Faith, Family & Freedom: Part 1‏7 of 21

Good day friends!

Welcome back.

The Ten Commandments originally provided a basis for our legal and political systems, creating justice and peace. The deliberate use of the Ten Commandments by our Founding Fathers as the basis of America's legal system and Constitutional Republic is proof they never intended to create a secular nation or government. The Founders also did not intend for the First Amendment to be used as a tool to eradicate religious expression and practices from American government. John Adams, Founding Father and second president of the United States, wrote:

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free." 

In this segment we will learn about the concepts and methods of legal positivism, despotism and case-law. We will see how they function in America's judicial system and how our ever-decreasing freedoms and liberties are being systematically stripped away. Now, introducing the Harvard Law School Dean responsible for bringing it all about...

"Faith, Family & Freedom: Our American Values Under Fire"

Christopher Columbus Langdell

(1826-1906)

“Twentieth-century jurisprudence is based on a Darwinian worldview. Life evolves, men evolve, society evolves, and therefore laws and the constitution’s meaning evolves and changes with time.” This observation by constitutional and legal scholar John Eidsmoe reflects the modern legal formulation known as “legal positivism.”

In his book, Christianity and the Constitution, Eidsmoe reviews the writings of the Critical Legal Studies movement – a group of radical lawyers, law professors, and law students – and summarizes legal positivism this way:

• There are no objective, God-given standards of law, or if there are, they are irrelevant to the modern legal system.
• Since God is not the author of law, the author of law must be man; in other words, law is law simply because the highest human authority, the state, has said it is law and is able to back it up by force.
• Since man and society evolve, therefore law must evolve as well.
• Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law (i.e., judges “make law”).
• To study law, get at the original sources of law, the decisions of judges; hence most law schools today use the “case law” method of teaching law.

Hence, legal positivism is simply moral relativism – the belief that there is no such thing as moral absolutes – applied to the law. According to relativists, there is no standard of right and wrong for all people in all places at all times. Moral relativism often flies under the more appealing term “pragmatism” and as such is closely tied to situational ethics, the belief that individuals should be free to do whatever seems best to secure the most desirable outcome for themselves in any given situation.

Tracing the development of the positivistic approach to law brings us to the next influencer on our list, Christopher Columbus Langdell. “This philosophy of ‘positivism’,” explains historian David Barton, “was introduced in the 1870’s when Harvard Law School Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell applied Darwin’s premise of evolution to jurisprudence.” As a result, Secular Humanism and its penchant for moral relativism – along with Langdell’s misapplied Darwinism – has now become the postmodern foundation on which America’s courts and law schools are built.

Langdell’s thought was further advanced by Dean Roscoe Pound and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Holmes was a student of Langdell’s at Harvard and argued that there is no fixed moral foundation for law:

“The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories… have a good deal more to do than the syllogism [legal reasoning process] in determining the rules by which men should be governed.”

Did you catch that? The “felt necessities of the time” and “prevalent moral and political theories” should be the basis of the rules by which men are governed. Using the “felt necessities” and prevalent theories” model, judges can allow just about anything to be legal, depending on whose feelings, morals, and political theories are chosen for reference. Guided by this dangerous thinking, we have seen countless abortions performed in America. Even the grisly partial-birth abortion procedure has passed legal muster – a practice the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan called “near infanticide.”

Along with millions of babies, matters of decency have also been aborted. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, while serving as an attorney for the ACLU in 1977, wrote a paper, entitled “Sex Bias in the U.S. Code,” for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In it, she argues that the legal age for sexual activity should be lowered to 12 years old. If enough judges agree the age change “is a necessity” based on the perverted “moral and political theories” of Alfred Kinsey, for instance, Americans would have to accept that it would be legal for an adult to have sex with a 12-year-old child. Lest you think that too crazy to happen, bear in mind that Kinsey actually first promoted this idea, triggering other forces that now push in similar directions. A University of Minnesota publisher produced a book that outlines the “benefits” of children having sex with adults, and the North American Man/Boy Love Association has promoted this idea for years. These kinds of philosophical foundations are now in play with relativistic judges.

Consider the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence vs. Texas. The court struck down the Texas sodomy law and, via the precedent, similar laws in several other states. The effect of the ruling instantly made homosexual sex legal. To arrive at such a ruling, the justices not only ignored the Constitution and the founder’s intent, but even went so far as to cite the law of another country in support of its decision! Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion cited a 1967 British Parliament vote repealing laws against homosexual acts and a 1981 European Court of Human Rights decision that such laws violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

Ignoring the Constitution and looking to case-law – including that of other countries – to justify what our laws don’t permit is the motive behind the case-law philosophy. Not surprisingly, Langdell also pioneered the case-law philosophy. David Barton regards this as a strategy for subverting the intent of the Founders:

“Under the case-law approach, history, precedent, and the views and beliefs of the Founders not only became irrelevant, they were even considered hindrances to the successful evolution of a society.”

