the law.
This powerful statement of universal rights was used by abolitionists as a moral cudgel to rid the United States of slavery, an institution explicitly at odds with the truths expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln consistently evoked the phrase in his famous Peoria speech against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and later during the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As President, Lincoln again included the phrase in the Gettysburg Address as the moral underpinning by which the union should be rededicated. Later, during the women’s suffrage movement and civil rights struggles of the 1960s, leaders such as Martin Luther King used the powerful phrase as a reminder to America that separate (treating people differently under the law based on their race) was not equal.

Leaders such as Lincoln and King believed that as America’s founding political document, the Declaration of Independence is our moral guide with which to interpret the Constitution. They saw that we cannot divorce the law from the moral underpinnings that legitimize it.

But by what authority does that moral underpinning exist?

“…endowed by their Creator”

The core contention of the Declaration of Independence and the principle of natural rights upon which America was founded is that there is a higher moral order upon which the laws of man must be based. The Declaration asserts the existence of “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” which had a clear meaning in 18th Century England and America. It referred to the will of God as displayed by the natural order of the world.

John Locke, who was widely read by the leaders of colonial America, wrote in his Second Treatise on Government: “Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule of all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must ... be conformable to the law of nature, i.e., to the will of God.”

William Blackstone, who was arguably the single greatest influence on the creation of the American legal system, wrote in Commentaries on the Laws of England, “As man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should at all points conform to his maker’s will.”

America’s founding was heavily influenced by the English and Scottish enlightenment, which specifically included a space for God and religion in its conceptions of rights, freedom and human reason. This gave the American Revolution a distinctly different character than the French Revolution, which in its most radical phase sought freedom by casting off all authority and remnants of the existing order -- especially God.

In the American formulation as declared by our founders, man’s rights come from God, not from man’s ability to “reason” them into existence. Man does not depend on government to grant him rights through a bureaucratic process, but instead to secure those rights that have been granted to him by God.

In other words, power comes from God, to you, which is then loaned to government.

Thus, the Declaration states, “That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
The English and Scottish enlightenment’s conscious inclusion of a space for God and religion had another key influence on the American system of government. Whereas the French Revolution believed it could create a “new man” through government education and indoctrination, the American Founding Fathers had a profound sense of the fallen nature of man. Thus, they created a system of checks and balances that would serve as a restraint on those in power.

“…the pursuit of happiness”

Here again we see the influence of the English and Scottish enlightenment on the Founding Fathers. For writers such as John Locke and Francis Hutcheson, the term “happiness” meant something close to “wisdom and virtue.” It did not mean hedonism or other shallow pleasures as the term is too often confused to mean today.

It is also essential to note that the Declaration does not say that we have a right to have happiness provided to us. It says we have the right to pursue happiness – an active verb. As I point out in jest to audiences in my speeches, the Declaration says nothing about a right to redistribution of happiness. It says nothing about happiness stamps. It does not say some people can be too happy and that government should make them less happy out of a sense of fairness.
The Founding Fathers understood that government could not give people happiness, that it was instead up to government to create an environment where the people could best work to achieve their dreams. As AEI’s Arthur Brooks has pointed out, polls of wealthy and successful people show that the harder one works for that success, the greater happiness one derives from it.

America is a land where through hard work, determination, and entrepreneurialism, people can achieve their big dreams. The right of “the pursuit of happiness” spelled out in the Declaration is a definitional statement about the nature of America that has attracted people from all over the world to come here to pursue those dreams.

Who We Are This July 4th

A bedrock belief of American conservatism is a respect for the established traditions and values of American culture. Conservatives believe from the time the first colonists landed in Jamestown, America took on a unique culture and set of values that have set us apart from our European cousins: a belief in natural rights, strong religious faith and values, the importance of the work ethic, and a spirit of community that manifests itself in a belief in limited government and strong civic participation. It is this set of beliefs – truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence – that have made America so successful, and they deserve to be protected.

