Ronald R. Cherry
American Judeo-Christian values
By Ronald R. Cherry
The American Declaration of Independence expresses a convergence between our Judeo-Christian Values and rational self-evident moral truth. As Thomas Jefferson said, our founding document is "an expression of the American mind."
"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 through the consent of the governed... " Thomas Jefferson
Since the pursuit of happiness, as Sigmund Freud surmised, is tied to human love and to creative work and play, the principles of American Judeo-Christian Values can rightly be summarized as honoring each individual's equal God-given rights to Life, Liberty and Creativity. This seed of American social justice was fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions and laws of Old Europe. Our Founding Fathers rightly separated church from state, but they wisely did not separate God from state; they acknowledged God as the source of our equal value, dignity and natural human rights. Our Founders incorporated Biblical moral and rational Enlightenment principles into our founding documents and laws, reflecting our Judeo-Christian culture and character, and our common sense, structuring a roadblock against totalitarian or tyrannical ruling power in America. Together our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights form the basis of American Exceptionalism, because God-given, equal, unalienable human rights, protected by rational Constitutional Law, is an all-American exception in the bloody trail of human history.
Our Founding Fathers were religious in a distinctive way, the Judeo-Christian way. They were the classic liberals of their day, deducing from rational Natural Law that just government power can only derive through an informed consent of the governed majority, while remaining conservative to Biblical moral principles including a belief that our infinite human value and equal human rights come from a power higher than government. Our Founding Fathers understood, by the Law of Nature, that the majority must make secular law under a Republican form of government as in our Constitution, and also reckoned, by the Law of Nature's God, that secular law must comply with man's sacred unalienable human rights as in our Declaration of Independence.
"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men." Thomas Jefferson
"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights [along with the majority], which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." Thomas Jefferson
There is a connection between God and Human Liberty, because God is the author of the infinite and therefore equal value of all individuals. Divine equality of human value leads to Divine equality of human rights and equality before the law. Thomas Jefferson noted that:
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."
God created equality of human value; equal human value leads to equal human rights; equal human rights circumscribe rightful liberty; thus, rightful human liberty derives from our Creator. Our equal unalienable human rights and equality before the law derive from God, while the tyranny of unequal human rights and inequality before the law derives from man. It is ironic that American Conservatives are now the champion of this idea, our most liberal founding principle. It is also an irony that many so-called Liberals have turned a blind eye to the required connection between God and liberty, and are thus on trajectory toward a self-serving, anti-American conservatism of Socialist State-derived unequal human rights and inequality before the law, where, as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, the Socialist Pigs are "more equal" than others. Thomas Jefferson correctly understood that rightful human liberty cannot survive among men without its Divine connection to equal human value and equal human rights.
In Judeo-Christian America one finds the idea of equality before God and the law – not the Big Orwellian lie of government forced equality. Modern European leaders, and the American Democrat Party, have wrongly and self-servingly stressed the value of forced equality at the expense of equal liberty, a French Revolutionary and Marxist principle. Karl Marx had his chance to promote equal natural human rights and equality before the law, but he chose tyranny instead. Modern social engineering of this sort, government enforced equality of social and economic outcome, has led to the failed European inventions of Marxist Socialism and Marxist Communism. Socialists in America have adopted this un-American idea which, in Orwellian fashion, is called "social justice." Totalitarian power is required to enforce equal economic and social outcome, elevating a Marxist oligarchy of not-to-be-equalized equalizers, thus the Orwellian paradox of forced equal outcome is unequal outcome on an immensely greater scale than any natural inequality which existed in pre-Marxist society. The fly in the Socialist ointment is precisely the fact that fallible, greedy, self-serving, violence-minded people, not angels, always make their way unequally and irreversibly to the top.
