This is the crux. If Man is endowed by his Creator with ‘unalienable’ rights, and the state has no part in determining the boundary of those rights, then many become frightened and angry, because they can gain no advantage; no power, no mastery over other men. They can ‘game’ the state (‘game the system), but they can’t ‘game’ God. Politicians particularly relish ‘gaming’ the system (see our current misanthropic crop), but, so too do celebrities and all that cortege of pretenders who swirl in orbit around the centers of power in DC, New York, Hollywood, etc. Gaming the system marks their highest aspiration, and success in ‘gaming’ evidences their greatest achievements. To confess sovereignty in all the people reduces them to a pedestrian status they fear greater than oblivion.
xzins observes in his msg 224 “If Franklin remained a deist, he was, like Jefferson, a Christian Deist.”
And that exactly fixes the problem critics face in attempting to deny a Christian influence on the making of America. To tailor the charge of deism to any of the Founding Fathers, the critics must redefine ‘deist’ to fit the changing characteristics of the different Founders. Franklin proclaimed “God governs in the affairs of men.” Not a belief usually attributable to Deists. Jefferson, on the other hand, swore fealty to Jesus Christ (“the pure gospel of Jesus Christ”). etc.
What is particularly distinguishing about the Founding Fathers is that they were already at the pinnacle of their society and yet chose to extend sovereignty to all the people, thereby surrendering much of the advantage they held in society. Does anyone know of any other class of men who have done such a thing in all of history? Yes, I know, their definition of ‘the people’ was considerably more narrow than what it became. Nevertheless it was their impetus that propelled us forward, step by step, as we progressed from their beginnings. Forward step by step, that is, until some thirty-five years ago when a majority of nine black-robed Justices chose to deny ‘personhood’ to unborn children, and thereby commenced the march backwards in the denial of sovereignty to the people.
Perhaps the founders intended the unborn to be counted as 3/5ths of a person.
But unlike slavery, an aborted child does not have standing to sue for his right to life to test that law.
And now another class is at risk of being deemed expendable at the convenience of another - assisted suicide is the first step toward euthanasia.
It's positively "Darwinian," YHAOS -- in the "Social Darwinism" sense: It's okay to pick off the helpless...even though their right to life is absolute (i.e., unalienable) and constitutionally protected.
Thank you for your superb essay/post YHAOS!
To call Franklin a Deist is to take him at his word. He said as much in his autobiography. He may not fit your picture of what a Deist should be, but he fit his own. He was an avid proponent of spirituality and gave to the cause no matter the denomination (giving to the building of a synagogue once I believe). He greatly admired a preacher for his great oratories (saying so in his autobiography) and was disappointed when he found out that the sermons were plagiarized, there being no sin in saying another man’s words, only in claiming them for your own. Franklin was from a Christian family and lived in a mostly Christian culture, to deny that he was influenced by Christianity would be to deny that shipbuilding has not been influenced by steel-working.
Franklin said he was a “thorough Deist”. Not slightly, not mostly, but thoroughly. Take him at his word.
“But I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns several points as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of the Revelation itself. Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of the sermons which had been preached at Boyle’s Lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them. For the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to be much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.” Franklin
http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/preservation/bios/franklin/chpt4.htm
This is an excellent example of the "tension" between natural law (the theory of law of the DoI and the Constitution) and positive legal theory. The nine black-robed justices of that time were mainly legal positivists. As mentioned earlier, the emphasis of natural law theory is always the human individual; positive law tends to focus on group "equities." (In Roe v. Wade, the contending "groups" involved are mothers as a class, and their unborn children as a class. What doesn't logically add up is the Court asserted the right to privacy as justification for its holding -- but privacy is something applicable only to individuals, not groups; and then it had to be found in a constitutional "penumbra." Needless to say, the entire Roe v. Wade decision is systematically illogical.)
In natural law, respecting the question of abortion, there are only two questions that need to be answered: Is the foetus human? Is it alive? All you need is two "yes" responses to make clear that a preborn alive human has an unalienable right to life and so is deserving of the protection of a just government. This conclusion is lawful according to the dictates of natural law theory, which is derived from JudeoChristian ethics. What the nine black-robed justices did was to turn something "unlawful" -- the termination of a live human -- into something "legal."
But God is not mocked.