For years now a majority of Americans have realized that neither of the so-called major political parties represents them. On fundamental issues of national identity and survival, such as border security, illegal immigration, the redefinition of marriage without regard to natural right, and the refusal to acknowledge Islamic fundamentalism as the primary motive for terrorism in our times, the elitist faction parties are tyrannically forcing the country down a path the majority opposes.
In the past when the political system left a majority stranded without representation, a realignment took place. So the Whig Party displaced the Federalists; Andrew Jackson’s Democrats displaced the Democratic Republicans of the Jeffersonian era; and the Republican Party displaced the Whigs. The rise of Jacksonian Democracy is an example of a realignment accomplished by a majority uprising within a Party, which seized control from what had become an elitist minority that refused to represent their aspirations.
At the end of the Reagan era, however, a very different realignment has taken place. An elitist clique, antithetical to the moral and philosophic principles of America’s constitutional Republic, came into control of the leadership in both political parties. Quietly and fully embracing the implications of the scientistic dogma of human evolution, this clique rejects all the self-evident truths articulated in the Declaration of Independence including, of course, the preeminent power of the Creator; the authority of “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” with respect to human affairs; the natural equality of all human beings, with respect to their possession of unalienable rights, endowed (filled with content, substantiated) by their Creator, God.
Most Americans do not reject the premises for government set forth in the Declaration of Independence. They do not reject the authority of the Creator, God. They do not believe that might makes right; that there is no law or no standard for just action but what is determined by the unaccountable will of those who wield superior force.
Whatever the elitist faction’s propagandists want us to believe, the great divide in America’s politics today is not between the Democrats and the Republicans, the socialists and the capitalists, the proponents of government domination and the champions of some speciously unlimited human freedom. Rather it is between those who reject any standard of right and justice apart from human power, and those who acknowledge a standard for justice that transcends human force.
It is between those who respect no standard of worth but material superiority, and those who acknowledge that their Creator has endowed all human beings, including the weak and powerless, with a path to respectability that requires nothing of them but their good will. It is between those who see no human equality but in neediness and appetite, and those who see a claim to equal respect that is available to all as and when they consent to exercise the right that God intends, even if they can do no more than inwardly acknowledge and consent to follow the God-endowed inclination of their good will.
According to the Declaration of Independence this is the equality the title of humanity entails. It is not the equality of wealth or pride or power; nor of fame, or any other form of human achievement. It is rather the equality of goodwill whereby any and all human beings may approve the benevolent intention of God for our creation, and make it their vocation to act according to that intention. The function of government is first and foremost to represent such people of goodwill in that vocation, so that, in combination with one another, they can defend and sustain the implementations of right required by the terms of God’s endowment, securing them against the depredations of those who despise and reject His terms.
This understanding of equality has profound implications for the meaning and purpose of what Madison called the “scheme of representation” that the Constitution of the United States is supposed to implement. Where goodwill is the basis for equal right, the right of every citizen to participate in elections becomes an opportunity to exercise goodwill; one that can be seized with no more power than it takes to cast a vote. In this respect, every voter shares in and helps to constitute a sovereign’s power, of the sort once held exclusively by those with sufficient material wherewithal to hold onto it by force.
But because their claim to sovereign power arises from their goodwill, people let go of that claim as and when their will is corrupted by the abuse of power. It is therefore no accident that, across what is supposed to be the partisan divide, the elitist faction has used its current leadership position to encourage American voters to abuse their share of sovereignty. They have encouraged an understanding of politics in which individuals and groups seek their own advantage, taking no account of the common good. They have encouraged an understanding of government in which individuals and groups seek government benefits, taking no account of their own responsibility. They have encouraged an understanding of right and justice that frees selfish, avaricious and hedonistic human passions from the constraints of natural conscience, taking no account of the human obligation to respect and preserve our God-endowed nature, in ourselves and on the whole.
But despite the elitist faction’s efforts to corrupt their goodwill, many Americans retain a strong sense of it, and of the duty to God and humanity that it proclaims. Some do so because they hear the voice of natural conscience. Many do so because they respond, in heart and spirit, to the call of faith in Jesus Christ.
Throughout the history of the United States, such people have been the salient factor in realizing the benefits of the “scheme of representation” with which the Founders sought to break the pattern of failure established by democratic regimes in the past. But in U.S. politics at present, there is no vehicle for the goodwill of the people. Indeed, the understanding of rightful liberty born of that goodwill is now rejected, and the institutions of self-government meant to implement that goodwill are being reduced to a façade for the tyranny of arbitrary power.
The battle between goodwill and untrammeled material ambition has been an ongoing characteristic of America’s history, with range wars, civil wars and gang wars to prove it. The difference now is that people of faith and conscience have accepted an intellectual and moral culture that denigrates their respect for truth, and despises their faith in God and human nature as He intends it. This is true to such an extent that, unlike our nation’s Founders, they shrink from invoking either His name or the implications of His Supreme authority.
Can a people entrusted by the God’s Providence to represent His sovereign power, return to power without reforming their abuse of it? In the Bible, David sinned as a man, but he had to repent as king. The American people have been gulled into abusing the unalienable right of liberty entrusted to us by God. If we do not cast aside the political idols that have enticed us into betraying that trust, we will never again deserve the right we cannot have without it.