"It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called "abolition of private property" [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before... It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow, and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them, and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent [with the Socialists on top]." George Orwell – 1984
Marxist Socialism is un-American because it is a form of elite minority rule – an oligarchy akin to the Medieval Feudalism from which our Founding Fathers escaped. Most people prefer to be hard-working and creative; by violating the will of the majority to keep their labored-for property collectivist Socialism becomes unjust as it excessively taxes away their property, promising the sky but delivering dust, using tyrannical government power without informed consent of the governed. Socialism always ends in social conflict and poverty because, on one hand it unjustly suppresses human creativity by excessively taxing away its reward, and on the other, in return for votes, through foolish property redistribution to those who, though mentally and physically able, fail to honor their Divine privilege and duty to work creatively. Why work if the reward, your property, is forcefully taken by the Marxist/Socialist State, and why work if, on the receiving end, you don't have to? Marxist Socialism is a quadruple insult to the pursuit of happiness: it coerces conformity and unnatural equality among all below the Socialist oligarchy; it suppresses God-given human creativity and the natural work ethic leading to economic collapse, and it damages the social fabric by promoting resentment on the one hand by excessively taxing the laboring middle class (the so-called Bourgeoisie), and ingratitude on the other (the non-disabled parasitic so-called Proletariat). American Socialists are fostering a calculated acceleration of social chaos in order to bring about their Marxist counter-revolution. Marxist Communism, the most malignant form of Socialism, dishonored the sacredness of human life, murdering 100 million civilians, the inevitable result of separating not just church from state, but a separation of God from state. Contrast that with the following quotations from our Founding Fathers which illustrate the value of unifying a righteous God to our State.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Thomas Jefferson
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased." Alexander Hamilton
"That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln
European cultures have historical ties to authoritarian and totalitarian systems dating back to the Roman Empire. European Christianity was, for a time, contaminated by its links to authoritarian rule; slavery in North America was implanted here by European Kings. American Judeo-Christian culture, on the other hand, has been linked to honoring Life, Liberty and Creativity from the outset, deriving its wisdom from the lights of reason, common sense and the Holy Bible – principles and values distilled into the American Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. Our Founding Fathers placed God into the Federal Government of the United States by placing the Creator into the Declaration of Independence, our supreme unamendable Natural Law. It is important for Americans to understand that rightful human liberty has something to do with God, an all-American idea which students should understand even if they are not particularly religious. Our Declaration of Independence does not create an American theocracy; it is an eternal declaration of war "against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," a roadblock to injustice and tyranny by its acknowledgement that our equal natural human rights originate from God rather than from a King, Pope, Caliph, Imam, Fascist Dictator, an Atheistic Communist Politburo, a Supreme Court, or a Legislature. It should be self-evident that if human rights are derived from government, a small group of other people, they can also be legally removed by government, and are thereby not unalienable. It is the height of irrationality and insanity to believe that a small group of people (government) can possibly be the source of your right to life or your freedom of speech.
America is a melting pot of diverse people including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Atheists, and from the Judeo-Christian perspective all made in God's image with infinite value, and thereby with equal natural human rights and equality before the law. We have in America a multiethnic society; God forbid that we continue down the road toward a Balkanized multi-value society, which is likely to happen with the atrophy of American Judeo-Christian Values. We must not adopt toxic values which exist in some foreign cultures. The totalitarian values of Communism, Euro-Fascism, and Islamic Sharia Law and Jihad (Islamo-Fascism) must not be allowed to metastasize into American Culture and Law, because those un-American foreign values are based on unequal rights and unequal law. Under Nazism (German Fascism) the so-called Aryan Race possessed superior rights compared to other races. Under Marxist Communism the so-called Proletariat Class, and the Marxist Ruling Class, possess superior rights compared to the so-called Bourgeois Class (Middle Class). Under Islamic Sharia Law Muslims possess superior rights compared to non-Muslims. Thus, the God-given equal rights of our American Declaration of Independence are pitted against the unequal rights inherent in all the others. Our Judeo-Christian Values have been with us from the beginning of the American Revolution; they have made us strong and successful. Recognizing and understanding other cultures is desirable; we can appreciate and admire foreign language, literature, music, cuisine and architecture, but we should never tolerate the foreign values of unequal rights, unequal protection of the law, violence which is not in self-defense, coercion, supremacism, bigotry (irrational intolerance), slavery and totalitarianism.
