Posted on 09/18/2005 9:30:23 PM PDT by betty boop
Freeper Investigation: Original Intent and Constitutional Jurisprudence
by Jean F. Drew
English and Anglo-American law’s core principle is the opposition to abusive power as exercised by the state. As Dan Gifford writes in “The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason,”
“The law is not the law regardless if it be good, bad, or indifferent. There is a higher moral law, originating within ancient Jewish law, which requires individual responsibility for opposing evil and promoting goodness. It is from this basic tenet that English law and Anglo-American law embody the following principle: The individual has rights against the state….
“The danger posed by the usual suspects in government for the sake of power is obvious. However, not as obvious is the more insidious danger posed by a list of usual suspects claiming to be [society’s] defenders…. Their attacks on God, traditional Judeo-Christian morals, the Calvinist concept of conscience, republican virtu, and Aristotelian reason or logos — the five essential elements that make our system work — as obstructions to social progress have been devastating….”1
Without doubt, “God, traditional Judeo-Christian morals, the Calvinist concept of conscience, republican virtu, and Aristotelian reason or logos” informed the worldview of the Framers of the Constitution and constitute that document’s spirit, meaning, philosophy — and vitality.
Russell Kirk corroborates this understanding, stating that the roots of American order trace back to four historical cities: (1) Jerusalem, in both the Israelite and Christian developments; (2) Athens, with its classical view of man as a “thinking animal” who possesses reason and soul; Rome, for the idea of “republican virtu” — personal self-restraint and direct participation in the governance and defense of the state; and London, for its concepts regarding the necessity of restraining monarchical power vis-à-vis the subject in the interest of preserving the public good of individual liberty. 2
Thus the Constitution is an extraordinarily “conservative document,” given its “roots in a much older tradition,” writes Stephen Tonsor. “Its world view is Roman or Anglo-Catholic; its political philosophy, Aristotelian and Thomist; its concerns, moral and ethical; its culture, that of Christian humanism.” 3
The “problem with the constitution” nowadays is that these ideas no longer inform the worldview of many Americans, in particular the “cultural elites” who sit on federal and state benches, who man the federal bureaucracies, staff the professoriate, and run the organs of public communications (i.e., the so-called “mainstream media”). All these constituencies, moreover, are effectively unaccountable to the people whom they purport to serve.
In light of breaking events — the recent ruling of a federal court in California that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of its “under God” language, the recent New London eminent-domain decision of the Supreme Court, and two Supreme Court vacancies (with possibly more to come within the tenure of the Bush presidency) — as well as long-standing public quarrels over the meanings of e.g., the Second, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, we thought it would be useful to inaugurate a Freeper Research Project into theories of the Constitution, “then” and “now”; i.e., the original intent of the Framers vs. modern “prudential” and ideological constructions. In particular it would be useful to explore the roles of all the players in a constitutional system based on the separation and balance of powers, to see how well that concept is working nowadays.
Or not, as the case may be. And if that is the case, then to ask: Why not? What has “gone wrong” such that, e.g., federal judges routinely feel free to legislate their ideals of social progress from the bench?
I thought I’d get the ball rolling with a piece on the cultural component of such questions. I’m sure my thoughts may prove controversial to some of my Freeper friends; for I intend to show that the single most influential cause of current-day constitutional chaos is the breakdown of a common understanding of God and man and of their mutual relations. It is my view, however — the only view that I can relate, based on my observation, experience, and the indirect sources that further inform the present state of my knowledge — and anyone’s free to disagree with it. I just hope we can all be civil and respectful when/if we do disagree.
The point is, I can’t “do your seeing for you” anymore than you can “do my seeing for me.” Under the circumstances, it seems to me the best course would be to simply “compare notes” and see if we might learn something from one other.
My friend YHAOS writes: “The Founders bequeathed to their posterity rather a unique philosophy, not only of government, but of human relationships.” Indeed, YHAOS; the Framers’ view of human relationships was predicated on the understanding that “all men are created equal,” and thus all have dependence on a creator. Further, because they are equally the creations of one Creator, all men share a common humanity that effectively makes them “brothers.” All men are created with possessing reason and free will as a natural birthright, and are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” All men are equal before the law, while constituting the sovereign We the People — connoting one single community — who delegate a very few existential powers (29 by my last count) to the government, and retain all others unto themselves.
