Free Exercise of Virtue Prohibited as of Today in USA

Townhall.com ^ | January 1, 2014 | Terry Jeffrey

[Kaslin]

As of today -- Jan. 1, 2014 -- a Democratic administration led by President Barack Obama will use a regulation permitted and funded by a Republican-majority House of Representatives to prohibit Americans from freely exercising not just Christianity, but virtue itself in the United States of America.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines virtue as "conformity to a standard of right" -- and, in truth, there is only one such standard. Individuals are born and die, nations rise and fall -- yet it remains.

Nor can it be escaped -- no matter how devoutly men such as Obama seek to annul it, or how abjectly his opponents in the political establishment shrink from defending it.

What is it? The Roman senator Cicero explained it with force and clarity five decades before Christ.

"There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil," wrote Cicero.

"Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice," he said. "It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable."

"God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer," said this Roman senator. "He who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man."

"When a man is inspired by virtue such as this, what bribes can you offer him, what treasures, what thrones, what empires?" wrote Cicero. "He considers these but mortal goods and esteems his own divine."

"And," concluded this pre-Christian statesman, "if the ingratitude of the people, and the envy of his competitors, or the violence of powerful enemies despoil his virtue of its earthly recompense, he still enjoys a thousand consolations in the approbation of conscience, and sustains himself by contemplating the beauty of moral rectitude."

Our Founding Fathers believed precisely this when they founded the United States.

Before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, an 18-year-old Alexander Hamilton wrote: "Good and wise men, in all ages, have ... supposed that the Deity, from the relations we stand in to Himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind prior to any human institution whatsoever."

"Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind," said Hamilton.

"They are written," he concluded, "as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

When Jefferson stated that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" and that governments are created to protect those rights, he was echoing both Cicero and the common view of his countrymen.

"Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion," Jefferson wrote, explaining the Declaration, in a letter he wrote in 1825. "All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc."

Today, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's ironically entitled "individual responsibility requirement" takes effect -- at least so far as the letter of the law is concerned. It says that almost all Americans must "maintain minimum essential coverage" for health insurance for themselves and their dependents or be penalized by the government.

This "minimum essential coverage" includes a "preventive services" regulation, which has been defined by the Obama administration to require co-pay-free coverage for sterilizations as well as drugs and intrauterine devices that cause abortions.

Quite literally, under this regulation, a mother can be forced through her insurance coverage to provide her daughter with the drug that kills her granddaughter.

To deliberately terminate the life of an innocent human being, or to be complicit in that act, is to violate the unchanging moral law that even pagans such as Cicero recognized and understood. A government that forces individuals into complicity with the taking of innocent life is fully breaking faith with the purpose of government: It violates the God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Virtue -- living by our creator's unchanging law -- requires Americans, like all those before us, to respect life.

Under President Obama, that now violates a federal regulation.

[Scrambler Bob]

Thanks -

Reading Cicero and Jefferson about Virtue is an encouragement to start 2014.

I’ll stop browsing news now, and go do chores.

[thirst4truth]

Of course, because bottom line and number ONE meaning to the democrats political life is abortion. Based on their number one tenant in life, no consequences for their actions.

The democrat party platform therefore is have sex, sex, and more sex with who ever you desire, yes even same sex is hunky dory (even better), cause someone else will pay for the consequences.

[bigheadfred]

Virtue ... now violates a federal regulation.

hmmmm...dint see that one coming...but wait...virtue is a pre existing condition covered under obamacare right?...Right

[HangnJudge]

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues,
but the parent of all others.

Cicero, ‘Pro Plancio,’ 54 B.C.
Roman author, orator, & politician (106 BC - 43 BC)

[Kaslin]

I don’t think there is anything of virtue in there

[Slyfox]

I have been studying the college educations of our Founding Fathers. Their education consisted of working towards a bachelors of philosophy - the scholastic variety - equal to a PhD in today's terms.

The core of their work revolved around the study of moral philosophy and ethics and their knowledge of virtue became the cornerstone of their junior and senior work.

Why? Because they were being trained to provide good leadership as judges and preachers.

So it is no wonder that they placed so much importance to virtue and why it was infused into our Founding documents.