What follows is a list of what this American considers to be our Judeo-Christian Values, the values established by our Founding Fathers, the basis for which is to be found in the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I am indebted to Dennis Prager who has elaborated on this subject long before I took it up; those who know his work will recognize many of his thoughts.
1. Our sense of right and wrong and our sense of wisdom come from the use of reason and common sense, but also from the Bible, which by faith was considered by our Founding Fathers to be God's inspired text. This faith lead to our American motto: "In God We Trust." Our Founding Fathers were believers in the God of the Bible, even if some were not Orthodox Christians, and they put that faith into the Declaration of Independence, into our laws, into our national monuments, and thus into our Judeo-Christian culture.
2. Truth is Sacred. There can be no liberty or justice, and little happiness without it. Jesus connected truth and liberty when He said "the truth shall make you free." In Deuteronomy God is described this way: "He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice."
3. Human life is the first gift of God, and it is of infinite value since man is made in the image of God. Judeo-Christian Values have lead to a culture of life in America, not a culture of death. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend innocent God-given life.
4. Liberty is a gift from God, stated so in our Declaration of Independence. Exodus is the story of liberation, as is the inscription on our Liberty Bell from Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," and also in the New Testament: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Our Founding Fathers understood that peace can only occur under liberty; peace under tyranny is an oxymoron. The tyrant or terrorist is by definition at war with liberty-loving people; we either accept the struggle for Liberty, or we accept the tyranny. Just war in medieval times was connected to the defense of life and privilege for kings and tyrants; American just war refers to the defense of life and liberty of a free people – individuals who wish to be free from tyranny and terror. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend their God-given Liberty.
5. Human creativity is a gift from God and is not to be unjustly suppressed by totalitarian, tyrannical or excessively taxing government. The work ethic is an important part of Judeo-Christian Values since honorable work is a reflection of God-given human creativity. Human reason is also an aspect of human creativity, leading to scientific knowledge and technological progress. Reason and science are important aspects of Judeo-Christian Values. Human creativity is central to the pursuit of happiness but does not guarantee it; totalitarian systems such as Communism or Islamic Sharia guarantee utopian happiness but don't deliver, because they suppress human creativity.
6. Establish justice. This is commanded repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible; this is how it has been done in America: Honor Life, Liberty and Creativity. Honoring the life of others is expressed by Jesus' Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Liberty in practical and rational terms means: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of peaceful religion, no established or state-supported church, right to own property and to privacy at home, right to bear arms in self-defense, uninterrupted elections, and the division of powers into three federal branches and among the states. It is unjust when government-derived group rights trump God-given individual rights to life, liberty and creativity. Our Founding Fathers enumerated these equal unalienable human rights for all people, and our Civil War enforced it for the American slaves when they were denied their God-given Liberty.
7. Hate Evil. This is commanded the Jewish and Christian Bible: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Americans with Judeo-Christian Values, as opposed to European leaders, still believe in the death penalty for pre-meditated murder, and America is still the nemesis of terrorists and tyrants – see the seal of the state of Virginia.
8. Love your neighbor is commanded in the Jewish and Christian Bible, and love your enemy is commanded by Jesus. Generations of Americans, starting with our Founding Fathers, have had to square the values of "Hate Evil" with "Love your enemy." This has been done by hating the evil within the enemies of God-given Life and Liberty, but not hating the evil-doer him/herself.
9. Courage is a Judeo-Christian Value, and it is also valued in other cultures. Courage can be defined as the willingness to place one's self into harm's way, and if necessary to die in defense of God-given Life and Liberty. I can think of no better example of warrior courage than young David as he stood with his sling before Goliath. There is no greater example of pacifist courage than Jesus, as He gave His life in defense of eternal Life and Liberty. Without sacrifice the protesting pacifist is a coward; Jesus was not a coward. The warrior and the true pacifist are linked by self-sacrifice in defense of sacred life and liberty.
10. From Many, One: E pluribus unum. Ethnicity and race don't matter, but our values do. We Americans should consider ourselves blessed to live under God-given liberty in the same melting pot, and we are privileged to pursue happiness through creative work and play, unencumbered by excessive government restriction. Those things of lesser importance should melt away into what is important, and which should unite us: Our value of Life, Liberty and Creativity – those individual human rights identified by the Declaration of Independence as the gifts of God.