YHAOS continues, “It was a philosophy that was greeted with disfavor by all the rulers of the world the moment they were exposed to it, because it left their rule to the sufferance of their subjects, and eliminated their ability to rule as they saw fit. They hated it then, they hate it today. This philosophy, so hated by the rulers and other elites of the world, is found and best expressed in the words of the Founders and of others who were most closely associated with the philosophy of Natural Law and with the events which occasioned the creation of the Declaration of Independence and of The Constitution.”4
Indeed, YHAOS. Those who would rule don’t much care for this sort of thing as a rule….
The “spirit of liberty” that informed the American Founding whereby the role of the state was to be severely delimited and constrained was brilliantly expressed by Trenchard & Gordon in Cato’s Letters (~1720):
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes….
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is Sole Lord and Arbiter of his own Private Actions and Property5….
In short, in the early eighteenth century, there was a cultural consensus in England and in the Colonies that it is the God–Man relation from which the just relations of man with his fellow man flows that (not coincidentally) constitutes the limit or check on state power and authority. The Constitution itself epitomizes and expresses this consensus.
So it’s hardly surprising that, as YHAOS continues, “It was a philosophy that was greeted with disfavor by all the rulers of the world the moment they were exposed to it, because it left their rule to the sufferance of their subjects, and eliminated their ability to rule as they saw fit. They hated it then, they hate it today. This philosophy, so hated by the rulers and other elites of the world, is found and best expressed in the words of the Founders and of others who were most closely associated with the philosophy of Natural Law and with the events which occasioned the creation of the Declaration of Independence and of The Constitution.”6
Indeed, YHAOS. Those who would rule don’t much care for this sort of thing as a rule…. And I am particularly intrigued by your notice of “the other elites.”
These “other elites” are informed by other notions that were altogether foreign at the time of the American Founding, and for more than a century thereafter. These notions are a specifically German cultural import — from Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx & Co., a going (and growing) concern since the mid-nineteenth century.
All three men were obsessed by power. Hegel’s model of the ideal state was Prussia, which was authoritarian and repressive. He worshipped Napoleon as a new World Savior. All three men wanted to “kill God.” This last, of course, is required for the free exercise of an unconstrained Will to Power: With God around, plans for constructing Utopia could never come to fruit. So they all decided He needed to be “bumped off” in order to clear the decks for a reconstruction of the world and human history, in order to perfect future history. Thus history as we know it must end.
And as it turns out, history under God becomes a dead letter with His demise. Then — and only then — can self-appointed Great Men assume the divine rule and enterprise with a free hand, “starting over from scratch,” as it were. Hegel and Marx both apparently believed that they could just start from nothing and, by the use of “pure” Reason, construct ever more perfect worlds, correcting all the imperfections that God left in His Creation, which is now to be happily Over, dispensed with. Men — or at least some men — have become “self-divinized.” A New World is a-borning.
We are speaking of the construction of progressivist utopias here.
Now the meaning of “Utopia” — a neologism of Thomas More — means “Nowhere.” Utopia is “a model of a perfect society that cannot be realized because an important sector of reality has been omitted from its construction, but its authors and addicts have suspended their consciousness that it is unrealizable because of the omission.”7 As the greatest English-speaking poet of the twentieth century put it:
They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one Will need to be good….
But the man that is will shadow The man that pretends to be. 8
The “omitted sector” of reality is precisely the spiritual sector, constituted by the relations of God and man — the divine-human encounter that orders human souls, and from souls to societies, including political societies. That is to say, the total eclipse of the great Hierarchy of Being: God – Man – Society – World. It seems plain to me that “the murder of God” involves a double homicide, one a parricide, the other a suicide….
Clearly, there was a profound sea-change in the understanding of Reality and of human self-understanding between the time of Locke and the time of Hegel. Rather than present a lengthy and probably tiresome analysis of how this noxious diremption occurred, let me just give you a sampler of how meanings central to the human person and to political society are understood these days under the respective frameworks of the Judeo-Christian/classical (JCC) worldview, and the progressivist (P) worldview.