Let me add that anyone who thinks that there could be another Constitutional Convention with equal success as the first one - is a fool - because less than half of the people at the table would share even a smidgeon of our Founders knowledge in virtue.

[stansblugrassgrl]

Thanks for posting. Government is not God. I will do my best to walk in His light.

[epow]

Under President Obama, that now violates a federal regulation.

Sorry Mr. Obama, but God's holy inerrant Word overrides your unconstitutionally assumed authority to regulate our lives, our businesses, and all our activities in a manner that would result in the murder of millions of unborn human beings. "Thou shall do no murder" is God's law, and your illegally fabricated "law" that orders employers to participate in the 1st degree murder of unborn children doesn't change either His mind or His law.You may have power to destroy our businesses and ruin us financially, but nothing you can do will cause many of us to participate in the violation of God's law against murder of the innocent.

[loveliberty2]

Excellent!!! Thank you, Kaslin.

Here is another essay on the idea America's Founders believed to be essential to liberty:

VIRTUE Among The People

The Soul Of America's Constitution*

America's Founders knew that it takes more than a perfect plan of government to preserve liberty. Something else is needed - some moral principle diffused among the people to unite and strengthen the urge to peaceful observance of law. They recognized that the raw materials of a free government are people who can act morally without compulsion, who do not willfully violate the rights of others, and who love liberty enough to demand that government's power is very limited. They used the word "virtuous" to describe such people. Defined by Webster, "virtue" is "a conformity to a standard of right," but whatever word is used to describe it, such a moral standard is the necessary fountainhead of a free society.

The Declaration of Independence referred to "Nature's God," the "Creator," the "Supreme judge of the World," and "Divine Providence" Our nation's founders came together, voluntarily, to create a limited government to secure for them and posterity their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. Such liberty, they believed, rested on three great supports:

1. Natural law and unalienable natural rights granted by the Creator,
2. A written constitution to assure a government of laws, not of rulers, and
3. VIRTUE among the people - the best defense against tyranny.

Their own words are eloquent reminders of their devotion to this belief:

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government." - George Washington's Farewell Address

"We may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored." - Samuel Adams

"Virtue must underlay all institutional arrangements if they are to be healthy and strong. The principles of democracy are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted!' - John Adams

---

Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III:  ISBN 0-937047-01-5

*Note: John Jay was America's first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

[Terry L Smith]

Dear Obama,
I refuse.

[Seraphicaviary]

One vital difference between Rights and Virtues is where falls the onus of the action.

In the exercise of Rights, you are petitioning an authority to grant something due to you. It does not require any effort or improvement of character on your part to get what is due. If the ones who are charged with guaranteeing your Rights do not themselves have Virtues (especially Prudence and Justice) then the situation is indistinguishable from having no Rights at all.

In the exercise of Virtues, which are habits according to Aristotle, you become a better person. It requires effort to change yourself so that the Virtues become more pronounced in you over time. The onus is on you for good social behavior.

This is where I have a major disagreement with Jefferson. Virtues are self-evident. Anyone can see Virtue in a man by observing his behavior. The ancients knew who had Virtue and who did not. Rights, on the other hand, are a recent development. They are not self-evident by observing behavior. One needs to be raised in an environment where you are told that people have rights before it becomes “self-evident”, as it was for the Founding Fathers. Anyone prior to 1500 AD would beg to differ that Rights were self-evident.

For Thomists like me and those trained in the theology of the Catholic Church, Rights are asserted without proof, but are convenient for interfacing with society. Given the current Administration, who show no Virtue in themselves and precious little respect for Rights, I would not trust Rights to protect me, but rather the Virtues.

The primary Virtue is Prudence, which allows you to determine who else has Virtues, and therefore who can be trusted in society. Exercise it whenever you can.

[abigail2]

Thanks for posting this...its really so simple.

[RipSawyer]

“Let me add that anyone who thinks that there could be another Constitutional Convention with equal success as the first one - is a fool - because less than half of the people at the table would share even a smidgeon of our Founders knowledge in virtue.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I humbly concur.

[Slyfox]

I do believe that the French Revolution was so different from the American one because of the divergent and enlightenment-leaning philosophies of the French.

