In 1776, the American people were at war, fighting to preserve the common principles that bound them together in society. They were fighting to defend the fundamental truths set forth in the Declaration of Independence â??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.â?
Today, we still celebrate our independence and pay tribute to our founding charter, but do we really understand it? Do we know the meaning of our creed? If we think Congress can regulate virtually every aspect of our being, then the answer is no. If we believe government should take money from one to give to another, then the answer is no. And if we accept a president who claims a power to kill Americans charged of no crime simply because he deems them a threat to society, then the answer is definitely, positively, and unquestionably no.
In the very first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, our founders wrote that the American people were breaking from British rule to live by the tenets of Natural Law â?? â??to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and coequal station to which the Laws of Nature and Natureâ??s God entitle them.â? To understand the meaning of our creed, we must come to know Natural Law.
Natural Law philosophy, which was first developed over 2,000 years ago, is the idea that universal laws govern all human interactions and that these laws, or truths, are discoverable by human reason. Aristotle wrote in Rhetoric (ca. 350 BC), â??Universal law is the Law of Nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men, even on those who have no association or covenant with each other.â?
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