Freedom and the American Example
This is the rationale and justification for a coalition of liberty-loving, benevolent nations, led by the United States, to interfere diplomatically (and militarily, if need be) in order to spread freedom to the world's oppressed peoples: "When therefore we see our fellow creatures [...] robbed of their most dear and unalienable rights, and borne down with a heavy load of oppression and abuse by the hands of tyrants [....]" (1)
Aiding the oppressed peoples of such nations is moral, according to the natural law, and if standing up to a tyrant means that a nation has to come to blows with his army, then the ensuing conflict is a moral war.
That's a lesson the United Nations and certain international bodies should learn. The true international rule of law is judgment, not will. It's not bowing to the pressures of political expediency, or simply importing secularist theories of society. It's not an international court opinion declaring a moral action to be immoral simply because such action offends the political or economic interests of ruler(s) or nation(s) not acting in accordance with the natural law.
The American revolutionaries stressed the natural law doctrine of natural rights--in opposition to secular, social utilitarian notions of "rights" (which translates to shifting social definitions). Natural law definitions are the true basis for global human rights.
International government does not need to repeat the lesson learned--the hard way--by the United States in the 19th century--a lesson that led to civil war. The Civil War happened because some Americans, after their revolution, gradually almost forgot about the moral basis for that revolution in the first place--or else, slave owners let their own self-interest blind them to its moral implications.
One person who warned his fellow Americans about letting their own self-interest stand in the way of following the moral law was Jonathan Edwards' grandson, lawyer Theodore Dwight (1764-1846) (brother to Yale College President Timothy Dwight). (Their father, Colonel Timothy Dwight, was one of Governor Jonathan Belcher's best friends.)
In An Oration, Spoken Before the Connecticut Society, for the Promotion of Freedom and the Relief of Persons Unlawfully Holden in Bondage (Hartford, 1794), Theodore Dwight chastised slave-owning citizens, and anyone who attempted to justify slavery, for acting against the moral law expressed in the Ten Commandments. Something morally wrong could never be politically right, Dwight reminded them. Slavery was against God's will; therefore slavery was morally wrong. The only thing preventing slave-owning citizens from admitting this was their own self-interest. Once the profits went out of slavery, then they would acknowledge slavery to be wrong. But the fact they acted on economic and political motives to maintain the institution of slavery made it no less wrong, nevertheless. Such people were trying to define justice and injustice solely in terms of the then-existing law of the nation. (Such a rationalization was an early manifestation of "positive law jurisprudence", otherwise known as legal positivism.)
The right to personal liberty is a pre-existing natural right. Therefore, Dwight argued, slavery could never be justified on the basis of property rights in the slave, since it was against the moral law to declare a human being to be a piece of property in the first place. In the second place, it was only through the social compact, agreed upon by the American citizens, that American governments could lawfully exercise the power to make positive laws. Americans who were never given the chance to accept or reject the social compact couldn't be subject to such laws, anyway. Such was the case with slaves in America. They were never consulted upon the terms of the social compact; instead, they were compelled to come to America and to submit to its laws by force. This, Dwight said, was nothing but tyranny. Therefore, in Dwight's view, slaves had a right to revolt; he analogized such an uprising to fighting a defensive war for the protection of liberty against invading tyranny.
Praising the French Revolution for its original dedication to rational government and the rights of man, Dwight lamented that the French later fell into the trap of permitting leaders to rise who plunged the nation into a bloody backwardness and barbarity. The injustice of the national French government extended outward to the colonial government of St. Domingo, whose overlords followed France's despotic example. Eventually despotism goaded slaves in the West Indies to fight for their own independence. Similar consequences awaited every country that violated the Biblical command for liberty. Only declining, barbaric nations tried to justify a system of slavery, and in Dwight's view, slave owners were tyrants. There was neither peace nor security for any nation that maintained slavery, for enslaved individuals were capable of fighting as vigorously for their freedom as did patriots in the American Revolution. And Dwight applauded their efforts to gain liberty and justice.
These are principles that people in places like the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America can turn to when they search for global security. And the American example leads the way.
James Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and later President of the United States, writing in Federalist No. 43 (1788), acknowledged (in words echoing the principles of the Declaration of Independence): "[...] the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed."
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States reaffirmed and adopted natural law principles of ordered liberty: "We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common Defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity [....]" So, government can reaffirm natural law definitions through actions like correct legislation and correct judicial opinions, and this is constitutional. (2)
In accord with this view, William Henry Seward (1801-1872), the anti-slavery United States Senator from New York who later became President Abraham Lincoln's Republican Secretary of State, delivered his "Higher Law" speech before the United States Senate on March 11, 1850, to advocate admitting California into the Union as a free state. Seward's speech appealed to the higher law, which dedicates territory within the United States to the highest and most honorable purposes. Thus it can be inferred, that the United States belongs to the world in the sense that all mankind inherits the universal principles espoused by the United States.
