The Founders' Vision for Government

I recently received a fund-raising letter from the CATO Institute. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the first of 10 pages:

I'd like to ask you to take a few minutes to read this letter and consider getting involved with what [George] Will calls the organization that is the nation's "foremost upholder of the idea of liberty." Because to us liberty is — or should be — what America is all about. The essence of America is a respect for the dignity of the individual. It should be axiomatic that such dignity is enhanced to the extent one has control over one's own life. All of Cato's projects are developed with that thought in mind.

You know, we treat it almost as a cliché, the phrase from the Declaration of Independence in which the Founders cite certain "unalienable Rights" among which are the rights to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." But it's a crucially important idea. Furthermore, the whole purpose of government in the Founders' vision was to secure those rights. What a powerful, radical phrase that is.

I previously blogged on the first paragraph, and concluded that America's Founders believed that the dignity of the individual is preserved only when the individual (and government) is subordinated to the "Supreme Judge of the World." To the extent that CATO is a secular (atheistic) or "pluralistic" organization, it is not a defender of the dignity of the individual. In an impersonal meaningless evolving universe, the individual has no meaning or dignity; the concept of "dignity" itself is an arbitrary social convention, not a timeless moral absolute.

Did America's Founders believe that the purpose of government was to secure the rights of an impersonal and meaningless individual? No, they believed that God commanded them to form a civil government which would protect the rights with which God Himself had endowed mankind.

And in this they were mistaken.

The Declaration of Independence says

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.

The Founders believed that instituting government was a divine command. Creating a civil government was for them an act of religious duty.

There is no other legitimate basis for having a government than to have a Theocracy, that is, having a God-commanded civil magistrate that protects God-endowed rights.

Tragically, America's Founders were wrong about this. The institution (or formation) of what we call "the government" was never commanded by God, and it inevitably undermines true Theocracy, that is, the protection of God-endowed rights.

As I have pointed out, the word "theocracy" simply means "God rules." In a theocracy, the government is subordinate to God. There is "a Law above the law." In a theocracy, the government is "under God" because God is over the government. America was obviously founded as a Christian Theocracy.

But God nowhere commands the creation of an institution called "the State" or "civil government" to be a necessary component of a true Theocracy. "The State" is in fact formed out of rebellion against God's Commandments, such as the commandment "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt not kill." There was no king in Israel's Theocracy prior to 1 Samuel 8. Before this great sin, Israel's Theocracy might have been called "anarcho-familist."

In 1776 every civil government in Western Civilization was a Christian Theocracy, or claimed to be. There were two things that made America different: (1) no king (2) no state-church. America was different not because there was no government at all (though there was a trend in this direction), and not because the government was no longer "under God" (a preposterous idea). America's government was "non-Sectarian," but still Religious.

To repeat the CATO fund-raising letter,

the whole purpose of government in the Founders' vision was to secure those rights. What a powerful, radical phrase that is.

But that wasn't really such a "radical" idea -- in the modern sense of "something really new and different." It was "radical" in the sense of something very old.

John Adams said that the ideas of the American Revolution had an ancient pedigree in English history, dating back to the Protestant Reformation: to such works as A Short Treatise on Political Power, and of the true obedience which subjects our to kings and other civil governors, with an Exhortation to all true and natural English men (1556), and Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (c. 1580). These works (and others) set forth the key points of the Declaration of Independence:

• God-ordained rights
• Governments instituted by God to secure these rights
• Governments abolished if they destroy these rights

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 of 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.

These are not new, "radical" truths. These were well-accepted political axioms. It was the British government that was becoming "liberal" in the modern sense of that word, following a new path, abandoning the old, "change you better believe in," and America's revolution was in fact a "conservative counter-revolution."

After the fall of Rome, the truly radical ideas in political science were put in place by medieval kings like Justinian, Ethelbert, and Alfred. They made the Ten Commandments the basis for law and government. They put government under God. The Christian trend was for these ancient pagan political systems to become smaller, smaller, smaller, diminishing entirely until only the government of Christ remained.

Benjamin Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and served in the Presidential administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison -- each of whom came from a different political party. And of what party was Rush?

I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat. I am now neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power . . . will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. He alone Who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.

America's Founding Fathers were part of this trend and made progress in it when they abolished the British government over the colonies, but they regressed backwards toward pagan Rome when they "ordain[ed] and establish[ed] this Constitution for the United States of America." Men like Samuel Adams ignored their initial reservations against the Constitution. Men like Patrick Henry did not; they opposed the new government created by the Constitution and never signed on.

In 1776 Adam Smith was speaking of "the Invisible Hand." Rather than relying on a civil government with a Roman-style Senate, America's Founding Fathers should have dispensed entirely with efforts 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," and should have been content "with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence."