LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
HELMS SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT
Reflection Essay Assignment
Submitted to Dr. Troy Gibson,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements and the completion of
PLCY 702 - B02
Founding Era and the Constitution
by
Tracy Nix
October 7, 2021
Introduction: The Cause
In the beginning, God created man and made him in His likeness and in His image. (Genesis 1:1, 27) God gave mankind a conscience and allowed him to be guided by it even before God installed the dispensation of government. In fact, God held Cain responsible for murder even before it was codified in any law because God knew Cain’s intricacies of thought and heart and because God is the one who designed Cain to have a conscience and to rule by his Creator’s order. (Genesis 4:13) There is a consensus amongst dispensational Biblical scholars that God ruled differently during various times in history and will rule man differently in the future by a set of administrative values. “Since its introduction into the United States by John Nelson Darby in the mid-nineteenth century, dispensationalism has gained adherents among the most conservative Protestants, those on the right wing of evangelicalism who came to be called Fundamentalists and Pentecostals. Dispensationalism is a refined system of biblical interpretation that divides sacred history into several (usually seven) dispensations, eras during which God relates to his covenant people in distinct ways.” (Baer 2007, p.249) God still has a use for the conscience, and it is formed into his ruling plans. Dr. Mike Lester, in his recent book entitled ‘Dispensationalism,' illustrates that God rules the earth and mankind differently at various points in history as a loving Father would train his children in various developmental stages during their formative years. (Dr. Lester 2020, p.73)To whom much is given, much shall be required. (Luke 12:48) One such example of a clear dispensational transitional teaching is found in John 1:17: For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. (James 1905) God is always fair. God did not install capital punishment as the punishment for Cain killing Able because human government had not yet been given, but once it was installed, God instructed Noah to shed man's blood that sheds blood. (Gen 9:6) Freedom of conscience is a gift from God, and it is precisely one aspect that makes man in the image of God and like him. God rules with freedom of choice in the conscience and does not coercively violate that aspect of mankind. God gives government to protect this conscience and expects it to rule as His “minister” (Greek word-diakonos) or one who executes the commands of another. (Romans 13:4) For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
The founders of the United States of America believed that the freedom of conscience was the law of nature and of nature’s God and was worth fighting for with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. (Jefferson 1907) Protecting the right to conscience was the prerogative of the framers and amenders of the constitution of the United States of America. “As John Quincy Adams noted, Jesus Christ “came to teach and not to compel. His law was a Law of Liberty. He left the human mind and human action free.” (Barton 2016) The founders left their successors a document called the constitution that was ratified by the states and amended to include a bill of rights that protects the freedom of conscience from future encroachment by the federal governments. Freedom of conscience is projected to all future generations in the First Amendment and is enshrined in this binding governmental glue by the “permanent will of the people.” (McClellan 2000, p.463)
The original intent method of interpreting the constitution remains the most objective method for interpreting and updating modern public policy to ensure the perpetuity of the “conscience clause or First Amendment” by means of the permanent will of the people.
The Constitution
The original intent method of interpreting the constitution was the chosen method of interpretation of the first Supreme Court and one that Thomas Jefferson argued for stating, “the original intent of the Framers ought to govern.” (McClellan 2000, 1–656) Although the Framers themselves left no specific interpretive method as governed to the Supreme Court in the actual constitution, William Blackstone’s “law playbook of their day” ‘Commentary on the Laws of England’ might have been the assumed source for a consensus of intention, since Blackstone was the second most quoted reference in the founding documents. Blackstone wrote, “the first and fundamental rule of interpretation of all instruments is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and intentions of the parties, the fairest and most rational method to interpret the will of the legislator is by exploring his intentions at the time when the law was made, by signs most natural and probable, and these signs are either the words, the context, the subject matter, the effects and consequences, or the spirit and reason of the law.” (McClellan 2000, p.466) Words have meanings and meanings could never mean what they never meant. “When the Old Testament is interpreted through the lens of the New Testament (rather than its own historical context), it’s possible to change the original meaning of the text. Again, it cannot mean what it never meant.” (Dr. Lester 2020, p.44). In a conversation between late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Byer, Justice Scalia can summarize in his remarks "the fight between a living constitutionalist approach and an original intent approach is that the living constitutionalist approach is subjective and could take the same policy, which was relevant and current at the time of the constitution and give it a different meaning based on the current bias of the day and whim of the judge: this isn’t the job of a judge but the legislator.” (Pen 2008) The First Amendment was given to protect freedom of conscience as the Framer’s intended it and is still applicable to the freedom of conscience in today’s policy concerns.
