Independence can mean different things to different people. All too many identify independence erroneously with freedom to do whatever one wishes. The buzzword in our day is “rights.” But, rights are not based merely on one’s wishes. Someone or something has to give us those rights. They are not there simply because we want them to be.
For our Founding Fathers, declaring independence was not simply something that they desired. It had a foundation. They felt entitled by natural law and by “nature’s God,” as they put it in the Declaration of Independence. The unalienable rights, which they enumerated and belong to every human being, they saw as an endowment by no one less than the Creator. I do not think that Thomas Jefferson, or any of the other signers of the Declaration, envisioned that the Supreme Court would ever think to redefine the dictates of natural law or of nature’s God. And, yet, in the name of individual freedom, it has.
Two very prominent examples of this are those having to do with every individual’s right to life and the right to practice one’s religion. The first is denied to so many who are killed before they are even born. As was the case with slavery, it is a matter of recognizing human life as something sacred. The second is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the Constitution. While it says that no law is to establish religion, it also says that no law is to prohibit the free exercise thereof. Yet, such expression is forbidden at graduations in public high schools, even though both Houses of Congress begin their sessions with prayer. (Go figure!)