JCC says: “There is a nature of man, a definite structure of existence that puts limits on perfectability.”9
P replies: “The nature of man can be changed, either through historical evolution or through revolutionary action, so that a perfect realm of freedom can be established in history.”10
JCC says: “Philosophy is the endeavor to advance from opinion (doxa) about the order of man and society to science (episteme)…”11
P replies: “No science in such matters is possible, only opinion; everybody is entitled to his opinions; we have a pluralist society.” 12
JCC says: “Society is man written large.”
P replies: “Man is society written small.” 13
JCC says: “Man lives in erotic [faithfully loving] tension toward the divine ground of his existence.”
P replies: “He doesn’t; for I don’t; and I’m the measure of man.”14
JCC says: “Education is the art of periagoge, or turning around (Plato).” [Essentially, this means that education is the art of transmitting the greatest achievements of human intellect and culture to the next-rising generation, which, as we have already suggested above, include achievements of great antiquity. In the specific Platonic sense, this process requires a “turning to the Light” or alternatively, a “tuning into the God.”]
P replies: “Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they do not feel any ‘desire to know.’ Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring the knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.”15
JCC says: “Through the life of reason (bios theoretikos) man realizes his freedom.”
P replies: “Plato and Aristotle were fascists. The life of reason is a fascist enterprise.”16
JCC says: The process in which the nature of man and the other participants in the great Hierarchy of Being becomes conscious and noetically articulate and luminous to the human mind constitutes the life of reason.
P replies: “Reason is instrumental reason. There is no such thing as a noetic rationality of man.”17
Just in case the foregoing “dialog” comes across as a tad too “abstract,” let me give an example from concrete American historical experience that fully reflects the “tensions” inherent in such “irreconcilable differences,” and get off the soap box. (Then it will be someone else’s turn).
My example concerns the scope and meaning of the Second Amendment.
JCC says:
Surely one of the foundations of American political thought of the [Founding] period was the well-justified concern about political corruption and consequent governmental tyranny. Even the Federalists, fending off their opponents who accused them of foisting an oppressive new scheme upon the American people, were careful to acknowledge the risks of tyranny. James Madison, for example, speaks in Federalist Number Forty-Six of “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.” The advantage in question was not merely the defense of American borders; a standing army might well accomplish that. Rather, an armed public was advantageous in protecting political liberty. It is therefore no surprise that the Federal Farmer, the nom de plume of an anti-federalist critic of the new Constitution and its absence of a Bill of Rights, could write that “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them....” On this matter, at least, there was no cleavage between the pro-ratification Madison and his opponent.
In his influential Commentaries on the Constitution, Joseph Story, certainly no friend of Anti-Federalism, emphasized the “importance” of the Second Amendment. He went on to describe the militia as “the natural defence of a free country” not only “against sudden foreign invasions” and “domestic insurrections,” with which one might well expect a Federalist to be concerned, but also against “domestic usurpations of power by rulers.” “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered,” Story wrote, “as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
“…the repository of a monopoly of the legitimate means of violence [by the state] — that is so commonly used by political scientists … is a profoundly statist definition, the product of a specifically German tradition of the (strong) state rather than of a strikingly different American political tradition that is fundamentally mistrustful of state power and vigilant about maintaining ultimate power, including the power of arms, in the populace.” 18
P replies (actually, this is Justice William Burger, who “never wrote a word abut the Second Amendment. Yet after retirement, he wrote an article for Parade magazine that is the only extended analysis by any Supreme Court Justice of why the Second Amendment does not guarantee and individual right”).19
“… the Second Amendment is obsolete because we “need” a large standing army, rather than a well-armed citizenry.”20 Plus we all know guns are dangerous things. Dangerous things should not be left in the hands of “innocent” (inept) civilians, especially when there are standing armies and organized police forces to whom we may safely delegate the use of force in our society.
To which JCC might retort: “Well, who’s policing the police? And what if the standing army comes after US?”
On that happy note, a few last words:
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master! “— George Washington
“All powers granted by the Constitution, are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and … every power not granted remains with them, and at their will; and … no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President or any department, or officer of the United States.” — John C. Calhoun
“The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.” — John Milton
_________________________
Notes:
1 In Tennessee Law Review: Second Amendment Symposium, vol. 62, no. 3, 1995: 759, http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Gifford1.htm .
2 Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991.