The modern Left – what I describe in my book To Save America as a “secular-socialist machine” – is using every lever of power at its disposal to dismantle our unique American civilization and replace it with a secular, bureaucratic culture in which government is big, citizens are small, and our rights are defined by the state rather than endowed by our Creator. Equality under the law is being discarded in favor of equality of results; consent of the governed is being subverted by an increasingly overbearing federal bureaucracy and imperial judiciary; and the pursuit of happiness is being undermined by a redistributive welfare state that kills the can-do, entrepreneurial spirit of America.
This July 4th, I hope you will take time to read the Declaration of Independence and consider the truths about our rights and freedoms contained within. I hope you will take time to appreciate the sacrifices made by the founding generation and generations since to secure our liberty.
But most of all, I hope you will take time to appreciate the greatness of America and how hard we must be willing to work to preserve that which makes it so special.
Happy Independence Day.
 
WRITTEN BY: Newt Gingrich and original article available by clicking on the title of this blog entry

Reflections on the Fourth

Over this past weekend our country celebrated it's 233rd birthday. We the people of the United States of America celebrated in a variety of ways. Many flocked to the beaches along our coastlines. Even more celebrated with family or community barbecue cookouts during the day, followed by fireworks displays at night. Our family was no different.

No matter how we celebrated the day, the vast majority of Americans did indeed celebrate in some way. The reasons that we celebrated were many. Some would say that for many, like Christmas, the true meaning of Independence Day has become lost on most people. I don't believe that is so.

As most Americans know and celebrate, Independence Day (or the 'Fourth of July') celebrates that date that the young American colonies declared their independence from the British crown back in 1776. Thus the massive display of the American flag, and of people incorporating the American colors of red, white, and blue into their wardrobes this weekend.

John Adams himself declared: "The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

He was off by two days in that letter, written to his wife on July 3rd, 1776, the reason being that Congress debated and revised the original Declaration of Independence after approving it a day earlier. The final version famously lists the July 4th ratification date. The actual signing of the Declaration, famously highlighted by John Hancock's gorgeous signature, happened on August 2nd, 1776.

Amazingly, both Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of America's most celebrated Founding Fathers, two of the first men to lead our nation as President, and two signers of the Declaration, both died on the 4th of July, 1826 within hours of one another on the fiftieth anniversary of that great event. Five years later, President James Monroe also died on July 4th, though he was not a signer of the Declaration.

In 1777, Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary in ways that a modern American would be familiar with, including an official dinner for the Continental Congress, toasts, speeches, prayers, music, parades, troop reviews, and fireworks. Ships on the Delaware River were decked with red, white, and blue bunting to mark the occasion.

In 1781, Massachusetts became the first state to adopt July 4th as a state holiday. In 1785, Bristol, Rhode Island, held the first-ever parade in honor of the date, and has held one continuously on that date ever since. In 1791, the first recorded use of the term 'Independence Day' happened. In 1870, Congress made the date an unpaid holiday for federal employees, then changed that to a paid holiday in 1938. Many American businesses have followed suit.

My own family had a very nice Independence Day weekend. We began our celebrations with my oldest daughter, Christine, and grandkids Elysia and Reznor staying at our home on both Friday and Saturday nights. On Saturday, I spent the day in our pool with my granddaughter, then fired up the grill for a cookout as younger daughter Kelly and her boyfriend Jay joined the festivities. At night we lit sparklers in our backyard, and got to enjoy a tremendous neighborhood fireworks display put on by one of our neighbors. I even got to enjoy the New York and Philly fireworks displays on television.

On Sunday, my wife Debbie and I packed up Chrissy, Elysia and Rez, and headed over to Williamstown, New Jersey for a cookout and pool party with some of Deb's family in honor of her father's 84th birthday. While there we had the great fortune to watch as the Phillies defeated the Mets to sweep a holiday weekend series, setting up the finale of our own celebration. Deb and I will be heading down to Citizens Bank Park tonight to watch the Phils take on the Cincinnati Reds.

