Alan Keyes
High court: tool of tyrannical elitist prejudice
By Alan Keyes
A decision degrading the natural right of marriage, endowed by the Creator, to the status of a fiat right, fabricated by government, will be unconstitutional on the face of it, because it disparages an antecedent right, retained by the people, which disparagement is explicitly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution's Ninth Amendment. Under present circumstances, the decision will also invite conflict on account of the openly flaunted prejudice of two of the justices participating in it.
Their participation in the decision-making process will confirm, by its arrogant disregard for even the pretense of impartiality, that the Court has made itself the instrument of the tyrannical elitist prejudice against unalienable right, which now seeks by every forceful means to impose itself upon the public mind, therefore abusing positions of power and influence in every sector of America's life.
Take careful note that this elitist prejudice is against the doctrine of unalienable right in general, not just against the unalienable right involved in the institution of marriage. This is why the campaign of elitist prejudice has focused especially on the judicial power of government. The judicial power is supposed to represent the rule of reason. In the derivation of just government, the rule of reason replaces the rule of force in the arbitration of human disputes. The whole doctrine of unalienable right depends, for its success, upon this substitution.
If you listen with any care at all to what is supposed to be the debate over "gay marriage," you will notice that, on one side and the other, it is made to turn on feeling, passion, tradition, and belief. No attempt is being made to reach a conclusion in light of reasonable common sense. On one side, marriage is treated as a matter of individual feelings. But since when are individual feelings reasonably subject to definition and enforcement by human law? Human laws can reasonably recognize and deal with outwardly appearing actions and consequences. Any attempt to base legislation on individual feelings denies their very nature as such, since such feelings cannot be known except from within, where no witness exists who is not omnipresent God.
On the supposedly pro-family conservative side, marriage is being touted as a matter of tradition, something handed down from one generation to the next. But by this rubric, the constitutional self-government of the American people would not exist, since it came into existence in defiance of the tradition of government handed down for centuries in Great Britain. America's complaints against British rule were, to begin with, stated in terms of the traditional rights of Englishmen. But those rights traced back to a Charter that derived its authority from the assent of a monarch who, according to tradition, rightfully came into its possession by God's power (approved, in the final analysis, on the field of battle).
But when the "Representatives of the united States of America," acting "by Authority of the good people" of the Colonies, declared that they "are and of right ought to be free and independent states," the battle had not yet been decided. On what basis of right did the good people of the colonies claim to have the authority to rule on the issue of independence? In appealing to the One they acknowledged as "the Supreme Judge of the world," what led them to presume upon His favorable judgment? What led them to state their independence as a fact, without the conclusive vindication of victory in battle?
They made their appeal on the basis of right reason. They made their appeal in common sense with Abraham in the Bible, when he made bold to ask "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The premises and facts they set forth in the Declaration of Independence relied on right reasoning (logic) familiar to them as it was set forth at length by thinkers such as John Locke (for example, in Chapter 2 of his Second Treatise of Government, passages from which I have quoted at the start of this article).
If the United States Supreme Court presumes to impose any redefinition of marriage on the states, respectively, or the people, without addressing the issue of unalienable right it involves, with reasoning that respects God-endowed right (which is the logic by which the American people asserted, and still claim to possess and exercise, sovereign authority over themselves), the Court's decision will be an attack on the very foundation of constitutional government, of, by, and for the people of the United States. It will be a high crime and misdemeanor that effectively dissolves the just bonds of government between and among the states, and among the individuals who compose the people of the United States. It will therefore be just cause for war.
Like the Dred Scott decision that heralded the onset of the first Civil War, the Court's action will bring the nation to the brink, whence "nothing but confusion and disorder will follow...." If the justices do not tread carefully, their temerity could very well set in motion the death throes of what is still supposed to be their country. "Forbid it, Almighty God!"
May 11, 2015
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The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one. And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it....
...for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property....
...the execution of the law of nature, is in that state, put into every man's hands, whereby everyone has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation....
