Why does our Constitution matter?

What kind of government does America have? (hint - it isn't a democracy)

Here's a great little video describing the form of government our Founders set up.  They definitely did their homework - and there were very good reasons they set up a Constitutional Republic as opposed to a democracy.

Why does this matter?  Liberal Democrats (and many Republicans as well) seem to have forgotten that there are limits on what our government can legitimately do - and that those limits are established in the Constitution.  During the health-care debate Nancy Pelosi was famously asked where the authority for remaking health-care was found in the Constitution.  Her response was telling - "Are you serious?  That's not a serious question."  Other Democrats have said similar and more ridiculous things about the relevance of the Constitution to current issues.

So what?  Some argue that since the Constitution was written over 200 years ago we've outgrown it, and it is no longer relevant.  This debate is at the core of a great deal of the legislative agenda of the current Democratic party leadership.  It matters because the Constitution establishes the foundation for the rule of law.  When we ignore the foundation upon which the rule of law is based we move towards the "rule of man".  That's the sure road towards tyranny.

Enjoy the video.

Church, State and the National Day of Prayer: What would our Founders think?

Recent articles published at the Patriot Post by Mark Alexander and Rebecca Hagelin put in clear perspective one of the most fundamental issues plaguing our nation.While we have plenty of challenges, many of the most serious ones can be traced back to one basic shortcoming – we have not adequately remembered and revered God as the Source of our life and liberty. The ruling yesterday by U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional only confirms this secular trend. It also highlights a grossly distorted perspective of the Founders’ views on the relationship between Church and State.

Our Founding Fathers made it very clear that the Constitution they labored to create was only fit to govern a people who took religion and morality seriously. John Adams expressed this quite forcefully. Said he “We have no government capable of contending with human passions unbridled by religion and morality”. The great English philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, whom Adams, Madison and their colleagues looked to as a teacher described this relationship perhaps most clearly:

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.”

Faithful adherence to religious beliefs leads to self-restraint, personal responsibility and charity for others. Consequently, such people need less government because they govern themselves and their communities well. The farther we slip from the moorings which religion has so long provided, the more government must be created to fill the void.

It is often argued that many of the Founders were not Christian, because they did not regularly attend public worship services or because some embraced Deism. While the Founders may not all have been personally attached to any particular denomination, that fact is not necessarily an indication of lack of Christian faith. Many were devoted churchmen and participated actively in their local congregations.  Some did not.  But there is ample historical evidence that Washington, Adams, Madison, Jefferson and the rest had a strong belief in God.  Washington was so aware of his influence in the young nation, and so sensitive to the need to prevent religious strife, that he chose not to participate in any particular denomination so as not to create grounds for religious bigotry. While their personal religious practices were diverse, and their beliefs complex, the Founders were uniformly and enthusiastically supportive of the role of religion in maintaining a stable, harmonious and prosperous nation. In his farewell address to his cabinet George Washington said:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge in the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle... Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?"

Over and over again the men who forged this nation from a conglomerate of separate colonial societies recognized the hand of God in their unlikely success – in the war for Independence against Britain, in the proceedings which gave birth to the Constitution and in the lengthy process of ratifying it, state by state.

In the Federalist #20 James Madison wrote: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution.”

While enthusiastic about the role of religion in the public sphere, the Founders were equally devoted to protecting the religious liberties of individual religious societies from undue governmental influence. They knew only too well the tyranny which a state-sponsored church could inflict. In response to a letter from the United Baptist Churches in the State of Virginia expressing concerns over the level of protection for religious freedom assured in the proposed Constitution, Washington wrote:

"....If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly, I should never have placed my signature to it"

Given the Founders clear support for the role of religion in public life it is impossible to take seriously the idea that their desire to prohibit a state-sponsored church meant that they were advocating an absolute separation of Church and State. Those who advocate such an idea today (mostly so-called “progressives” and supporters of central government power) clearly have their own anti-religious agenda. Their fear of religion blinds them to the genuine strength religion brings to a society.

Or perhaps they simply prefer the levers of government, which they as civic priests can use to exert control over the people, to the levers of personal control exercised by a people who act according to the dictates of their own consciences, and who direct their lives through honoring faith in and personal commitments to a God whom they love and revere. Undermining the religious foundation of those liberties which have made us who we are is both incredibly naïve and dangerously shortsighted – although that seems to be the path which the atheists and secular religionists among us have been pushing for decades – and which sympathetic elements in our judicial system have supported. We can only hope that we as a nation can reverse this trend before it is too late.