John Dewey similarly believed a strict adherence to the Constitution was an obstacle to the liberal, humanistic, and socialist changes he and many like him desired to accomplish:

“The belief in political fixity, of the sanctity of some form of state consecrated by the efforts of our fathers and hallowed by tradition, is one of the stumbling-blocks in the way of orderly and directed change.”

Although judges and legal scholars now refer to judges as “making law,” Founding Father and architect of much of early U.S. legal philosophy William Blackstone never believed judges “made law” but that they were to study the U.S. Constitution to “discover” or “apply” the law.

Although introduced in the nineteenth century, legal positivism began to make real headway when Earl Warren became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1958 case, Trop vs. Dulles, Warren declared the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution could not have the same meaning now as it did at the time it was written. Legal positivism has been racing through court decisions at an ever-increasing pace since the mid-1900s. What is the clear implication of legal positivism? Since morals and standards change over time, so does the meaning of the Constitution. Strangely, the Constitution has supposedly become much harder to understand than it once was – although it was originally written for the complete comprehension of the "common man" of the day. The seismic shift represented in these liberal, Godless ideas is how society defines reality. The new definition flows from a postmodern philosophy that refuses to acknowledge any absolutes – nothing right, nothing wrong, nothing moral, nothing immoral. Truth does not exist, and there are no absolutes that transcend time or situation. Everything is subject to individual interpretation.

For the U.S. Supreme Court to descend into the abyss of moral relativism is disastrous. The Constitution has been the shield and defender of essential liberties for well over 200 years, based on “The Law of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Now, according to Justice Kennedy and five of his colleagues, its meaning has become no more predictable than the shifting sand of personal opinion. After the 1962 and 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed prayer and the Bible in American schools, cheating, stealing, rape, murder, and assault have increased dramatically throughout the culture. The rejection of a fixed moral standard as the basis for law means there is no longer a benchmark by which a society judges good and bad behavior. After the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to outlaw the posting of the Ten Commandments in our nation’s public schools, the increase in deviant behavior rose higher still, and the threat dramatically continues to this day.

Absent a fixed moral standard as the basis for law, “might makes right.” Thus, the groundwork is laid for one of two (and possibly both) disastrous ends. Anarchy is one. And that would most likely lead to the second, which is for our nation to be subjected to the feelings, opinions, agenda, and worldview of a small group of immoral, elitist judges who rule from behind the bench or a dictator that rules from behind a gun. The loss of a fixed moral standard means Lady Justice is no longer blind, and those who have money and influence have a greater chance at getting what they want – to the detriment and harm of the middle-class and the poor. Lacking moral law, man will not be restrained from within, so he must be restrained from without. More intrusive and a larger government presence in our lives will be required. Finally, the loss of a fixed moral standard means injustice will naturally follow, resulting in the unjust suffering and death of many. America is the longest standing constitutional republic in the history of the world. Unless we return to the proper, limited, and fundamental purpose of the law, though, our freedoms will not be secure much longer.

Our nation has embraced what Alexis de Tocqueville called “soft despotism,” which gives people the illusion that they have control over their government when in reality they have very little.

Soft despotism occurs because the people have forgotten – or never were educated – about the true purpose and intent of the law. When a people have become sufficiently ignorant and selfish, they vote for politicians who promise to offer them the government trough. Politicians gladly plunder some for the benefit of their special interest groups and voting blocs, all while taking advantage of constituents’ ignorance and selfishness in order to garner still more power and control by making people more and more dependent upon them and the government. Soft despotism is furthered through an incestuous and mutually beneficial relationship between judges and politicians to the detriment of freedom-loving people, their liberty and property. The welfare state in America has gone a long way toward encouraging people to vote themselves a raise by voting for politicians who promise the most government handouts.

Though never an economist by trade, Langdell and his legal despotism have reached deep into the pockets of most Americans. And we’re all worse off for it.

Sources:

John Eidsmore, “Christianity and the Constitution,” (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1987)

David Barton, Original Intent, (Alero, TX.: Wallbuilders, 1996)

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “The Law in Science-Science in Law,” (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1920)

Steven Brown, “Fears Grow over Academic Efforts to Normalize Pedophilia” (www.CNSnews.com, July 10, 2003)

John Dewey, “The Public and its Problems”, (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1927)

Thomas Jefferson, “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson” (The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association 1904)

John W. Whitehead, “The Second American Revolution”, (Wheaton, IL: Good News Publishers, 1985)

Brannon Howse, Grave Influence (Worldview Publishing, 2009)

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