Our family celebrates Independence Day the way that the vast majority of normal Americans do: family gatherings, cookouts, swimming, baseball, fireworks and all with the flag proudly displayed and the red, white, and blue clothing worn. On this date in particular, we all pause to reflect on the braveness of our forefathers, the greatness of our nation, and the unity of purpose with which we must all move forward together to keep our country free. May God continue to bless the United States of America.

Religion and Politics Don't Mix?

"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." --Thomas Jefferson

For all of our nation's history, there have been tactical battles between opposing political ideologies -- liberals (leftists) who want to liberate us from constitutional rule of law, and conservatives who strive to conserve rule of law. Great political capital has been, and continues to be, expended by the Left in order to offend our Constitution, and by the Right in order to defend it.

Amid the din and rhetoric of the current lineup of tactical contests, I ask that you venture up to the strategic level and consider a primal issue that transcends all the political noise.

How many times have you heard the rejoinder, "Religion and politics don't mix"?

Most Americans have, for generations now, been inculcated (read: "dumbed down") by the spurious "wall of separation" metaphor and believe that it is a legitimate barrier between government and religion. So effective has been this false indoctrination that even some otherwise erudite conservatives fail to recall that religion and politics not only mix, but are inseparable.

Recall that our Founders affirmed in the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

In other words, our Creator bestowed the rights enumerated in our Declaration and, by extension, as codified in its subordinate guidance, our Constitution. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights; they are not gifts from government.

To that end, Alexander Hamilton wrote, "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

But the Left has, for many decades, made its primary objective the eradication of God from every public quarter, and routinely relied on judicial activism to undermine constitutional rule of law and, thus, the natural rights of man.

The intended consequence of this artificial barrier between church and state is to remove knowledge of our Creator from all public forums and, thus, over time, to disabuse belief in a sovereign God and the natural rights He has endowed.

This erosion of knowledge about the origin of our rights has dire implications for the future of liberty.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."

As the author of our Declaration of Independence makes clear, we should all tremble that man has adulterated the gifts of God.

Ironically, it was Jefferson who penned the words "wall of separation between church and state" in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

Jefferson was responding to a letter the Association wrote to him objecting to Connecticut's establishment of Congregationalism as its state church. Jefferson responded that the First Amendment prohibited the national (federal) government from establishing a "national church."

After all, the controlling language (Amendment I) reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Jefferson concluded rightly that the Constitution's 10th Amendment federalism provision prohibited the national government from interfering with matters of state governments -- a "wall of separation," if you will, between the federal government and state governments.

Among all our Founders, Jefferson was most adamant in his objection to the construct of the Judicial Branch of government in the proposed Constitution, writing, "The Constitution [would become] a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."

Jefferson warned: "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. ... It has long been my opinion ... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 81, "[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution."

But Jefferson was correct in his apprehension about our Constitution being treated as "a mere thing of wax" by what he called the "despotic branch," who would do the bidding of their special-interest constituencies rather than interpret the plain language of the Constitution.

In 1947, Justice Hugo Black perverted Jefferson's words when Black speciously opined in the majority opinion of Everson v. Board of Education that the First Amendment created a "wall of separation" between religion and government, thus opening the floodgates for subsequent opinions abolishing religious education and expression in all public forums.

John Adams wrote, "If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave."

It may not be in the power of man to alienate the gift of liberty, but it will certainly take the power of men, guided by our Creator, to defend it. To that end, religion and politics are inseparable.

WRITTEN by Mark Alexander and presented in his Federalist Society emailing dated May 14th, 2009

Behind the Angst at Notre Dame

It might be hard for alumni, sports fans and fundraisers to admit but, at the end of the day, not every educational institution matters. Few are unique; most are redundant and easy to replace.The University of Notre Dame, though, is different.

This is not merely because of past (and, we can hope, future) football success, a catchy fight song and savvy merchandising. Notre Dame matters because it aspires to be something different and interesting: a great research university that is excellent precisely because it is meaningfully and distinctively Catholic.

