Posted on 02/12/2015 10:19:21 AM PST by PROCON
During a heated discussion over gay marriage, CNN morning Anchor Chris Cuomo opined that the unalienable rights endowed to all Americans do not come from God.
Cuomo was debating Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Near the end of the back-and-forth and after Moore argued that rights cannot be handed down by men, Cuomo blurted out:
“Our rights do not come from God, your honor, and you know that. They come from man... That’s your faith, that’s my faith, but that’s not our country. Our laws come from collective agreement and compromise.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Just another comatose Cuomo! Move on — nothing to see here!
However, most religious moral codes change over time, Christianity’s included, even if the Scripture doesn’t. Slavery is a good example; what is accepted and regulated by Scripture would be utterly rejected as wholly immoral by most Chritians today. So to claim that religious morality is some how rooted to fixed, eternal moorings compared to that of non-believers is wishful thinking IMHO.
Regardless of what we call ourselves, Scripture says we will be known by our fruits. His fruits are pretty rotten.
Great information, thank you for posting the link.
Notice how Cuomo says that his “faith” is such-and-such, but that the TRUTH is something else?
That’s what his father’s and brother’s political careers are built on: the assertion that their “faith” tells them one thing, but the TRUTH is something different.
Yes, but we’re not actually talking about a specific moral code, we’re talking about the reason an external authority is necessary to justify any moral code. That’s true even of moral codes one doesn’t adhere to, from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism to the cannibals of Borneo. (Actually, I’m thinking of checking the latter out - I’m sure it’s not too bad a thing once you get past the shrunken head part).
But WHO drives the occurrence?
Occurrences have an initial force before they proceed to the final condition.
You’re absolutely right!
People need to understand that the Declaration of Independence is exactly what the title says: it’s a notice to show how we’re now independent from England.
The Republic was created later in the Constitution...YEARS later. After the Articles of Confederation and three Continental Congresses.
So Cuomo was right and wrong. I suspect he was trying to be a jerk though.
The DOI wasn’t a “founding document” in as much that it only created a separation from England and established sovereignty. It didn’t truly found our nation. The Constitution did that.
The Constitution was ratified in 1789.
Secular humanist libtards believe that man's evolution is just as viable an explanation for the existence of natural law and natural rights as a Creator, thereby claiming natural law for the humanist worldview and solving many of humanism's dilemmas in the realm of ethics and law. Evolution was responsible for certain genetic behaviors in man that allow him to discover and conform to natural law which also is a result of evolution.
But this means that while natural law and rights may appear concrete today. it is undergoing constant change, just as man's genetic behaviors and understanding of natural law evolve. If this is true, rights or law recognized by man today may evolve right out of existence.Thus the humanist is left with an uncertain and unstable source of law.
I said it was A founding document, not THE founding document.
Without the Declaration, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the Articles of Confederation, there would have been no Constitution. These are all founding documents.
The Declaration provides the “why”.
The Constitution provides the “how”.
Really? Are you trying to say that the DoI has some force of law or that the Constitution declares that our rights come directly from God?
I don’t need the Hillsdale course, as good as it is. I have taken numerous courses over the years on the Constitution, its framers, and their writings as well as reading and studying those documents and writings. The Hillsdale course like any other course presents the view of the scholar who writes and/or conducts the course which is no different than any other course I’ve taken. The approach and view of the subject are of course colored by the writer/presenters viewpoint. With each course I’ve taken and everything I’ve read throughout my lifetime I have never found anything in the Constitution that comes close to stating that our rights come from God. The fact is that our Constitutional rights are based in part on the various denominational interpretations of faith in God as each individual framer understood them as well as common law, and traditions of moral codes that go back to the beginning of recorded history. In that sense, you could say that the Constitution is based in part on the principles of faith and belief in God.
My contention in this thread is that the DoI is a founding document that does not have any force of law or expression of rights beyond what was in contention at the time with king George. They expressed their frustration with the abrogation of their rights as Englishmen under the rule of the crown.
As to the DoI providing arguments against leftest arguments and goals it does not directly. The DoI contains the arguments against the English crown, not against our current party of traitors. You can push that argument at them forever and they will laugh at you. They pervert the words in the DoI and the Constitution to mean whatever they want in their pursuit of tyranny.
We need to either have representatives who will address all of these issues based on constitutionality and the democrat party’s disregard of the Constitution or we, as defenders of the Constitution need to issue a new DoI that declares that the democrat party and our RINO reps no longer represent us and that they engage in criminal actions that are contrary to Constitutional law. That declaration would have to be backed up by actions that will remove them and restore the Constitution, the Republic, and the rule of Constitutional law.
Since the first alternative will never happen, the second seems to be the only viable path. Do I believe that enough support could be brought to bear on that path? I don’t know and a lot would depend on who is advocating that path. Who knows, the original DoI signers were a small group who struggled and sacrificed for years to achieve the goal with on and off again popular support.
All the other parts came from men who understood the Bible.
Which one would that be?
The one who created us.
The Nature and Source of Our Rights
"The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Georgetown Republicans, 1809. ME 16:349
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:441
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:209, Papers 1:134
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." --Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48
"The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings." --Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1817. ME 15:124
"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:422
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:227
"Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:235
"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end." --Thomas Jefferson: --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Navigation of the Mississippi, 1792. ME 3:180
"The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless." --Thomas Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1790. ME 8:72
"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819. ME 15:200
"Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights." --Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:272
"I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Danbury Baptists, 1802. ME 16:282
The Right to Life and Liberty
"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:211, Papers 1:135
"Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819.
"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798. ME 9:441
"In a government bottomed on the will of all, the life and liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all." --Thomas Jefferson: 5th Annual Message, 1805. ME 3:390
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791. ME 8:276
"Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment and enjoyment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that... the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood." --Thomas Jefferson to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, 1795. FE 7:13
The Pursuit of Happiness
"The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1782. ME 4:196, Papers 6:186
"If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness." --Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1817. ME 15:124
"Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I as steadfastly believe." --Thomas Jefferson to John Page, 1763. ME 4:10, Papers 1:10
"The freedom and happiness of man... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810. ME 12:369
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. van der Kemp, 1812. ME 13:135
"I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Ellicot Thomas, et al., 1807. ME 16:290
No. Neither the Scriptures nor Christianity's moral codes change. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Do some people who call themselves Christian decide that Biblical morals are too strict and confining, and should change with the times? Yes.
That's a different thing.
"Slavery is a good example; what is accepted and regulated by Scripture would be utterly rejected as wholly immoral by most Chritians today."
God no more "accepted" slavery than He accepts theft, murder, homosexuality, etc. He permitted slavery, knowing that it was part of a fallen, sinful world, while laying out rules to govern the practice. He did the same with divorce, which the Bible says He hates.
God gave slaves rights and privileges; the Israelites were under rules and restrictions that specified their proper treatment.
" So to claim that religious morality is some how rooted to fixed, eternal moorings compared to that of non-believers is wishful thinking IMHO."
It might be your opinion, but the facts say otherwise.
A pos for all time. Same as Obama.
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