[AwesomePossum]

Again, in our American Constitutional Republic, generally speaking, the people have a voice in the laws that are enacted by their elected representatives..............local, state and federal. Depending upon the morals of the citizenship, thus, the laws will certainly reflect said morals, whether you like it or not, or whether you believe it or not, it happens...........in every society, including ours.

If you don't like the laws, instead of breaking them or advocating the breaking of them............work towards changing them. In the meantime, all laws reflect some sort of moral influence, or the absence of morality, which absence is in itself a degree of morality.

In laws of commerce, for example, all parties are expected to act with virtue, in other words, in honesty; in their papers, in their communications, in their products, in their finances, etc., etc........................Now, the last time I looked, lying and giving false testimony were part of the Ten Commandments............the founding fathers were very aware of the laws of God, and knew that a society in tune with said laws would be more safe, more clean, more productive, less taxed, more healthy, more prosperous, more mighty, and more giving, more successful, and more lasting..........a Republic, if you can keep it.

[tacticalogic]

You're argument amounts to a tacit assertion that since all laws are based on morality, we have to abandon the idea that there can even be such a thing as a secular government, accept that it has to be theocratic and accept that all we can do is choose a theology.

I don't buy it.

I also don't buy the "It's the will of the people, so it has to be right." We live in a Constitutional republic, not a democracy.

James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell

13 Feb. 1829
Letters 4:14--15
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.

Justice Clarence Thomas

"I write separately only to express my view that the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases. By continuing to apply this rootless and malleable standard, however circumscribed, the Court has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits. Until this Court replaces its existing Commerce Clause jurisprudence with a standard more consistent with the original understanding, we will continue to see Congress appropriating state police powers under the guise of regulating commerce."

A republic, if you can keep it, indeed.

[JamesP81]

the founding fathers were very aware of the laws of God

The Founding Fathers believed that a republic could not function without Christian virtue being common in its people. Or, as James Madison once said, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Our system of government will not work without the influence of Christians. However, it will also not work if we use government to legislate people into being good. Neither end of the spectrum is workable.

Government can never effect Christian virtue in the people. You might not like it, but that is a simple indisputable fact. Virtue is a choice of the people; law is in place to prevent others from infringing on a person's God-given inalienable rights.

Our Republic does not stand or fall on the virtuousness of its laws; it stands or falls on the virtuosness of its people.