3 Retrieved from a collection of aphorisms I’ve been compiling for many years. Unfortunately, at the time I found this one, I was not in the habit of recording the titles of works in which the aporism appears, e.g., in which Tonsor’s remark was given; and now do not remember it. (Mea culpa — So sorry!)
4 YHAOS at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1470264/posts?page=1150#1150
5 John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1995 [1720]. Trenchard & Gordon were writing about 40 years after England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which John Locke was major mentor and instigator. The Framers were well acquainted with the works of all three men, for Locke and Trenchard & Gordon were quintessential sources of the history of “revolution” in the British historical context; plus the philosophical/sociopolitical movements that they were describing were relatively recent from the Framers’ standpoint.
6 YHAOS op cit.
7 Eric Voegelin, “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,” op. cit. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, p.316.
8 T. S. Eliot, Choruses from “The Rock,” as quoted by Voegelin, ibid.
9 Eric Voegelin, op. cit., p. 258
10 ibid.
11 ibid.
12 ibid.
13 ibid.
14 ibid.
15 ibid, p. 260 16 ibid.
17 ibid.
18 Sanford Levinson, “The Embarrassing Second Amendment,” Yale Law Journal. Originally published as 99 Yale L.J. 637–659 (1989).
19 David B. Kopel, “The Supreme Court’s Thirty-five Other Gun Cases: What the Supreme Court Has Said about the Second Amendment,” 2000; http://www.i2iorg/SuptDocs/Crime/35.htm
20 ibid.
Thank you so much, YHAOS, for helping us to put this all in perspective!
It's still the same "fight," however -- and ultimately it's a fight for truth. Back in the '60s, the power of the political Left was waxing; it may be that in our own time, it is actually waning....
We'll see. :^)
Thank you ever so much for writing!
I agree with your observations on all three posts 179-181.
"P replies: “Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they do not feel any ‘desire to know.’ Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring the knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.”15
Which is exactly what's been going on in this country for many years and we can see the result. Great post.
We do indeed see the result.... Thanks so much for writing, dljordan, and for your very kind words.
Absolutely NOT!!!! The U.S. soldier swears an oath to the Constitution, not the U.N.
Thank you so much for writing, A-G!
I submit you put too narrow and literal a meaning on ‘happiness.’ Its context in the DoI is philosophical and involves freedom ‘in the pursuit of’ happiness. The concept involves more than whistling as you drive down the road with the top down on a beautiful, balmy afternoon.
Seems to me the wording in the Declaration of Independence was mighty close to the Virginia Declaration of Rights - in which case the meaning of "happiness" was material possessions.
Yes, the operative word here is ‘in addition.’ Undeniably, jury nullification was used to deny justice to blacks. This action was not in the mainstream of the tradition of jury nullification, and had the tradition never existed, the action of the southern white juries would have been no different than they were under the historical conditions which actually prevailed.
If my memory serves me correctly, they ended up prosecuting the same individuals under Federal civil rights violations when the jury nullified the State indictments. It seems a similar thing happened in the O.J. trial as he was found guilty for wrongful deaths in civil proceedings after the acquittal in the criminal murder trial.
IMHO, things have a way of balancing out. In the example I used of a potential rash of acquittals following a Federal law to prohibit the private ownership of firearms, no doubt there would also be a reaction. In that case however, I believe the offset would have to be much more than a remedy against particular individuals.
Staff officers are sometimes seconded to other countries to observe. For example, Lionel Mandrake was seconded to Jack Ripper's command in the movie "Dr Strangelove." Or even more strangely, I've seen navy working on an airforce base.
Truly, officers are tasked between services and to other entities, especially in U.N. peacekeeping missions. But, IMHO, a U.S. soldier has no business being ordered around by a foreign power - even the U.N. - and should never be subjected to an International Criminal Court for his actions while executing lawful commands from his superior officer. Those issues are more appropriately handled at the command level. Otherwise every U.S. soldier on foreign ground performing U.N. peacekeeping duties would be subject to the political whims of the country to which they are assigned.
As betty boop noted, the U.S. soldier is sworn to defend the United States against her enemies foreign and domestic - not the United Nations.
IMHO, the worst possible result at the U.N. would be global governance, global taxation, global judiciary and global military force. But this is precisely what the Maurice Strong's of the world would like to see...