...but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will....
...self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends...and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow.... if he that judges, judges amiss in his own, or any other case, he is answerable for it to the rest of mankind. (From John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 2, "Of the State of Nature")
A decision degrading the natural right of marriage, endowed by the Creator, to the status of a fiat right, fabricated by government, will be unconstitutional on the face of it, because it disparages an antecedent right, retained by the people, which disparagement is explicitly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution's Ninth Amendment. Under present circumstances, the decision will also invite conflict on account of the openly flaunted prejudice of two of the justices participating in it.
Their participation in the decision-making process will confirm, by its arrogant disregard for even the pretense of impartiality, that the Court has made itself the instrument of the tyrannical elitist prejudice against unalienable right, which now seeks by every forceful means to impose itself upon the public mind, therefore abusing positions of power and influence in every sector of America's life.
Take careful note that this elitist prejudice is against the doctrine of unalienable right in general, not just against the unalienable right involved in the institution of marriage. This is why the campaign of elitist prejudice has focused especially on the judicial power of government. The judicial power is supposed to represent the rule of reason. In the derivation of just government, the rule of reason replaces the rule of force in the arbitration of human disputes. The whole doctrine of unalienable right depends, for its success, upon this substitution.
If you listen with any care at all to what is supposed to be the debate over "gay marriage," you will notice that, on one side and the other, it is made to turn on feeling, passion, tradition, and belief. No attempt is being made to reach a conclusion in light of reasonable common sense. On one side, marriage is treated as a matter of individual feelings. But since when are individual feelings reasonably subject to definition and enforcement by human law? Human laws can reasonably recognize and deal with outwardly appearing actions and consequences. Any attempt to base legislation on individual feelings denies their very nature as such, since such feelings cannot be known except from within, where no witness exists who is not omnipresent God.
On the supposedly pro-family conservative side, marriage is being touted as a matter of tradition, something handed down from one generation to the next. But by this rubric, the constitutional self-government of the American people would not exist, since it came into existence in defiance of the tradition of government handed down for centuries in Great Britain. America's complaints against British rule were, to begin with, stated in terms of the traditional rights of Englishmen. But those rights traced back to a Charter that derived its authority from the assent of a monarch who, according to tradition, rightfully came into its possession by God's power (approved, in the final analysis, on the field of battle).
But when the "Representatives of the united States of America," acting "by Authority of the good people" of the Colonies, declared that they "are and of right ought to be free and independent states," the battle had not yet been decided. On what basis of right did the good people of the colonies claim to have the authority to rule on the issue of independence? In appealing to the One they acknowledged as "the Supreme Judge of the world," what led them to presume upon His favorable judgment? What led them to state their independence as a fact, without the conclusive vindication of victory in battle?
They made their appeal on the basis of right reason. They made their appeal in common sense with Abraham in the Bible, when he made bold to ask "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The premises and facts they set forth in the Declaration of Independence relied on right reasoning (logic) familiar to them as it was set forth at length by thinkers such as John Locke (for example, in Chapter 2 of his Second Treatise of Government, passages from which I have quoted at the start of this article).
If the United States Supreme Court presumes to impose any redefinition of marriage on the states, respectively, or the people, without addressing the issue of unalienable right it involves, with reasoning that respects God-endowed right (which is the logic by which the American people asserted, and still claim to possess and exercise, sovereign authority over themselves), the Court's decision will be an attack on the very foundation of constitutional government, of, by, and for the people of the United States. It will be a high crime and misdemeanor that effectively dissolves the just bonds of government between and among the states, and among the individuals who compose the people of the United States. It will therefore be just cause for war.
Like the Dred Scott decision that heralded the onset of the first Civil War, the Court's action will bring the nation to the brink, whence "nothing but confusion and disorder will follow...." If the justices do not tread carefully, their temerity could very well set in motion the death throes of what is still supposed to be their country. "Forbid it, Almighty God!"
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