The First Amendment was given as a restriction on the government from interfering and imposing upon the free conscience of the people. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America was written for a purpose as described in the preamble as securing the blessings of liberty, and the Amendment itself explicitly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (Congress 1791) This same Congress that had just adopted the Bill of Rights as suggested by President George Washington, had just fought a recent Revolution over the general concept of freedom of conscience. Taxation without representation, freedom to worship without a state-church dictating what an individual should believe or how he should worship, and imposed slavery (to which the body of Congress had just 20 year-time stamped its irradiation) were all (then) recent issues that the Congress, who adopted the bill of rights, had just fought with the Mother Country to free themselves of. James Madison wrote in a pamphlet war, trying to convince States to ratify the constitution, in Federalist 84, a persuasive styled essay arguing against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights because he feared that once these rights were enshrined, then they might be limited to the number ascribed in the constitution and not in natural law. (Madison 1788) In order to strike a ratification deal with the States, Madison and his Federalist colleagues agreed to at least get the main “Bill of Rights” list legalized for interpretation. As stated, the signers of the Declaration believed that they were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that did not begin with Government nor end with government protection, but it was the duty of the government to protect these rights, and hence they must be defined. A then, newly formed government thought it amongst their first duties to protect rights and in the first list, though not accumulative, was the "conscience clause."
The Concern
The First Amendment of the Constitution was vague enough to leave the interpretation of rights to today's public policies without the Congress seeing the need to amend and update the constitution to fit today's unique challenges. One public policy concern is a recent overstep by President Joe Biden in mandating vaccinations upon the citizens of the United States with or without consent of conscience. “President Joe Biden recently demanded through the executive extension and implementation by OSHA, that all companies in the U.S.A. who employ over one hundred people should mandate the recent and experimental COVID 19 vaccination upon all its employees or bear the weight of the undue burden of getting a perpetual COVID test.” (House 2021) The freedom of conscience doctrine that the founders intended is not honored in this Executive Mandate. The First Amendment, as prescribed in the constitution and interpreted by the Supreme Court, is in opposition to this mandate on a forced experimental COVID vaccination.
Was there ever a time that the founders dealt with this conscience level issue and denied freedom of conscience: No, not as described in a vaccination mandate? One conscience issue that Washington wrestled with, during the time when the Articles of Confederation were the governing document, was the intentional harm's way that he may put his soldiers in.
“In the draft GW’s aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman wrote this paragraph after crossing out one that reads: “The small Pox is making such Head in every quarter that I am fearful it will infect all the Troops that have not had it. I am divided in my opinion as to the expediency of inoculation, the Surgeons are for it, but if I could by any means put a stop to it, I would rather do it. However, I hope I shall stand acquitted if I submit the Matter to the Judgment and determination of the medical Gentlemen.” The Continental troops in the Morristown area underwent inoculation throughout February and into early March 1777, and on 8” (Washington 1777)
The primary reason why the inoculation is not the same is that it was not a vaccination manufactured in a lab. The time when George Washington was experimenting in his mind about exposing soldiers to smallpox for the sake of inoculation was before there was a bill of rights or a constitution. Soldiers signed up to be exposed to the elements and vowed their lives to the government, and that meant being exposed to the elements in harm's way. Inoculation was not a government-imposed vaccination on a free people. A soldier is a soldier by choice, will, and conscience.
A vaccine mandate is in direct contradiction to the wording of the First Amendment, which restricted Congress or (The National Government) to impose upon the conscience of the people. Many people today are wrestling with a conscience level issue in the COVID vaccination because all vaccines available to date either have aborted fetus cells in them directly or were derived under the experimentation using aborted fetus cells. To put it plainly, a baby must die so that Americans can live. It really makes no difference to people of faith whether the baby was murdered forty years ago or yesterday: taking a vaccination of this kind or any other similar, may or may not make them complicit in the genocide of a generation but certainly makes it a conscience issue that everyone should have the right to decide without the threat of being squeezed out of their livelihood with no ability to make income and provide for their own family. (Bowyer 2021, p.1) It is certainly not the place of the Federal government to infringe upon the conscience of any generation as prescribed in the constitution. “The U.S. Constitution, as understood by the men who wrote it - the Framers - authorized only a limited form of federal government: limited in what it is allowed to do. That power, in turn, can only legitimately come from the People, who created the Federal Government. The said government is merely their creature. The objects on which it may legislate and spend money are strictly limited by its text, most notably Article I of the Constitution.” (Mazurak 2014, 183–202)
The Continuity
The while public safety is one concern of the government, the perpetuity to govern with consent and permanent will of the people is their duty-bound constitutional enshrined responsibility. In a Constitutional Republic, the government restricts evil through laws, and the people restrain the government through a constitution.