This project is not about nostalgia, heritage, school spirit or "branding." Instead, Notre Dame's aim is to achieve genuine excellence, and thereby to engage and improve the world through — not despite — its Catholic character. This character is to be pervasive, animating and enriching, not merely a decoration or garnish, a little "something extra" sprinkled on top of an otherwise standard-issue enterprise.

Notre Dame's project is challenging and vulnerable, but it's also exciting and important — and not just to Catholics. We all have a stake in its success. Conversations are made deeper and richer, and the diligent search for truth is helped by the presence of diverse, distinctive — sometimes dissenting — voices. Institutions, like individuals, provide these voices.

Peter Parker's Uncle Ben was right to say, "With great power comes great responsibility." Similarly, institutions that matter carry a burden. This is why Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama with an honorary law degree is so controversial. Most graduation speeches, of course, are entirely forgettable hodgepodges of Dr. Seuss, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Starbucks-cup quotations.

This year, however, Notre Dame's commencement speaker on Sunday could hardly be more prominent or memorable. And yet, the choice has divided sharply not only the Irish Nation but Catholics generally and has prompted many of us who love Notre Dame and embrace its mission to ask: Is Notre Dame's decision consistent with the character and commitments that make it distinctive? That make it worth caring about? That make it matter?

To understand what the controversy surrounding Obama's invitation is about, it is important to understand what it is not about.

Most important, the issue is not, as some commentators have suggested, whether Notre Dame should welcome, engage, debate and explore a wide range of viewpoints. Of course it should. It was, after all, a central message of the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council that "nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo" in Christians' hearts, and the same can be said for the work of a Catholic university. Such a university has nothing to fear from — indeed, it has the best possible reasons to welcome — inquiry, investigation, argument and testing. And so, no one could reasonably oppose inviting the president to Notre Dame for discussion and dialogue on immigration, education, health care — or even abortion.

The question on the table is not whether Notre Dame should hear from the president but whether Notre Dame should honor the president. A Catholic university can and should engage all comers, but in order to be true to itself — to have integrity — it should hesitate before honoring those who use their talents or power to bring about grave injustice. The university is, and must remain, a bustling marketplace of ideas; at the same time, it also has a voice of its own. We say a lot about who we are and what we stand for through what we love and what we choose to honor.

The controversy at Notre Dame is not about what should be said at Catholic universities, but about what should be said by a Catholic university.

It is also a mistake to frame the controversy in terms of academic freedom. Obviously, this freedom, properly understood, is central to the mission of any great university.

Even so, no one is proposing limits on what can or should be discussed, debated, taught, studied or written by students or scholars. The American Association of University Professors is right to insist that "the opportunity to be confronted with diverse opinions is at the core of academic freedom," but wrong to imagine that this principle requires a university to be indifferent to the messages it sends through the honors it confers.

No university is entirely neutral; every university makes decisions about what to affirm, through its policies, as good or true. One can (and should) affirm the right (and duty) of scholars at Catholic universities to be true to their scholarly vocations while still asking whether Notre Dame is being true to itself.

Next, some have suggested that it threatens the separation of church and state for Catholic bishops to express regret and criticism regarding Notre Dame's decision. This suggestion is badly misplaced. A Catholic bishop who calls on a Catholic university to be true to its Catholic character is exercising, not undermining, religious liberty.

Finally, the reason some say that an authentically Catholic university — even one that appreciates fully President Obama's appeal and the historical significance of his election — should not honor him with a ceremonial law degree is not because he rejects "Catholic" views on abortion. The worry, instead, is that Notre Dame will send the wrong message and say something that is inconsistent with its Catholic character and with its commitment to human rights by honoring — at this time, anyway — a president whose record so far on abortion and embryo-destructive research is glaringly in conflict with that commitment.

