In this post-9/11 era of security and vigilance, it seems that government has gotten bigger and more pervasive. Security guards are everywhere, policemen are at surprisingly benign public events, federal agents have wands at airports, pockets must be emptied and belts removed at court houses and graduations, I get “can I help you?” suspiciously asked to me. The list goes on.
I know the first order of government is safety — that is, after a perfect union and establishing justice. But somewhere further down the preamble, wasn’t there something said about securing the blessings of liberty for our posterity? I feel sometimes that my liberties have been stripped much like the typical swimming hole trick, where kids run off with the swimmers’ clothing. They end up wearing barrels to hide their nakedness. I personally want to pass something besides an empty barrel down to my posterity. Something that is fitting and worthy. I guess it’s human nature, not to mention dignity, to choose anything over nothing. May I have this next dance? Oh, sorry, but I need both my hands to hold this barrel up.
I preach about how our nation was formed under God and people scream Separation of church and state! at me. I tell them about how the Declaration of Independence says our rights come from our Creator and they say frothily, God is not in the Constitution. Who’s talking about the Constitution? The Constitution is essential. It is the house of law and order in which our American family freely lives and moves. But the house has a concrete foundation, and that foundation is the Declaration of Independence.
The framers of the Constitution took the Declaration of Independence for granted, just like a buyer of a house takes for granted that the house has a foundation. The framers also took for granted that someone was responsible for the rights defined in the Declaration of Independence. That someone was God. Just like we take for granted that someone poured the foundation to a house we buy. A question that should never be asked, “Does your house have a foundation?” Second question that should never be asked, “Did the framers of the Constitution believe in God?”
Belief in God was implied in the Constitution because of the fact that belief in God was explicit in the Declaration of Independence. The implication may be in the words of the Preamble. “We the people . . . to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Those blessings of liberty are spelled out in the Declaration of Independence in words like “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The Declaration then makes a powerful statement. “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Today, that statement is distorted into the view that would sound like this, “Our rights come from the Bill of Rights, which are provided for by our Constitution.” Let me give you an illustration.
In a simple world, I have been given three pieces of fruit: an orange, an apple, and a banana. I look around at my simple world and say, This fruit comes from whoever created my simple world. I love fruit. Other people love fruit too and they may want my fruit. So I hire a fruit-guard to protect my fruit. At first he guards my fruit faithfully, but then I start trusting him too much. Soon he forgets what his job is and begins to think that he gave me the fruit. So he starts peeling my banana, squeezing my orange, and nibbling on my apple. The fruit-guard has become the fruit-thief. When I challenge him he laughs and says he gave me the fruit and he can take it back if he wants. In my simple world, I forgot the true source of the fruit, so what can I say? After all, the fruit-guard is big, and he has a badge on, so he must be right. I had three pieces of fruit — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — now I have none. My mistake was that I let the fruit-guard hold my fruit instead of charging him to fight anyone who tried to steal it.
That is what we have done today. We’ve come to think that government is the source of our rights because government is charged with protecting those rights. We will lose every right we have in this country unless we assert the fact that our rights are given us by our Creator, and that government is not a blessing. Remembering the aphorism attributed to of George Washington, “Government is like fire: It is a dangerous servant and a cruel master.”
Remind government often with these words: Mr. State, I have an orange, an apple, and a banana. You must never let anyone touch my fruit, and — by the way — you may never touch them either.
Lamar Howell's Weblog 
Here is the comment I mentioned at softball that I posted at DouglasFarah.com:
The nature of American-style democracy is that we walk a balancing act, with well-founded traditional liberal concerns on the one hand (human rights, national sovereignty, due process, etc.) and on the other hand, the need for defense, the burdens and blessings of alliances, and the blessings and challenges that go with being the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. It’s a messy business, and we seem to bounce around between the pragmatism of Reagan’s Iran-Contra scheme and Bush’s Guantanamo, and the wimpiness of Carter’s Iran rescue attempt and Clinton’s Somalia fiasco.
The American public is fickle. In spring and summer 2001, the papers were full of reports of lawsuits regarding profiling. After 9/11, the public was screaming: “Young male Middle Eastern Muslims in flight school? How come no one was watching these guys?!”
The public wants law enforcement agencies to be able to go after “these guys”, but the thought of our own phones being tapped or e-mail being scanned makes us justifiably nervous.
Defining the issue as a “war on terrorism” is a brilliant rhetorical device that opens the door to more aggressive or “creative” tactics, but it’s still very messy, both within our country and internationally. The world’s nations and peoples don’t agree on a universal set of rules or values and don’t define any issue the same way.
Hugo Grotius, the Father of International Law, was one of my ancestors, and I admire him. However, ultimately there is no international law. I don’t think most of us Americans would much like it if there were.