Beck hit a little too close to home for somebody’s taste,
“And one more thing. If the key to American governance is the passage in the Declaration of Independence about god-given inalienable rights, why’d the authors of the Constitution go ahead and enumerate some of those rights anyway? And why, if they’re inalienable and god-given, weren’t those rights made exempt from amendment or repeal via Article V? The touchstone of the Constitution isn’t God, it’s rule by popular consent; religion may well influence the public in deciding which rights are so critical that even the popularly elected government should be forbidden to touch them, but when push comes to shove, it’s your call, not God’s. Slavery was once a right too, after all, and I’m sure there were plenty of apologists who found religious backing for that, fair or not.”
Sorry AP, but I’m going to have to side with Glenn on this one.
Oh, and to pick a nit, they’re UNalienable, not INalienable.
To pick another nit, slavery was never generally viewed as a “right” by the Founders. Disagree? Show me where it is affirmed as a “right” in our founding documents, their public statements, or even their personal letters. Until then, don’t try to make the claim.
In response to the question, “And why, if they’re inalienable and god-given, weren’t those rights made exempt from amendment or repeal via Article V?,” I would simply say that if Allahpundit understood what the first part of his question really meant, he’d understand that he’s already answered the second part. Not one of the Founders – and I mean not a single one – would have gone for the notion that any of our unalienable rights were subject to the sort of democratic “repeal by popular decree” that AP proposes. Has he actually read what the Founders thought about democracy? Even Jefferson thought pure democracy was a horrid idea. Further, AP is implicitly mistaken about the purpose of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights – they were not understood to be giving these rights, they merely affirmed these rights. Rights that would still exist, and would still be God-given, even if you were to amend the Constitution to erase the entire BoRs outright. Sometimes it pays to read the primary documents from the Founders themselves that can act as important commentary and/or elucidation for what we see embodied in our founding documents.
Beck’s right – militant godlessness is a dangerous threat to American freedom. Note – I am NOT saying that “the godless”, i.e. atheists, agnostics, etc. are a threat. There are many people who don’t believe in God, much less who are active practitioners of a religion, who are good citizens, and who don’t want to line people like me up against a wall behind the police station and shoot us. Nor am I saying that someone who is irreligious can’t be a conservative, etc. (though, for social conservatism, religiosity does seem to help).
I am saying that the principle of militant godlessness, as it is defined and espoused by people like Richard Dawkins and his ilk, is an attack on the fundamental underpinning of the American system. Beck’s right. Get rid of God, and you replace Him with the state – and that never ends well. Again, our Founders – even those who were not Christians – were pretty clear on the importance of religious faith in shaping the attitudes and responses of our society. Something about the Constitution being made for a moral and religious people, and would be inadequate to govern those who were not. Juxtopose that with the impotence of the Constitution in restraining much of the crowd we currently see in Washington now.
Yes, there have been people who used (operative word there) religion to do a lot of nasty things – crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, and the like. My own spiritual heritage – the Baptists and their spiritual antecedents – were right there with the Jews on the receiving end of a lot of this type of thing in Europe. But I would daresay that one century of godlessness in power has killed, maimed, uprooted, and destroyed many times the number of lives than has all religion put together for the past twenty centuries. Think Soviet Union, Maoist China, Polist Kampuchea, the various fascist regimes (including Germany). Let’s face it – one Communist regime that has as one of its explicit principles the rejection of religion and the view that it is the “opiate of the masses”, if put into place in a populous enough country, can rack up a bigger body count than the entire Thirty Years War in relatively short order. So can one fascist regime that is based on the replacement of God with the State.
I would suggest that Allahpundit dig into the history of the First Amendment that guarantees him the right to be godless and to not have to adhere to a state religion. He’ll find Baptists like John Leland and others who influenced Madison and Jefferson to craft that amendment.
“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever…. Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”
Those words weren’t penned by a godless man. They were written by John Leland. And they embody the heritage of religious freedom that AP thinks could be up for a “democratic” vote.
Tags: Glenn Beck, History, Religion