The Constitution was a continuation of the Declaration of Independence that has never been annulled and speaks to the original intent of the writers of the Supreme law of the land.
While the Court’s change of standards has perhaps been a display of poor judgment, the Court’s actions have been illegal under the standards of original intent. Furthermore, they have violated the value system of "the laws of nature and of nature's God" established in the Declaration of Independence. Even though contemporary courts now regularly violate that legal standard, few today consider such violations significant, for they believe the Constitution to be independent of the Declaration. This incorrect belief is of recent origin; in fact, it was rejected by earlier generations. As Samuel Adams pointed out: Before the formation of this Constitution…. this Declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union and has never been disannulled. (Barton 2009)
The belief that mankind has natural rights given by God is the intention and the text of the founders. In plain English, for all future generations to interpret current policy thereby, the founders dared to set out and state just some of those rights in the amendments to the constitution. There were many other rights as described in the State’s constitutions that did not make their way into the main mothering document. One can conclude that the main rights that were vital and agreeable to the consensus of all parties that were present in the first Congress are in the constitution.
One key that the Framers left in their map to govern the future United States thereby was the ability of Congress to change the constitution to the will of the people. The best power ascribed in the constitution of the United States government is that it gives power to the people and that any people can find and follow the will of God in their government for their generation.
God ordained the government to be His minister. The Executive Branch of the United States is not representing God accurately through his ministers as he descriptively gave instruction of conscience in the Bible. It is time that we, the people, redress these grievances through state representation and in representatives in Congress to change the constitution to more accurately reflect the will of God and the people and in order to be able to hold overreaching governmental powers accountable for the tyrannical and purposeful opposition to the very constitution that they swore an oath to protect. The original intent method of interpreting the constitution remains the most objective method for interpreting and updating modern public policy to ensure the perpetuity of the "conscience clause or First Amendment" by means of the permanent will of the people: However, “We the People” must have a will to do our duty.
References
Baer, Jonathan R. 2007. “American Dispensationalism’s Perpetually Imminent End Times*.” Edited by Glenn W. Shuck, Amy Johnson Frykholm, Barbara R. Rossing, and Timothy P. Weber, The Journal of Religion 87, 87, no. 2: 248–64. https://doi.org/10.1086/510650.
Barton, David. 2009. Original Intent<br>. Aledo TX.
———. 2016. “Biblical Christianity: The Origin of the Rights of Conscience.” Wallbuilders. 2016. https://wallbuilders.com/biblical-christianity-origin-rights-conscience/.
Bowyer, Jerry. 2021. “Aborted Baby Vaccine? A Truth Check,” The Christian Post, , 1. https://www.christianpost.com/news/aborted-baby-vaccine-a-truth-check.html.
Congress. 1791. Bill of Rights<br>. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript.
Dr. Lester, Mike. 2020. Dispensationalism: Understanding the Basics<br>. Lancaster, CA: Michael J. Lester Self Publish.
House, White. 2021. “The Path out of the Pandemic<br>.” WH.GOV. 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/covidplan/.
James, King. 1905. Bible<br>. No Copyright.
Jefferson, Thomas. 1907. “The Declaration of Independence in Congress July 4. .” The Library of Congress. 1907. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07029104/.
Madison, James. 1788. “Federalist 84<br>.” Teaching American History. 1788. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/federalist-no-84/.
Mazurak, Zbigniew. 2014. “THE CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITS ON THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ACCORDING TO THE CONSTITUTION’S FRAMERS,” Politeja, , no. 32: 183–202. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.12797/Politeja.11.2014.32.11.
McClellan, James. 2000. Liberty, Order and Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Pen, Liberty. 2008. “Activist vs. Orientalist Part I<br>.” You Tube. 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXeUfVhDVUM.
Washington, George. 1777. “From George Washington to John Hancock, 5 February 1777.” Founders Online. 1777. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-08-02-0268#GEWN-03-08-02-0268-fn-0012.
stylefix
Comments