December 15, 2004

The rights of Englishmen are derived from God, not from king or Parliament...

Thomas L. Krannawitter has written a piece that's right on target: Justice Thomas' Line to the Deepest Bedrock

...Savvy liberals like Reid are right to be more concerned with Thomas than Scalia because Thomas' natural-law jurisprudence represents the greatest threat to the liberal desire to replace limited, constitutional government with a regulatory-welfare state of unlimited powers.

Thomas is one of the few jurists today, conservative or otherwise, who understands and defends the principle that our rights come not from government but from a "creator" and "the laws of nature and of nature's God," as our Declaration of Independence says, and that the purpose and power of government should therefore be limited to protecting our natural, God-given rights.

The left understands that if it is to succeed, these principles of constitutional government must be jettisoned, or at least redefined. Thomas' frequent recourse not only to the text of the Constitution but specifically to the founders' natural-law defense of constitutional government is fatal to liberalism's goal...

It's only natural that leftizoids should hate both George W Bush and Clarence Thomas. They are saying the same thing. To quote the President: Freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to every man and women in this world--

...From the liberal view, liberty cannot be a natural right, protected by a government of limited powers, because there are no natural rights. As liberal political scientist Charles Merriam explained in 1920, the "natural law and natural rights" of the founders had been discarded by intellectuals "with practical unanimity." Instead, "the state … is the creator of liberty."

Bigger government means more liberty, not less. "It is denied," Merriam concluded, "that any limit can be set to governmental activity," and therefore the Constitution's original intent, which limited government power, "no longer seems sufficient."...(Thanks to
Judd blog)

"No limit can be set to governmental activity." That's the plan. That's the program. For those who believe in "legal realism," there's no logical reason why not. Which is precisely what the Founding Fathers were trying to prevent.

Posted by John Weidner at December 15, 2004 8:04 PM
Weblog by John Weidner