11. Giving is a Judeo-Christian value and duty.
12. Self-discipline, self-respect, respect for elders and for others, individual responsibility, loyalty and gratitude are Judeo-Christian Values.
13. In the Judeo-Christian Value System there is a natural and common-sense balance between compassion and courageous confrontation of evil. This can be seen metaphorically as a natural balance between femininity and masculinity; both good and necessary.
14. The natural resources of the Earth, including the animals, along with the rest of creation should be honored and well cared for, but also used and enjoyed; and never worshiped.
Elite European leaders and philosophers, and some Americans in government, mass media and the Ivory Tower, have decided that "God is Dead." They have it wrong; our Founding Fathers have said otherwise. The European separation of God and state in the Twentieth Century resulted in Communism and Fascism, with a disgusting explosion of mass murder, wars of aggression, indecency, subjugation and human suffering. The Judeo-Christian Values of our Founding Fathers has resulted in an explosion of Life, Liberty and Creativity for hundreds of millions of people. It can be so for our children, and their children, and for our posterity into the future – a bright future. We have a choice: Accept and defend Judeo-Christian Values by placing God, but not the church, back into the American State by enforcement of equal natural human rights via equality before the law, or accept a new wave of Totalitarianism of the Marxist, Euro-Fascist or Islamo-Fascist variety.
America does not have an exclusive claim on Life, Liberty and Creativity; these are the universal equal rights of all people, everywhere, and for all time. Recall that our Founding Fathers were revolutionaries, and realize that the American Revolution will not end until there are no longer enemies of our God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity, foreign or domestic. The Liberty that flourished in ancient Greece and during the Roman Republic was short-lived; American Liberty, however, can last as long as the Earth exists, because our Liberty is bequeathed by the King of the Universe.
Thus Always to Tyrants
Ronald R. Cherry, MD, author of Restoring the American Mind
© Ronald R. Cherry
July 14, 2019
The American Declaration of Independence expresses a convergence between our Judeo-Christian Values and rational self-evident moral truth. As Thomas Jefferson said, our founding document is "an expression of the American mind."
"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 through the consent of the governed... " Thomas Jefferson
Since the pursuit of happiness, as Sigmund Freud surmised, is tied to human love and to creative work and play, the principles of American Judeo-Christian Values can rightly be summarized as honoring each individual's equal God-given rights to Life, Liberty and Creativity. This seed of American social justice was fleshed out in the U.S. Constitution through reason and common sense, unencumbered by the dysfunctional religious and secular traditions and laws of Old Europe. Our Founding Fathers rightly separated church from state, but they wisely did not separate God from state; they acknowledged God as the source of our equal value, dignity and natural human rights. Our Founders incorporated Biblical moral and rational Enlightenment principles into our founding documents and laws, reflecting our Judeo-Christian culture and character, and our common sense, structuring a roadblock against totalitarian or tyrannical ruling power in America. Together our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights form the basis of American Exceptionalism, because God-given, equal, unalienable human rights, protected by rational Constitutional Law, is an all-American exception in the bloody trail of human history.
Our Founding Fathers were religious in a distinctive way, the Judeo-Christian way. They were the classic liberals of their day, deducing from rational Natural Law that just government power can only derive through an informed consent of the governed majority, while remaining conservative to Biblical moral principles including a belief that our infinite human value and equal human rights come from a power higher than government. Our Founding Fathers understood, by the Law of Nature, that the majority must make secular law under a Republican form of government as in our Constitution, and also reckoned, by the Law of Nature's God, that secular law must comply with man's sacred unalienable human rights as in our Declaration of Independence.
"Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men." Thomas Jefferson
"Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights [along with the majority], which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." Thomas Jefferson
There is a connection between God and Human Liberty, because God is the author of the infinite and therefore equal value of all individuals. Divine equality of human value leads to Divine equality of human rights and equality before the law. Thomas Jefferson noted that:
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."
