The author traces Rushdoony's reasoning that law is given by God as described in an inerrant Bible, and then says that the countervailing idea (critically important to American democracy) is social contract theory.

From my reading of history, American democracy was founded on the theory of natural law and natural rights.  We all know the words, "...created equal.... endowed by (the) creator with certain inalienable rights..."   In the spirit of Deism, the identity of the creator is not spelled out further.  We might reasonably expect that if we were to ask the Founders, they would have said, "God, nature, or some combination thereof," and if asked further, might have said something about individual conscience in such matters.

Although we can make those inferences about the Founders' meaning of "creator," we do not have certainty in that regard, and neither do Rushdoony et. al. for their own assertions.  Whatever deeper resonance or origins those words may have had with the words of scripture or of the philosophers of the European enlightenment or other sources, the words of our Founders stand on their own two feet.  Those words were the original statements of a political philosophy that, at the time, had never before been put into practice.  

We do not have to go back any further than the statement of the Founders: Theirs were the words that gave birth to our republic, as axioms in themselves that established the trail of tradition that leads up to our present point.  

The concept of inherent, inalienable, or intrinsic characteristics (rights and by implication responsibilities) is subtly but significantly different from the concept of social contract.  A social contract is after all a contract, a negotiated exchange of value: something is given in exchange for something else.  Nothing is inherent, nothing is inalienable, no characteristics are intrinsic, all are measured by comparisons rather than in and of themselves.  

From this one can derive democracy: with free people gaining rights in exchange for responsibilties, and gaining certain liberties in exchange for other limits.  Most of the systems of European democracy derive from social contract theory, and today we can see that they have stood the test of time well.  

The outcomes of rights and responsibilities, liberties and limits, are to some extent comparable between the "natural law" and the "social contract" theories.  Yet under social contract, nothing is inviolable, and thus, everything is potentially "in play" or at risk.  Nothing is presupposed; there are no "hard limits" to protect the rights of minorities or individuals in the event a majority decides it best to alter the "terms" of the contract.  

What has in fact happened over time, is that each system, American and European, has partaken of the theoretical basis of the other.  European national constitutions incorporate statements of inherent nature and inherent rights, and the American tradition of minimal government interference in market relationships places much of each citizen's life into the domain governed by negotiated agreements.  

Taken together, the common ground is that a democratic society, a republic or a parliamentary system, is, as quoted in the previous article in a different context (Wyclif), "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."   Our rights and responsibilities may be given by our Creator; but our government, and therefore the system of laws that is produced by the legislative branch of government, is not given by our Creator but is given by ourselves acting as "we, the people."  Any claim of a basis for theocracy is thereby refuted.  

by gg on Thu Jun 01, 2006 at 05:03:47 AM EST