July 4^th, 1776, with a continental colonial army in the field fighting for their rights as Englishmen, the Continental Congress prepared to sign the document that many felt might be their own death warrant.  Several grim and dark jokes seem to have been made about hanging in that chamber but the actual mood was very somber and serious. They did not commit themselves fully to a struggle for independence from the greatest empire the world had ever seen without counting the cost. This is, perhaps, why the final words of the Declaration of Independence, just above their signatures, read “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

With those words they pledged themselves as a sacrifice for freedom. Some of them, indeed, lost their lives. Others, rich before the war, ended it penniless. Others to keep their honor sacred refused offers of the release of beloved family members from horrible and almost always fatal British prison ships in spite of their breaking hearts. They meant what they said. As the people of that day would have put it, they were in earnest.

Earlier in the Declaration they had referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It was more than a rhetorical flourish. These well educated men were very familiar with the background for such a formulation. Back in the 16^th century, the Protestant theologian John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (a very popular book in colonial America), had stipulated that “the law of God which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men.” Many of the men gathered on that solemn occasion were lawyers, steeped in English law and jurisprudence, and were, therefore, very familiar with the statement of the famed 17^th century English jurist Sir Edward Coke that “The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart” and with what the most popular law commentator of their own day, William Blackstone had written in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone had written that “As man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker’s will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature.”

Their self-evident truths and rights endowed by man’s Creator shows that they believed God was calling them to do what they did. With feeble steps of trembling faith, with reliance on one another and on the protection of God, they launched themselves into implacable war with an empire which had the world’s best army and the world’s best and largest navy. For them the “Providence” on which they depended was not merely simply the way things happened in the world. For them, providence, as John Calvin had earlier summarized, meant that God “as keeper of the keys” actually “governs all events.”

Samuel Adams, John’s relative who had formed the Sons of Liberty and was the mastermind of the first Tea Party, noted that the British had tried to make the state a god. He argued that Americans had seen through that folly. On analyzing the Declaration, he wrote “We have explored the temple of royalty, and found the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone.” He claimed that through the Declaration and its emphasis on providence that “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient.”

Samuel Adams dismissed the argument that Americans had to always obey the government in order to obey God. He felt the success of America had given it the responsibility to not give up. He wrote, “The hand of heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world.”

The American pulpit took up this same theme. Before the war, many ministers had called the reverence and deference for the king a form of idolatry. Now they spoke boldly in favor of the cause of independence. In Philadelphia, George Duffield argued that America’s forefathers had fled Europe to escape tyranny and oppression and that freedom is God’s gift to us because we hated tyranny so. He gave thanks for God’s “adorable goodness” and said that Americans “were born the heirs of freedom.”

So, today it is time to throw off idolatry and reject the idea that government is our ultimate security and refuge. Government is made up of human beings and those human beings have all the failings and sins of human beings. Instead we must liberate ourselves from the clutches of a new and growing tyranny in this our most imperial of presidencies. We must refuse the state’s claim to become our new god. The state will prove a false and destructive god. We are the heirs of freedom, meant to make our own way. We are free to obey God or refuse but God never intended us to give his role to a mere president, or to a bureaucracy. It is time for us to cast down these false idols and realize that we must take responsibility for ourselves. We must quit expecting government to do everything for us and to solve every problem and remember that we have a birthright to fend for ourselves. God created us with the ability, right, and duty to make decisions for ourselves. Expecting government to take care of all our problems is selling our birth right for a one time offer of a bowl of soup. If we sell it, it will be hard to get it back.

Today, I decided to let James Madison do my thinking for me.   What follows is an excerpt of an article written in the National Gazette, March 29, 1792. It is Madison considers property rights and especially the definition of property. I will follow his comments with a few of my own.

Madison:

This term (Property) in its particular application means “that domination which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.

In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.

In the latter sense, a man has property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.

He has property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.

He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.

In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Where and excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.

Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho’ from an opposite cause.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own….

Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and inalienable right. To guard a man’s house as his castle, to pay public and enforce private debts with the most exact faith, can give no title to invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred than his castle….

If there be a government then which prides itself on maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification of the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the inference will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.

If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property of rights.

Sumruld:

One must wonder what Madison would make of the modern United States. We have already had a Supreme Court ruling which justified local municipalities taking property, in the form of land and dwelling, from individuals to give it to others simply because the city or county would reap more in taxes from the new owner. Here we see a violation of property rights. We also are seeing a growing “excess of power” on the part of our government which is threatening our opinions (new hate speech laws), our persons (government health regulations), and our possessions.

Though our government was instituted to “protect property of every sort” including those which lie “in the rights of individuals,” it has ceased to be a just government by Madison’s definition. Remember Madison would know perhaps better than anyone else what our founders had meant our government under the Constitution to be. After all, he got the moniker “Father of the Constitution” the old fashioned way, he earned it. He envisioned the new document, wrote its first draft and fought for it in the convention and in the ratification fight. A truly just government, according to Madison, “impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.” It does not use empathy as an excuse to pass out rewards to its favorites at the expense of others. For Madison, as for the other founders, charity was a voluntary act by the individual. He would have viewed our approach to government welfare as a form of state sanctioned theft.

Note also how much Madison would have objected to the idea that our consciences can be judged by the law, which is a basic assumption of the new hate crimes law making its way through the Congress. He even said a government that perfectly respected the sacredness of private property (our government has ceased to do this) would have no right to “invade a man’s conscience which is more sacred.” 

According to Madison, no government which violates our rights to our opinions, religion, persons, or our actual possessions can be a pattern for the United States. This, however, has become the pattern. We must turn back the tides of tyranny for the day has come when the United States does not “equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights.” Our government has become an elitist tyranny which respects neither the rights of property nor the property of rights. It is time to change that.