God created equality of human value; equal human value leads to equal human rights; equal human rights circumscribe rightful liberty; thus, rightful human liberty derives from our Creator. Our equal unalienable human rights and equality before the law derive from God, while the tyranny of unequal human rights and inequality before the law derives from man. It is ironic that American Conservatives are now the champion of this idea, our most liberal founding principle. It is also an irony that many so-called Liberals have turned a blind eye to the required connection between God and liberty, and are thus on trajectory toward a self-serving, anti-American conservatism of Socialist State-derived unequal human rights and inequality before the law, where, as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, the Socialist Pigs are "more equal" than others. Thomas Jefferson correctly understood that rightful human liberty cannot survive among men without its Divine connection to equal human value and equal human rights.
In Judeo-Christian America one finds the idea of equality before God and the law – not the Big Orwellian lie of government forced equality. Modern European leaders, and the American Democrat Party, have wrongly and self-servingly stressed the value of forced equality at the expense of equal liberty, a French Revolutionary and Marxist principle. Karl Marx had his chance to promote equal natural human rights and equality before the law, but he chose tyranny instead. Modern social engineering of this sort, government enforced equality of social and economic outcome, has led to the failed European inventions of Marxist Socialism and Marxist Communism. Socialists in America have adopted this un-American idea which, in Orwellian fashion, is called "social justice." Totalitarian power is required to enforce equal economic and social outcome, elevating a Marxist oligarchy of not-to-be-equalized equalizers, thus the Orwellian paradox of forced equal outcome is unequal outcome on an immensely greater scale than any natural inequality which existed in pre-Marxist society. The fly in the Socialist ointment is precisely the fact that fallible, greedy, self-serving, violence-minded people, not angels, always make their way unequally and irreversibly to the top.
"It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called "abolition of private property" [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before... It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow, and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them, and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result, foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent [with the Socialists on top]." George Orwell – 1984
Marxist Socialism is un-American because it is a form of elite minority rule – an oligarchy akin to the Medieval Feudalism from which our Founding Fathers escaped. Most people prefer to be hard-working and creative; by violating the will of the majority to keep their labored-for property collectivist Socialism becomes unjust as it excessively taxes away their property, promising the sky but delivering dust, using tyrannical government power without informed consent of the governed. Socialism always ends in social conflict and poverty because, on one hand it unjustly suppresses human creativity by excessively taxing away its reward, and on the other, in return for votes, through foolish property redistribution to those who, though mentally and physically able, fail to honor their Divine privilege and duty to work creatively. Why work if the reward, your property, is forcefully taken by the Marxist/Socialist State, and why work if, on the receiving end, you don't have to? Marxist Socialism is a quadruple insult to the pursuit of happiness: it coerces conformity and unnatural equality among all below the Socialist oligarchy; it suppresses God-given human creativity and the natural work ethic leading to economic collapse, and it damages the social fabric by promoting resentment on the one hand by excessively taxing the laboring middle class (the so-called Bourgeoisie), and ingratitude on the other (the non-disabled parasitic so-called Proletariat). American Socialists are fostering a calculated acceleration of social chaos in order to bring about their Marxist counter-revolution. Marxist Communism, the most malignant form of Socialism, dishonored the sacredness of human life, murdering 100 million civilians, the inevitable result of separating not just church from state, but a separation of God from state. Contrast that with the following quotations from our Founding Fathers which illustrate the value of unifying a righteous God to our State.
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Thomas Jefferson
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Thomas Jefferson
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased." Alexander Hamilton
"That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Abraham Lincoln
European cultures have historical ties to authoritarian and totalitarian systems dating back to the Roman Empire. European Christianity was, for a time, contaminated by its links to authoritarian rule; slavery in North America was implanted here by European Kings. American Judeo-Christian culture, on the other hand, has been linked to honoring Life, Liberty and Creativity from the outset, deriving its wisdom from the lights of reason, common sense and the Holy Bible – principles and values distilled into the American Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. Our Founding Fathers placed God into the Federal Government of the United States by placing the Creator into the Declaration of Independence, our supreme unamendable Natural Law. It is important for Americans to understand that rightful human liberty has something to do with God, an all-American idea which students should understand even if they are not particularly religious. Our Declaration of Independence does not create an American theocracy; it is an eternal declaration of war "against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," a roadblock to injustice and tyranny by its acknowledgement that our equal natural human rights originate from God rather than from a King, Pope, Caliph, Imam, Fascist Dictator, an Atheistic Communist Politburo, a Supreme Court, or a Legislature. It should be self-evident that if human rights are derived from government, a small group of other people, they can also be legally removed by government, and are thereby not unalienable. It is the height of irrationality and insanity to believe that a small group of people (government) can possibly be the source of your right to life or your freedom of speech.
