Saturday, May 20, 2017

The Laws of Nature and Nature's God

It was wonderful to be born in the United States, and like most kids of my generation I said the Pledge of Allegiance in school, one Nation under God. I was compelled to attend Sunday School and catechism class in order to be confirmed in a Protestant church, more or less in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. My education pertaining to the American Revolution was idealized, a Declaration of Independence and Washington crossing the Delaware.

Later in life it became interesting and important to study everything more closely. Pilgrims purchased slaves and captured Indians to trade for more slaves. The Revolutionary War was a financial and political disaster. Everything the Founders did turned to crap, especially in the Federal Convention of 1787. Supreme Court decisions went from bad to worse, decreeing that Indians were in a permanent condition of pupilage and Negroes were inhuman. It led to Civil War with nearly a million casualties; cost five times the GNP of 1860. Worthless paper money, income tax, wars to grab territory and force trade, domestic regulation of commerce and power to compel obedience in matters of private life all flowed from the Civil War.

I made a special study of the Gilded Age. Railroads were financed with European loans and a ludicrous "curb market" for worthless securities. Conspiracies of money and corrupt politics opened the door to another bout of civil war, pitting farmers against bankers, consumers vs. producers. The Supreme Court held that the police power of Congress was an unlimited writ of arbitrary will. Regulatory agencies bloomed, liberty ring-fenced and strangled.

It's not unnatural to seek the genesis of that result. I came to see that it was one phrase in the Declaration of Independence, "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God" that entitled us to form a government of our own choosing. Quite a claim when you think about it. Signatories to the Declaration believed themselves competent to understand God's eternal blueprint.

I made a close study of natural rights doctrine and came to despise it. Far more important to the evolution of a just society were the interests of children, our "innocent posterity" as the Declaration explained, a specific justification for war. Eventually it was expanded to include the welfare of women and children worldwide. We sent missionaries, diplomats, armies of conquest and occupation, foreign aid. At home, every state, city and village created schools to educate children and supervise their moral development. The story of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn was a saga of truancy and delinquency. In the 1930s, it was The Dead End Kids, in the 50s and 60s a wave of fashionable beatniks and smiling hippies. No matter what our government attempted to do for children, it led to woe. Today's situation is hopeless and irreversible, a nation of digital zombies and precious snowflakes crying for a "safe space" in college. Millions are employed in street crime, obscenity, socialist agitation, and fantasy roleplay, given a blank check that broke our economy and punished productive enterprise. Entertainment is not a productive industry. Neither are armies of teachers, politicians, and drill sergeants.

In reaction to the modern mess, roughly one-third of America has pledged allegiance to God again, loudly devoted to scripture, prayers, "young Earth" geology, and the defense of Israel no matter what it costs, as if Israel was our 51st state, more important than the other fifty put together. In desperation, evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.

Our innocent progeny have never been so ill-served. Talk radio host Dennis Prager proclaims that we are in another civil war. He's an old man, a true believer in myths: E Pluribus Unum, One Nation Under God. His rear view mirror is a kinescope, gazing at Ozzie and Harriet, can't see what happened to Ricky Nelson, one of the disgusting delinquents who dishonored his parents and the Obedient Generation of television households, advertisers, NFL football, and Thanksgiving dinners. Today, Prager announced happily that Trump is "a conservative dream" -- which is true, but not in the sense that Prager meant. Donald Trump is a TV personality, no different than Barack Obama. Trump's presidency is toast because he's not Obama.

It's folly to bemoan ignorance or denial of Natural Law and God-given Rights. They have zero weight in legislation, merely an empty gesture in the Constitution that prohibits religious tests to hold public office, which is universally honored in the breach. No politician dares to admit that he's an atheist or freethinker. Paul Ryan was compelled to disavow Ayn Rand.

Worse -- power politics rule the world, and we're outnumbered by those who have no Judeo Christian God to complicate their aspirations. The only way to prevail would be nuclear war, incinerating their innocent progeny and our own, a final and irreversible farewell salute to Nature.

World map according to population by BoAML