Friday, April 15, 2005

 

Principles of Conservatism: Natural Law

The Higher Authority


Natural law is defined as that set of certainties ( moral absolutes) without which we could not agree about right from wrong ( Brad Miner, on natural law).

There are volumes written on the subject of natural law and its many sects and variants. I do not intend to recast them here, but rather to point out that classical natural law or moral absolutes was thought by our founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, to be embodied in the Ten Commandments and the rules of God as written in the Christian Bible.

Derived from this interpretation of natural law are the natural and inalienable rights of people, which include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Subsidiary to liberty or freedom, as they believed these to be synonymous, is the natural right to personal property, which in itself is a fundamental requirement for a people to be truly free. The natural law and the natural rights that stem from that law form the basis for the Constitution of the United States of America.


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