America is a melting pot of diverse people including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Atheists, and from the Judeo-Christian perspective all made in God's image with infinite value, and thereby with equal natural human rights and equality before the law. We have in America a multiethnic society; God forbid that we continue down the road toward a Balkanized multi-value society, which is likely to happen with the atrophy of American Judeo-Christian Values. We must not adopt toxic values which exist in some foreign cultures. The totalitarian values of Communism, Euro-Fascism, and Islamic Sharia Law and Jihad (Islamo-Fascism) must not be allowed to metastasize into American Culture and Law, because those un-American foreign values are based on unequal rights and unequal law. Under Nazism (German Fascism) the so-called Aryan Race possessed superior rights compared to other races. Under Marxist Communism the so-called Proletariat Class, and the Marxist Ruling Class, possess superior rights compared to the so-called Bourgeois Class (Middle Class). Under Islamic Sharia Law Muslims possess superior rights compared to non-Muslims. Thus, the God-given equal rights of our American Declaration of Independence are pitted against the unequal rights inherent in all the others. Our Judeo-Christian Values have been with us from the beginning of the American Revolution; they have made us strong and successful. Recognizing and understanding other cultures is desirable; we can appreciate and admire foreign language, literature, music, cuisine and architecture, but we should never tolerate the foreign values of unequal rights, unequal protection of the law, violence which is not in self-defense, coercion, supremacism, bigotry (irrational intolerance), slavery and totalitarianism.
What follows is a list of what this American considers to be our Judeo-Christian Values, the values established by our Founding Fathers, the basis for which is to be found in the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I am indebted to Dennis Prager who has elaborated on this subject long before I took it up; those who know his work will recognize many of his thoughts.
1. Our sense of right and wrong and our sense of wisdom come from the use of reason and common sense, but also from the Bible, which by faith was considered by our Founding Fathers to be God's inspired text. This faith lead to our American motto: "In God We Trust." Our Founding Fathers were believers in the God of the Bible, even if some were not Orthodox Christians, and they put that faith into the Declaration of Independence, into our laws, into our national monuments, and thus into our Judeo-Christian culture.
2. Truth is Sacred. There can be no liberty or justice, and little happiness without it. Jesus connected truth and liberty when He said "the truth shall make you free." In Deuteronomy God is described this way: "He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice."
3. Human life is the first gift of God, and it is of infinite value since man is made in the image of God. Judeo-Christian Values have lead to a culture of life in America, not a culture of death. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend innocent God-given life.
4. Liberty is a gift from God, stated so in our Declaration of Independence. Exodus is the story of liberation, as is the inscription on our Liberty Bell from Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof," and also in the New Testament: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Our Founding Fathers understood that peace can only occur under liberty; peace under tyranny is an oxymoron. The tyrant or terrorist is by definition at war with liberty-loving people; we either accept the struggle for Liberty, or we accept the tyranny. Just war in medieval times was connected to the defense of life and privilege for kings and tyrants; American just war refers to the defense of life and liberty of a free people – individuals who wish to be free from tyranny and terror. Americans with Judeo-Christian Values will defend their God-given Liberty.
5. Human creativity is a gift from God and is not to be unjustly suppressed by totalitarian, tyrannical or excessively taxing government. The work ethic is an important part of Judeo-Christian Values since honorable work is a reflection of God-given human creativity. Human reason is also an aspect of human creativity, leading to scientific knowledge and technological progress. Reason and science are important aspects of Judeo-Christian Values. Human creativity is central to the pursuit of happiness but does not guarantee it; totalitarian systems such as Communism or Islamic Sharia guarantee utopian happiness but don't deliver, because they suppress human creativity.
