[Originally Posted July 1, 2011]
This morning on my radio broadcast, my friend Dr. Tony Beam and I discussed the relevance of the U.S. Constitution in our time. This week before Independence Day brought a revived discussion over whether or not the Constitution is still relevant in modern America. According to the folks over at Time Magazine, it doesn’t matter that much in the twenty first century. The editor of this left-leaning magazine, Richard Stengel, claims that it was written too long ago to have a lasting impact on American life today. Of course, Stengel’s commitment to the secular-progressive worldview precludes him from believing in absolute and timeless principles.
Stengel claims that the Founders’ opinions on war, peace and national prosperity are too outmoded for us to consider in modern culture. He indicated that, since the founders weren’t familiar with “predator drones and ‘sexting,’” their philosophy of government isn’t relevant to modern challenges. What Stengel fails to grasp is the admonition of Ecclesiastes that “there is nothing new under the sun.” This Ecclesiastical passage teaches that, though circumstances may change, the basic human condition, human tendencies and human nature are cyclical and don’t truly change. Think about it: is jealousy solely a modern problem? Is homosexuality a modern movement? Of course not. These trends have been part of the human experience since the fall; there is nothing is new under the sun when it comes to basic societal challenges and conventions.
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Though the early U.S. Navy didn’t use Predator Drones to carry out military strikes, they nevertheless engaged in armed conflict. Whether the armed forces use a cannon or a cruise missile, the founding principle of limited power to the presidency on declaring war is relevant. Just as Thomas Jefferson was required to seek approval from Congress before declaring War on Tripoli, so should Barack Obama. The weapon with which the war is waged doesn’t change this principle. Though smart phones and ‘sexting’ weren’t part of the founding generation’s cultural lexicon, vulgarity and pornography was. Our forefathers weren’t oblivious to filth and sexual flagrance. Their concept of freedom of speech was based on basic modes of societal decency. Just as it was inappropriate to run naked through the streets in 1789, so it is today. The argument that the founders were unfamiliar with modern tools and terms, and thus disqualified from being politically relevant in our time, is a straw man. Though circumstances may change, the underlying issues driving our modern challenges and debates are no different than in the Revolutionary Era.
The attack on the Constitution by the American Left is another front in their war on truth. First it was the Bible, which is the foundation of Truth, on which rests the concepts of personal liberty and human dignity. Now, the war on truth has been expanded to include not on the very source of truth, but all documents and ideas based upon it. This, of course, includes the American Constitution. For all the pontification by the Left that the founders were a pack of atheists, history soundly refutes this notion. The overwhelming majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Christians, and none of them openly opposed Christianity’s influence on our national culture. Even Thomas Jefferson, not an orthodox Christian believer, understood the Christian foundations of the nation’s character and stated that “no nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian Religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.” Jefferson wrote this in defense of his attendance of Christian church services in, of all places, the United States Capitol building.
All-in-all, this renewed sense of hostility to the Constitution by the secular-progressives in our Country is an assault on absolutes. It is a renewed attempt to deconstruct America. The deconstructionist post-modern movement has sought to subvert all truth, by dismantling the historical record. As such, the Bible is dismissed as fatally flawed and hopelessly corrupted by ancient legend, though all archaeological and historical evidence suggests exactly the opposite. Concurrently, the convictions of our forefathers are reconstructed into a mystical, mythical set of Freemason methodologies devoid of any fundamentally Christian belief. It is all part of a concerted effort to make us forget who we really are; it is all orchestrated to scrub the American Consciousness of the principles that made us great. We, the People, must stand-up to the secular-progressive left as they seek to poison American history and culture. Secularization is always the forerunner to socialization. If the Left wins in secularizing this nation, socialism will soon sweep in and sweep away the freedom’s for which our founders fought.