I don't believe that either betty or I was defining 'happiness' as consisting of anything as superficial or fleeting as 'whistling as we drive down the road with the top down on a beautiful, balmy afternoon.'
I do not know your religious beliefs, or lack thereof, so please interpret most of the following as being based on my own beliefs -- a personal view of the subject at hand -- certainly not to be mistaken as immutable for anyone else. I don't embrace or presume such arrogance. :)
I can't speak for betty, but in my original post, in which I stated: any time I ‘pursued’ happiness, I rarely, if ever, achieved my goal. And the happiest times in my life have always occurred simply as a by-product of making ‘right’ choices (as opposed to convenient, self-serving, or popular ones)', I was referring to much more tangible, powerful examples (than your 'balmy afternoon' reference) of goals that I once believed would play a large part in my achieving 'happiness'. Those goals were often relationship, or career, or wealth, or creature comfort, or socially or professionally status-related.
I have experienced in my own life, and have witnessed in others', the fact that, if we convince ourselves that 'pursuing' a specific goal will increase our 'happiness quotient', once the 'pursuit' ends, we are often left feeling a certain letdown ... a palpable void -- because none of the goals that I mentioned above (or others that are also commonly included in the 'average' modern American's definition of the achievement of 'happiness') are ever guaranteed to last. Nor is their achievement guaranteed to produce the desired result. Any one of them could be taken from us in a heartbeat. And none of them necessarily permanenetly adds to our sense of personal peace and contentment.
I have found that, when we 'pursue' happiness of a wordly nature, we neglect the more important personal peace and contentment that is achieved by recognizing that lasting 'happiness' is almost always a byproduct of 'right' choices, made as a result of thinking in more eternal dimensions. And that kind of thinking leaves little room for focusing intently on ('pursuing') fleeting (in the grand scheme of things), physical-world (often material, or material-related) aspirations.
I have discovered (after much trial and error :) that lasting happiness is achieved as a secondary, often unexpected, result of decisions and behaviors that are 'goodness'-based, and such happiness cannot be taken away, only increased, over time.
There is an unmistakable difference between the way the Bible defines happiness (or 'blessing') and the way our culture promotes it. Happiness in our culture is inevitably self-centered, and the result of what others do for us, or what we earn through personal industry and acquisition. The focus is on ourselves, and how to satiate our appetites, or gain affirmation, acknowledgment or attention.
I cannot envision any other kind of happiness that would be 'pursued' than the kind described above. 'Pursuit' implies an active, goal-oriented focus.
Deep and lasting happiness is not self-centered, it is God-centered. It blossoms rather than appearing as a trophy standing on some distant finish line, waiting to be 'pursued' ... waiting to be 'earned'. Deep and lasting happiness blesses our lives when we entrust our lives to Him, and daily strive to be the people He would have us be -- not when we focus our lives on our notions of personal physical or emotional needs or desires.
I have always considered the final paragraph of John Wesley's obituary as evidence of a man who had a 'corner on happiness' that few of us ever enjoy:
Though his taste was classic, and his manners elegant, he sacrificed that society in which he was particularly calculated to shine; gave up those preferments which his abilities must have obtained, and devoted a long life in practising and enforcing the plainest duties. Instead of being, 'an ornament to literature', he was a blessing to his fellow creatures; instead of, 'the genius of the age,' he was the servant of God!
~ joanie
Oh, we see so "eye-to-eye" on this issue, joanie-f!
Thank you so very much for this magnificent post/essay!
As a Christian walks with the Lord and learns to trust Him, he is able to "count it all joy" no matter what the "it" is (James 1:2).
Here is a case-in-point from 1999 when Larry Ashbrook walked in on a youth service in a local Baptist church and slaughtered seven and wounded seven:
“….The Baptists know all this [secularism] Their most engaging trait is that they don't care. They set forth the Truth as they have received it, that Jesus Christ died for your sins. Case in point: the Fort Worth commemoration. The occasion is ostensibly civic. The mayor is a speaker; Gov. George W. Bush and other office-holders have come as non-speakers just to reinforce the sense of public outrage and grief. A rabbi prays. I spot Moslems in the crowd. ….
