Without natural law, tyranny not far away
Natural law operates upon all that exists in nature. Its laws cannot be ignored without consequence. Natural law does not operate directly upon governments but rather upon the men who comprise them. Governments do not exist in nature but are the societal constructs of men.
Natural law binds men. Men will be served in government either by the representatives/ servants of the people who respect natural law (from which liberty itself is derived) and are consciously bound by it, or they will be ruled by men, tyrants, for whom natural law is an impediment to their ambitions.
In particular, the transition from a society that honors natural law to one that spurns it can be incremental and therefore difficult to discern before it reaches a tipping point where liberty gives way to tyranny. The journey from free man to slave can be sudden or slow, but if slow, the window of opportunity to reverse the trend once the tipping point is reached is less than one generation.
That tipping point has been reached. We are that generation. If we fail, the experiment with a republic based on natural law, on God-given unalienable rights, will be over and lost, probably for all time. We will be known as the generation that shamefully and selfishly squandered liberty for all men, for every subsequent generation.
What hope would we have to recover liberty? Could men as lazy and stupid as to have negligently, passively surrendered it have the wisdom, courage or fortitude to fight to regain it? As the writers of Anti-Federalist No. 52 quote, “They [the people] would have recourse to the ultima ratio, the dernier resort of the oppressed — the sword.” Have you checked history lately? The track record of groups of the oppressed ridding themselves of their tormentors is monumentally discouraging.
The laws of nature and nature’s God are on display all around us. While we cannot function independent of it, we live in a nation that has lost respect for natural law. As this is an insidious cancer that operates systemically, it is impossible to determine the consequences fully, but our culture has finally begun to exhibit the rot that is the result of operating under false premises. I will abstain from itemizing. Write your own list.
The preeminence of natural law is a self-evident truth. As stated in Anti-Federalist No. 51, “I am not obliged to prove this principle because it would be madness in the extreme to attempt to prove a self-evident truth.”
When I come into contact with an individual who is unable to discern natural law, I realize our journey into dissolution, chaos and tyranny is only so many heartbeats away. I am an old man. I have lived in a disintegrating but still mostly free society. I grieve that as reality is currently unfolding, my children and my children’s children, and their children may not.
This is a clarion call. It is time for another Great Awakening.
PAUL PHANEUF
Fayetteville