It has happened, in the course of history, that one nation has been dedicated, since its founding, to fulfilling universal principles, and that nation is the United States. These principles are universal in scope only because they are the gift of humanity's Creator. Therefore, the Constitution recognizes the personhood of all peoples and values all human life. This is the pro-life position.
Relying on natural law principles, Seward highlighted the Constitution's fundamental affirmation of individual equality and the blessings of liberty--including the glory of morality. No nation should rule by despotism, for injustice is a characteristic of barbarism. Seward directly stated that all just human laws are re-enactments of God's Law--and that applies also to the Federal and state constitutions. Thus, the principles of justice in the United States Constitution are an embodiment of God's Law. The Constitution already embodies these. As Seward noted, anything ignoring the Divine law calls for political measures to reaffirm the Godly principles of the Constitution. The people's duty is to discern the Divine will, and to do it. That is the United States' national (and universal) mandate. And it is so because such is the mandate for any Christian nation.
In answer to those who were afraid of national division over an important moral issue, Seward revealed that it is better to be right than to compromise, and that vigorous political debate is healthy for a country; it keeps its principles sound. Unity is not the highest virtue at the expense of the United States' founding principles. The hope of the United States in the 19th century lay not in a civil war between North and South; that's not what America was about. Rather, the future of the United States lay in the West--the next step in fulfillment of the people's "manifest destiny".
The failure of the French Revolution left the American Ideal as the only revolution that succeeded in achieving its noble goals, because--like England's Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 which it professed to restore--America's fight for independence historically has been the revolution based on natural law (unalienable) rights, based on belief in mankind's Creator, the Giver of those rights. Upon that basis alone, the American Ideal periodically renews itself throughout United States history. America fell to the ground like a wounded eagle during the Civil War (1861-1865). Yet in the aftermath, the American Ideal triumphantly rose again, because emancipation (brought by Republican President Abraham Lincoln) dramatically reaffirmed the United States' commitment to the unalienable rights of humanity.
Likewise, after the pessimism generated by the radical 1960's, America rose to optimism again during the 1980's. Under the leadership of a cheerful United States President, personally dedicated to bringing freedom to the rest of the world--particularly to nations shuddering under the oppression of communism--the United States renewed its founding commitment to spread freedom, democracy, and the moral rule of law world-wide. After the foreign policy missteps of the 1990's, Americans recovered their bearings and headed toward global liberation again during the early 21st century. They were led by a resolute United States President who refused to back down from the hard task of standing up to foreign autocracies. The United States was once again on the right track to fulfilling its manifest destiny.
1. Tyrannical "conduct is a violation of the law of nature, which requires all to exert themselves to promote happiness among mankind. Love is the fulfilling of the law, but this implies a benevolent frame of heart, exercised in beneficent actions toward all men, as we have opportunity. When therefore we see our fellow creatures, especially our friends and brethren, whose happiness is more immediately under our care, reduced to a state of misery, robbed of their most dear and unalienable rights, and borne down with a heavy load of oppression and abuse by the hands of tyrants; this law requires us to stand forth in their defense, even though we are not involved with them in the same evils, and how much more, when our own happiness is equally concerned." (Quote from Nathaniel Whitaker (1777), reprinted in Frank Moore, editor, The Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution (1860).
2. Princeton University Professor Edward S. Corwin, The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law (Great Seal Books/Cornell University Press, 1955), acknowledged the natural law origins of the U.S. Constitution.
Conservative jurisprudence (when in accordance with the Constitution's true (moral law) spirit) seeks to go back to the Constitution's inherent principles. Thus it is the natural law that defines the true "living Constitution". What "judicial activists" call the "living Constitution" is really the evolving or changing Constitution--but changing illegitimately so as to dump or discard its own inherent principles (which cannot be done, because to do so is to go against the Constitution itself).
Historically, the United States has prospered because its human-posited laws and society were based on eternal values that are universal in scope and potential application. Unfortunately, some regions of the world turned away from those values (e.g., Germany during the National Socialist period of the 1930's; and 21st-century France, which adopted secularism flowing from 18th-century Enlightenment doctrines); such regions manifest different sets of priorities than does the United States. Therefore, it would not be a wise idea for the United States to submit its citizens to the jurisdiction of international courts and the United Nations.
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