Yet the occasion is saturated with Christian joy. There's an odd word -- "joy.'' What's joyous about the desecration of a house of worship and the slaughter of teenage worshippers and counselors? Nothing is "joyful'' about evil. Joy, as the Baptists of Fort Worth would make known, comes with God's response to evil. Does He leave it to fester? Hardly. He points to the victory already won, and in the end to be lastingly consummated, through His son's death and resurrection. It's right there in those Bibles waved under Satan's snoot. Nor does it stop even there, you dumb lunk with the pitchfork! Christians inside and outside the Southern Baptist Convention would affirm this reality….
“….Affirm? A mild word for what goes on at the stadium. What about the father of one of the victims, leading the audience/congregation in the singing of a song his murdered daughter had loved? What about the pastor of the desecrated church, the Rev. Al Meredith, whomping up a classic Baptist revival on the spot -- a call to fasting and repentance and prayer? "Raise your hand if you want the killing to stop -- if you want to see the spirit of the living God sweeping over our land like wildfire.'' Up in the air -- a forest of affirming arms, one of them attached to an Episcopalian journalist. Bad news for Satan. He's stirred up the Baptists -- folk who take him with the deep seriousness his malice deserves. The culture wars may have taken a decisive turn….”
The pursuit of happiness is an odd phrase in our contemporary culture. We link happiness with pleasure. Buying a new car makes us happy. Being in love fills us with happiness. We are happy when things are going well and sad when they are not.
Then there is the matter of joy, a spiritual experience having little or nothing to do with happiness. As Alamo-girl so succintly put it: "...Christian joy which requires only Him - and cannot be diminished at all by poverty, murder, persecutions, injustices, sickness or death."
There is, in truth, no pursuit of joy. It comes as a gift from God, as the dew in the morning and is available to us for as long as we choose to accept it.
Happiness of the sort guaranteed by our Constitution is a pursuit that can only occur when the citizenry is unfettered by opressive dictates of government.
Our current jargon might define the sort of happiness spoken of in our Constitution as self-fulfillment or self-actualization. The Constitution, after all, guarantees the freedom of individuals to pursue their lives (happiness) without undue government interference.
Once again, a piece of Constitutional wallpaper resounds with powerful intent. The pursuit of happiness limits the government from interference in the normal activities of the citizenry. The primacy of individual freedom is upheld by the happiness clause.
Government today has forsaken the Constitution's admonition that the citizenry be allowed to pursue happiness. Modern officialdom prefers that citizens pursue (legally enforcable versions of) the common good. The rights of the individual have been supplanted by the rights of society as defined by the government.
The government tells us to eat cake if we want to be happy. Just be sure to grant our overlords unlimited access to our labor, our property, our wealth and our sentiments.
"Pursuit of happiness" is a Creator endowed inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence. I suspect some people confuse that right to freedom as you have described it - as if it meant Christian joy which as you say is another matter altogether, a gift from God.
I wish the inalienable rights laid out in the DofI had been clarified in the Constitution but at least the courts seem to take the Constitution as flowing from the DofI.
That was folish of me. I referred to the Constitution rather than the Declaration of Independence.
There are other, similar, terms surrounding this issue. ‘Original Meaning’ is the term most often used by the federal judiciary in their more than two hundred year ongoing discussion about . . . . well, . . . . Original Meaning.
John Locke, a favorite of the Founding Fathers, provides us an insight on the issue: “When a man speaks to another, it is . . . [to] make known his ideas to the hearer. That then, which words are the marks of, are the ideas of the speaker [punctuation mine] . . . . [T]his is certain, their signification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs of nothing else . . .” (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).
Please do not take my words to mean that I believe either you or betty have a flippant view of happiness. I’m simply saying that the word, as it was secularly understood by the Founding Fathers, can be viewed as haveing less import than it does. I guess I issued an unnecessary cautionary tale. No offense intended.
“I do not know your religious beliefs, or lack thereof”
Well, I’m a cranky old Presbyterian, who over 40 years ago saw the handwriting on the wall and understood his church was abandoning him. I had no desire for spiritual goo, so I walked away and haven’t been back.
“Happiness of the sort guaranteed by our Constitution is a pursuit that can only occur when the citizenry is unfettered by oppressive dictates of government.”
You make an important distinction between Christian Joy and a societal pursuit of happiness. Well done, Amos.
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