Opinion

Freedom Means Having The Choice, Liberty Means Using It To Do Right

Alan Keyes Former Assistant Secretary of State
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[This is the last installment of an 8 part essay available in its entirety on my blog.  My column here last week was Part 3.]

I thank God America’s founders did not follow the sly path of people like CNN anchor Christopher Cuomo. Apparently he is willing to pretend that whatever wickedness, injustice and mutual self-abuse human beings are willing to tolerate must be accepted as law, provided the right legal ritual is followed in declaring it such.

For our personal convenience, we kill our offspring and call it an exercise of right; deny, degrade and replace the definition of family that serves our species, to replace it with one that simply services our lust; trample upon the liberty of all so that some may restore the power and privileges of elitist faction rule; and then deceitfully proclaim that this stew of murderous, degrading, self-serving, self-idolizing poison is prepared to lift up the poor, bring solace to the outcast, and enhance the dignity of all.

In this generation we seem determined to prove that nothing is more necessary to the order and happiness of a human community than the acknowledgment of a sacred standard of justice that arises from beyond the reach of human consensus and compromise. Every day brings new proofs that the only reason people like Christopher Cuomo want to erase God’s standard from our history is so that those who now ride the crest of power in our society can fasten a permanent yoke about the necks of rising generations, making it easier to keep them in bondage.

Of course, such people will say that their aim is to realize every good hope for peace, equality and love men are capable of.  They will claim this is why they abuse government power to loot the income, command the labor and suppress the dissenting conscience of humanity. Yet America’s experience, proves that peace, equality and love are better served when individuals are restrained by well-formed consciences, and governments are constrained by institutions that empower them to demand respect for their unalienable rights.

This experience was forged by generations that spawned their share of devilish mayhem. But they ended up casting out and facing down more demons than they conjured up, sometimes with enormous sacrifice. What Chief Justice Moore understands, and what Christopher Cuomo wants us to forget, is that they whenever they did so, it was on the basis of an American creed that acknowledges and reveres the authority of the Creator, not some cult of greed, lust and vain ambition produced by a perverse consensus among ourselves.

Now we are asked to succumb to the delusion that we should abandon that creed at the despotic whim of elitist judges and justices, abetted by a lawless executive. Whatever fantasies of inconsequential lust and cost free government hand-outs they use for bait, we will gain nothing by this abandonment but to ruin our character as a free people. But they will gain the opportunity to enslave or compromise the decent conscience that allows free men and women to believe that it is right to live, or if necessary risk and give our lives, in the God blessed exercise of rightful freedom.

Christopher Cuomo’s false portrayal of our rights is like the federal judge’s attempt to deny the sovereign powers and antecedent rights of the State of Alabama and its people. Neither is simply about the particular issue of “gay marriage.” Both have to do with the foundational issue that will determine whether this is the generation in which the American republic is wounded to its very soul by a successful assault on the premises that form the heart of our identity as a free people. Already our nation lies weakened, its people plundered of the fruits of their extraordinary achievements, while vultures summoned and even fed by means of those very fruits, hurriedly wait to feed upon its carcass.

This may be, as some believe, a righteous judgment from God for our sins. But it may also be the deadly flick of the dragon’s tail, as he takes revenge upon the nation responsible for deadly blows that more than once frustrated his career of evil. But much like the onset of our undoubtedly fallen nature, the fate that awaits us will reflect the choice for God or evil we make now. On this, at least, we Americans can still agree: Whether by mindless chance or God’s intention, our freedom is to choose. But, for good or ill, doesn’t our fate depend on choosing rightly?

If you still believe that it does, then you have not abandoned the creed responsible for America’s true success, whatever Mr. Cuomo and those like him want you to believe. For when America’s founders spoke of God and our Creator, they spoke of one who sets truthfully before us life and death, blessings and curses. Our freedom is to choose. But all the generations that came before us proved, by the eventual triumph of their good will, that to secure our rights we must choosing righteously; not selfishly for ourselves alone, but generously, for the good of all humanity. Such is the challenge of our birthright as a nation, as articulated in the Declaration. And if we are still willing to make that challenge the arbiter of our debates, then there is still hope that when our choice is made, we will have once again preserved our liberty.