The Crown: Too Heavy for Human Heads
All of this stems from a misunderstanding of the Rule of Law. These days the majority of people believe that the Rule of Law means everyone must obey whatever the civil law is. Therefore, if the law says we can kill babies, that must be OK. If the law says two men can marry, that must be OK. If the law says we cannot sell body parts, that must be bad, and we must get really upset. This point of view conveniently ignores the source of law in the first place, which is really at the heart of the Rule of Law. Let us back up and take a look at the actual meaning of the Rule of Law.
The well-known Latin phrase is lex rex, which is translated law is king. Today we refer to the Rule of Law. To fully understand this concept which has been the foundation of western civil law for centuries, we must consider three points. First, what is meant by king or rule? Second, what is the appropriate way to establish law? And third, what is an appropriate law? We will answer each of these questions and see how our U.S. government is violating every point when it comes to issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Finally, we will look at what must be done to uphold the true Rule of Law.
First, what is meant by rule? This means that citizens are not owned or controlled by other people. If you are controlled by others, that makes you a slave. Therefore, we do not have a who at the top, we have a what. We are not ruled by a person or people, but by the law itself. The law is king. In theory, every person is subject to the law equally, including our kings, presidents, judges, and legislators.
Second, if the law is king, then what is the appropriate way to establish law? If we want to avoid being enslaved by presidents or judges or the majority, then we need an orderly way to establish law which keeps that power out of the hands of individuals, small groups, or even the people at large. The answer is a Representative Republic, as defined by The U.S. Constitution. The Constitution spells out how law is to be established. In our system neither the President nor the Supreme Court makes law; only the Congress does, and those laws must directly pertain to the seventeen powers granted to the federal government by the states. The President's job is to execute the laws of the Congress, and the federal courts are to settle disputes arising from those laws. So, the appropriate way to establish law in our union is through our elected representatives in Congress.
Third, what is an appropriate law? To begin, it must have been enacted through the correct process as noted above. More importantly, however, a law must have a legitimate basis other than the will of the majority, whim of a president, or agenda of a judge. There must be an external standard to protect the people from tyranny and slavery. The Founders believed that civil law should be based on what they called natural law, as it was defined by Blackstone, who acknowledged that man is a creature and subject to his maker's will. "This will of his Maker is called the law of nature…" Blackstone said. He goes on to say, "No human laws should be suffered to contradict these." James Wilson, a signer of the Constitution and original member of the Supreme Court said, "It should always be remembered that this law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God… Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine." Alexander Hamilton, also a signer of the Constitution and author of the Federalist Papers, said that the law "dictated by God Himself is, of course, superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this." It is evident that our Founders believed civil law should be based on God's natural law, not on the desires of the majority or the politically correct fancies of presidents and judges.
These days, however, we labor under the misconception that civil law can be codified by a small band of unelected lawyers at the Supreme Court. In Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court broke the Rule of Law on all three points. The judges set themselves up as king, they established new law in an illegal manner, and they violated natural law. There is no law concerning abortion or marriage at the federal level because those issues were not delegated to the national government. They are state issues pursuant to the Tenth Amendment. The Supreme Court has no jurisdiction in these areas and should not have heard these cases, but it did so anyway in order to further a political agenda which is contrary to state constitutions, contrary to the U.S. Constitution, and contrary to natural law.
To those readers who think that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what is constitutional, consider this. What if the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to rape? What would we do if that opinion stuck and became the basis for public policy, if it became the "law of the land?" Would we allow rape clinics to open in our neighborhoods where men could safely and legally take innocent little girls who don't know any better until it is too late, until they come out of the clinic abused and scarred for life?
So what should be done? The first thing to do is to stop, turn around, and go another direction. Just because the states and the people have cowered before federal courts, idolized their false opinions, and turned their twisted opinions into actual policy, does not mean it was incumbent upon the states and the people to do so in the first place. We must immediately repent of bowing to the Supreme Court. These judicial sins exemplify one of the reasons why the Founders separated the executive branch from the judicial branch and why they left the majority of sovereignty with the several states -- so that court judges could not become kings. The Supreme Court may order a state to recognize gay marriage, but the court has no officers to enforce the order. Enforcement requires a member of the local executive branch, such as Kim Davis, to put the court's opinion into practice. The same is true of other unconstitutional and immoral federal mandates. For example, no branch of the federal government has the constitutional or moral right to tell Oklahomans how to burn coal, how to educate children, or that they must kill babies. We simply should not enforce these illegal policies in Oklahoma, and we should actively prevent any federal official from enforcing them in our state. Separation of powers and state sovereignty are the mechanisms by which we can restore the Rule of Law.
If states exercised their sovereignty, we could see more than one good solution to the gay marriage problem. One solution would be for the governors of the several states to announce to the world that they believe in the Rule of Law and will therefore enforce their state constitutions against a rogue federal judiciary. They would instruct their court clerks to uphold the Rule of Law -- that is, the clerks must enforce the laws of their states and of nature's God, while refusing to enforce illegal and immoral court orders from the federal government. The state legislatures would pass measures to punish those clerks who violate their state constitutions and to protect and defend their clerks from the federal government. This same approach could be used against all manner of federal usurpation of power. Another solution to the gay marriage problem would be for the state to remove itself from the marriage business altogether.
To date no state governor or legislature has stood up to lead in either of these ways. That must change, and it should begin with Oklahoma. We call on Governor Fallin and our Legislature to take a stand for states' rights and the Rule of Law.
In all of this, we must remember our birthright. Our government was created by the people as their servant, and it is accountable to the people. If the government does not follow its charter to administer justice on their behalf, then the people have the right to change it or to start over, as was explained to the world in the Declaration of Independence. I personally do not want to start over. To avoid that route, let us educate and encourage our executives and legislators to exercise their authority to nullify the illegal and immoral edicts of the Supreme Court and federal government.
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