As much as Thomas Jefferson tried to help, he could not put them all philosophically on the same page.

That is why their revolution was so bloody and ended so disastrously and why we ended up with our noble Constitution.

[stevie_d_64]

How can we possibly expect a nation to turn back to, much less understand the most simplistic definition of the term “Virtue”, if that ver nation does not believe in its simple concept???

The vast majority of the american people DO NOT have time for this lesson, nor the guilt trip it will hit them with if a few decide to take on this challenge...

Much less the people we elect to office under some political ideology...They are too busy justifying their existence to worry about such trivial things like Virtue...

No, I believe this experiment that started back, over 230+ years ago. was a nice try...We had our run...I do not believe there are enough people out there willing to sacrifice, much less tout such a basic truth to the founding principles it was created (inspired) to sustain what is left of any decent, virtuous, truthful nation of people with the same ideals, goals...

Maybe there will come a time in the near future where some of the last pockets of virtue, can re-constitute, and form up something people may flock to again...But that is going to be made much more difficult by the onslaught of Liberalism and its partners in crime these Fabian Socialists that seem to embed themselves within societies and come out only after the seeds of their tree can take root and patiently take over as it has done here...

What a shame...I think this article is right on the money, but it is not enough to bring about the type of resistance to this threat to our liberties and freedoms as we, in this lifetime jave come to learn and appreciate, and do what we can to protect them...

Sure we can continue to put up a fight, but what exactly are we fighting now??? The front is all around us, and it is coming from within the ranks of the political apparatus some of us here are affiliated with, and have supported because it used to believe in those ideals...

Those people we elect to office do not believe in this stuff anymore...

[stevie_d_64]

When you talk about the exercising of “rights” are you forgetting that the “unalienable rights” enumerated in that document are not rights afforded by a government instituted amoung men, but they are granted by an authority that is recognized by this government, that is sourced by an authority higher thatn ANY government instituted amoung men...

Virtue is not necessarily a biblical trait a person can master...God simply wants us to be able to tell the difference between what is right, and what is wrong...It can really be that simple...

When government comes in and tries to define such terms, and do so under the most rightious intentions, you still get flaws when government tells the people THIS is what is virtuous and correct, and this is the path the government is taking all of us...etc etc etc...

When this government turned its back on God, God did his best to continue to bless and keep this country on the straight and narrow...

Ask yourselves this question...

“Do you believe this country is still blessed by God???” (Be honest!!!)

“Do you believe we, as a nation, are capable of receiving the grace of God, after so long off the path???”

It may very well take some un-Godly and un-Christianlike action to get us on the correct course, and some people are not yet willing to see that just yet...

I do not believe we are ready...

[Seraphicaviary]

I am not forgetting the “unalienable rights” - I am denying they exist. I am flat out saying that the Authority higher than governments gave us virtues rather than rights.

Knowledge of virtues is older than the Bible. They were known by the Apostles and Evangelists, who did not know of rights in the Roman Empire beyond what the Empire granted to its citizens.

There is no “just right” or “just wrong”. Rather, God gave us the answers to the question of how to live well until we grew up and learned the reasons why a given thing was right or wrong. This was the overall lesson of St. Paul in Galatians.

This country will be blessed again when the people are once again virtuous.

[stevie_d_64]

“This country will be blessed again when the people are once again virtuous.”

The one thing (so far) we are on the same page with...No prob...

So if you deny an “unalienebale right” as one that has already existed, then why was it inspired to enumerate them in such a way back when T.J. put them down on parchement???

“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness???” what are these, if they are not at least mentioned as they were in that document so that people could, without a doubt, be inclusive to their purpose???

I would say there is some wiggle room if you wish to parse the “virtue/unalienable rights” debate, I’m not really trying to throw rocks at that aspect...I believe virtues and unalienable rights can co-exist, intertwine, and not get twisted up with an individuals freedoms and liberties, yet give that individual the ammunition to battle the forces aligned to take away both, as you have defined...

Ehhhhhhh, its alll being white washed by forces bigger and badder than we are anyway...I kinda wish we were able to put up a better fight...

Check your FReepmail...I have an off-line question for ya...