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The American Spirit
Counsel,
At its essence, America is a spirit, born here in 1776. America's founding
fathers must have been considered religious radicals and extremists. How dare
they declare a revolution based on something as spiritual as the laws of nature
and nature's God?
Like the founders of our nation, members of the National Lawyers Association
need to be prepared to pledge our lives, our fortunes and sacred honor to uphold
the laws of nature and nature's God.
To lawyers reading this, will you join us?
The king and the parliament, thought it was all legal, among other things, to
refuse to punish murders of colonists by British soldiers, to deny colonists the
right to trial by jury, to force colonists to become executioners of fellow
colonists, and to send mercenaries "to complete the works of death, desolation
and tyranny." By what authority did the colonists challenge the Crown? They
asserted a spiritual authority: the laws of nature and nature's God.
America is revolutionary in spirit. Most of us still believe that these
truths are self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed
by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that the purpose of government is to
secure these unalienable rights.
In 1776, the United States of America was given its name, its purpose, its
principles and its spirit. In 1789, the Constitution merely laid out the form of
government that would secure those earlier-declared unalienable rights. In 1791,
the Bill of Rights was ratified in the first ten amendments.
To most Americans, it is inconceivable that the laws of nature and nature's
God now somehow violate the very Constitution to which they gave birth. Today,
Supreme Court and lower court decisions separate the spirit of the law from the
letter of the law.
Yet, it is the American spirit in our Declaration of Independence that
inspires the world, even when we fail to live up to it. The world longs to
embrace our philosophy of government. When Pope Benedict XVI met with President
Bush in April 2008 in Washington D.C, the Pope called us to honor America's
religious roots, not because we were ever a Catholic nation. The Pope called us
to these roots because our philosophy of government is consistent with
Catholicism, traditional Protestantism and Judaism. Our philosophy of government
springs from the transcendent laws of nature's God, including specifically, an
unalienable right to life.
Our Declaration proclaims self-evident truths which are not unique to any
single religion, but which are consistent with many. The laws of nature and
nature's God do not establish a religion, but they form our philosophy of
government, a philosophy which judges and public officials swear to uphold,
irrespective of their own religion, or their religious or anti-religious
beliefs.
On NLA's homepage is a link taking you to a column written by Bernard Reese,
a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. His column is titled "U.S.
Should Use Philosophy of Government in Declaration."
Please read it, share it with other lawyers and judges. Then sign up as a
member of NLA.
The annual NLA conference, July 18-19 in Colorado Springs, is quickly
approaching. Please come. I promise that you will be richly informed and blessed
by meeting other NLA attorneys and listening to the terrific presentations of
this years' speakers.
Until I see you at the conference, I am
Sincerely yours,
Rebecca Messall NLA President, 2007-2008 |