The Catholic view on these matters, after all, is that there is no specifically or narrowly "Catholic" view. The church affirms that human life is sacred, and that every human being, at every stage of development, should be welcomed in life and protected in law. This affirmation rests on the same foundational principles of human dignity and equality that animate the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, principles that were celebrated not only by Pope John Paul II but also by Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

The president's error is not failing to submit to "Catholic" authority — why should he? — but aggressively and consistently promoting policies that are unjust because they deny the basic equality of every human being.

To doubt that a Catholic university should honor Obama at this time, and to worry about the message such an honor sends, is not to engage in partisan or "single issue" politics or to deny that there are many things to be celebrated and admired about our new president's life, campaign, election and vision. Indeed, these things make it all the more regrettable — tragic, really — that he is so badly misguided on such a fundamental issue of justice.

WRITTEN by Richard W. Garnett for USA Today and published on May 11th, 2009

God and Country

Of course it's purely a hypothetical question if you live in America or most any free nation, but if you simply had to make a choice, which would you choose: God, or country? If you're someone who is among the tiny minority of Americans who doesn't believe in God to begin with, it's an easy question. And if you're one of those who loves God completely but has little faith or confidence in any government, then it's probably an easy choice for you as well. But the vast majority of Americans would find this a difficult question with which to wrestle. Your first inclination would be to say something like "There's no way that would ever happen here in the U.S., so I don't even have to worry about it." Perhaps true. When the United States of America publicly issued its Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, the document began: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them..." The Declaration goes on to famously state: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The document, written by Thomas Jefferson, was signed with affirment by him, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and leaders from all 13 original colonies. So the United States at its founding was a nation of believers. Then in what is commonly known as the 'Bill of Rights', the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1791 guaranteed "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." What the authors were striving for was tolerance, not abolition of religion from society. So you would seem to have a pretty solid backing to believe that you shouldn't ever have to worry about being forced to make such a choice. But the fact is, those words were written and spoken in the past, and we are talking about a hypothetical future. Think it can't happen in actuality? Then you simply haven't been paying attention to the history of the world. One thing that you can most certainly count on in the future is change, and for anyone to say they know where that change is going to take us in the next few centuries, even just in the next few decades, would be extremely presumptuous and naive. So just play along. Something happens, and you are forced to make that choice: God or country. The likely way such a choice would come is from the country end of things. Some entity coming to power and telling you that you may worship no God, or must worship some particular version of God, or else you have to leave the country (or worse.) In the Bible, the last years of mankind on earth are filled with this type of individual, personal decision in the Book of Revelation. You will be forced to choose between God and the ruling power manifest by Satan, and the immediate price of choosing incorrectly will be your life. In his own life, Jesus Christ spoke of the relevance of government in the Gospel of Luke: "Give to the emperor the thing's that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's". This famous 'render unto Caesar' statement shows that the Lord understood and supported that there was a need for government of men by men. I would say that if you are ever forced into such a choice, then you only have one decision to make - choose God. That means even if you have to die for your choice. Because no government worth living in would force such a choice on you, and none is worth the price of your immortal and eternal soul. Now for some, the choice might come from God Himself. For reasons only he may fully appreciate, you may be called to some action or to take some position that runs counter to that of your official American government position. And when I say 'called', I mean 'called by God' in a manner that leaves you no doubt as to the origin of the call to action. In that case, you most certainly need to choose to do or say whatever it is that God is calling you to. There is every probability that His reasons go to a message that He wants delivered through you to the rest of mankind. The bottom line is that you should always choose God over country, and the simple reason is that your country, the United States of America, was formed with the blessings of God and inspired by His Word. God came first, His will and power are greater. You will be subject to the laws, rules, customs, and opinions of your countrymen for a few decades. You will answer to God for eternity. So while there is no choice to make, while America remains a God-fearing, God-loving nation in most hearts, continue to fight with everything that is in you and pray with everything you have that this status continues. But if one day the situation changes, and it all falls apart, be sure that you are ready to make the right decision. The correct choice will always be the choice for God.