6. Establish justice. This is commanded repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible; this is how it has been done in America: Honor Life, Liberty and Creativity. Honoring the life of others is expressed by Jesus' Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Liberty in practical and rational terms means: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of peaceful religion, no established or state-supported church, right to own property and to privacy at home, right to bear arms in self-defense, uninterrupted elections, and the division of powers into three federal branches and among the states. It is unjust when government-derived group rights trump God-given individual rights to life, liberty and creativity. Our Founding Fathers enumerated these equal unalienable human rights for all people, and our Civil War enforced it for the American slaves when they were denied their God-given Liberty.
7. Hate Evil. This is commanded the Jewish and Christian Bible: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Americans with Judeo-Christian Values, as opposed to European leaders, still believe in the death penalty for pre-meditated murder, and America is still the nemesis of terrorists and tyrants – see the seal of the state of Virginia.
8. Love your neighbor is commanded in the Jewish and Christian Bible, and love your enemy is commanded by Jesus. Generations of Americans, starting with our Founding Fathers, have had to square the values of "Hate Evil" with "Love your enemy." This has been done by hating the evil within the enemies of God-given Life and Liberty, but not hating the evil-doer him/herself.
9. Courage is a Judeo-Christian Value, and it is also valued in other cultures. Courage can be defined as the willingness to place one's self into harm's way, and if necessary to die in defense of God-given Life and Liberty. I can think of no better example of warrior courage than young David as he stood with his sling before Goliath. There is no greater example of pacifist courage than Jesus, as He gave His life in defense of eternal Life and Liberty. Without sacrifice the protesting pacifist is a coward; Jesus was not a coward. The warrior and the true pacifist are linked by self-sacrifice in defense of sacred life and liberty.
10. From Many, One: E pluribus unum. Ethnicity and race don't matter, but our values do. We Americans should consider ourselves blessed to live under God-given liberty in the same melting pot, and we are privileged to pursue happiness through creative work and play, unencumbered by excessive government restriction. Those things of lesser importance should melt away into what is important, and which should unite us: Our value of Life, Liberty and Creativity – those individual human rights identified by the Declaration of Independence as the gifts of God.
11. Giving is a Judeo-Christian value and duty.
12. Self-discipline, self-respect, respect for elders and for others, individual responsibility, loyalty and gratitude are Judeo-Christian Values.
13. In the Judeo-Christian Value System there is a natural and common-sense balance between compassion and courageous confrontation of evil. This can be seen metaphorically as a natural balance between femininity and masculinity; both good and necessary.
14. The natural resources of the Earth, including the animals, along with the rest of creation should be honored and well cared for, but also used and enjoyed; and never worshiped.
Elite European leaders and philosophers, and some Americans in government, mass media and the Ivory Tower, have decided that "God is Dead." They have it wrong; our Founding Fathers have said otherwise. The European separation of God and state in the Twentieth Century resulted in Communism and Fascism, with a disgusting explosion of mass murder, wars of aggression, indecency, subjugation and human suffering. The Judeo-Christian Values of our Founding Fathers has resulted in an explosion of Life, Liberty and Creativity for hundreds of millions of people. It can be so for our children, and their children, and for our posterity into the future – a bright future. We have a choice: Accept and defend Judeo-Christian Values by placing God, but not the church, back into the American State by enforcement of equal natural human rights via equality before the law, or accept a new wave of Totalitarianism of the Marxist, Euro-Fascist or Islamo-Fascist variety.
America does not have an exclusive claim on Life, Liberty and Creativity; these are the universal equal rights of all people, everywhere, and for all time. Recall that our Founding Fathers were revolutionaries, and realize that the American Revolution will not end until there are no longer enemies of our God-given Life, Liberty and Creativity, foreign or domestic. The Liberty that flourished in ancient Greece and during the Roman Republic was short-lived; American Liberty, however, can last as long as the Earth exists, because our Liberty is bequeathed by the King of the Universe.
Ronald R. Cherry, MD, author of Restoring the American Mind
© Ronald R. Cherry
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