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A Call To Stand
John
Eidsmoe
Lt. Colonel, USAFR (Ret.)
Colonel, Alabama State Defense Force
Professor, Thomas Goode Jones
School of Law
2648 Pine Acres, Pike Road,
AL 36064
(334) 270-1789 fax (334)
386-7223 EidsmoeJA@juno.com
A CALL TO STAND WITH CHIEF
JUSTICE MOORE
The storm of moral crisis
has descended upon Alabama. Among the most vital issues
facing American jurisprudence are (1) whether our legal
system may acknowledge the Higher Law of God as the
source and measure of our laws; (2) whether the
establishment clause of the First Amendment prohibits
the State of Alabama from acknowledging God and His law
as the moral foundation of law; (3) whether the State of
Alabama (and the 49 other states) are distinctive and
viable entities in the American constitutional system or
whether they are merely closely supervised subdivisions
of a national government; and (4) whether it is ever
appropriate to disobey the order of a federal judge.
All of these issues come
together in the Alabama Ten Commandments case, often
cited as Glassroth v. Moore.
The symbolic portrayal
could not be more graphic. In the rotunda of the Alabama
Judicial Building in Montgomery stands a 5,280 lb
granite monument depicting the Ten Commandments, with
various quotations from America's founding fathers on
the monument's four sides. Just a few blocks away, in
front of the Federal Court House, stands a sculpture of
Themis, the Greek goddess of law and justice. The Ten
Commandments monument was financed entirely with private
donations; Themis was paid for by federal funds. And
yet, Themis is guarded by federal officers, while U.S.
District Court Myron Thompson has ruled that the Ten
Commandments monument must be removed from the Judicial
Building rotunda.
Recently I have noticed a
shift in the debate. A few weeks ago the debate centered
between those who say Judge Thompson is right and those
who say Judge Thompson is wrong. Today, the debate seems
to be between those who say Judge Thompson is wrong but
his order must be obeyed, and those who say Judge
Thompson is wrong and we must resist his order.
I have written at great
length to articulate my belief that the Ten Commandments
may properly be displayed in court houses and other
public buildings; the most complete exposition of my
position may be found in my article "The Alabama Ten
Commandments Case: Is the Pendulum of Establishment
Clause Jurisprudence Swinging Back to
Nonpreferentialism?" Jones Law Review II:1
December 1998 pp. 39-97.
Today I am writing to
declare my belief that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore
is justified in disobeying Federal Judge Myron
Thompson's order to remove the Ten Commandments
monument, and that public officials, pastors, and other
citizens of Alabama and across the nation should come to
Chief Justice Moore's defense.
I do not treat
disobedience lightly. As a former prosecutor, a retired
Air Force Lt. Colonel and Judge Advocate, and a Colonel
and Chaplain in the Alabama State Defense Force, I
strongly believe in the rule of law. The rule of law
means we submit to lawful authority. But just as
strongly, the rule of law means we resist unlawful
authority. For the rule of law restrains both the people
and their rulers. Where law does not restrain the
people, the result is anarchy. Where law does not
restrain the rulers, there is tyranny. Those who believe
in the rule of law must be equally opposed to both.
It is often said that a
public official, especially a State Supreme Court Chief
Justice, has a higher duty than others to obey the
orders of a federal court, that civil disobedience may
be an option for a private citizen but not for Chief
Justice Moore. The exact opposite is true. State
officials have a heightened duty to resist unlawful
federal authority, and when they do so it is called
interposition.
Black's Law Dictionary,
Fourth Edition
offers the following definition:
" Interposition.
The doctrine that a state, in the exercise of its
sovereignty, may reject a mandate of the federal
government deemed to be unconstitutional or to exceed
the powers delegated to the federal government.
The concept is based on
the 10th Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States reserving to the states powers not delegated to
the United States. Historically, the doctrine emanated
from Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dallas 419, wherein
the state of Georgia, when sued in the Supreme Court by
a private citizen of another state, entered a
remonstrance and declined to recognize the court's
jurisdiction. Amendment 11 validated Georgia's position.
Implementation of the
doctrine may be peaceable, as by resolution,
remonstrance or legislation, or may proceed ultimately
to nullification with forcible resistance.
The Constitution does
contemplate and provide for the contingency of adverse
state interposition or legislation to annul or defeat
the execution of national laws." In Re Charge to
Grand Jury, Fed. Case No. 18,274 [2 Spr. 292].
Far from a radical
doctrine, interposition is actually a middle ground
position. Absolute submission to unlawful authority
leads to and sanctions tyranny and oppression. Popular
rebellion can lead to chaos and bloodshed. Interposition
-- lesser magistrates, state and local authorities,
placing themselves between their people and the higher
magistrates or federal authorities -- is a moderate
course that is less likely to result in either extreme.
Interposition has a long
tradition in Western law and has led to some of the
greatest advances in constitutional liberty. Medieval
theologians and philosophers who addressed and endorsed
interposition include John of Salisbury (1030-85 AD),
James of Viterbo (circa 1300 AD), and Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274 AD). Aquinas believed that
"...the duty of obedience
is, for the Christian, a consequence of this derivation
of authority from God, and ceases when that ceases. But,
as we have already said, authority may fail to derive
from God for two reasons: either because of the way in
which authority has been obtained, or in consequence of
the use which is made of it." (Book 2, Commentary on
the Sentences of Peter Lombard)
When a ruler becomes a
tyrant, his authority no longer comes from God and he
becomes an illegitimate ruler. While it may be better to
bear with moderate degrees of tyranny, Christians must
stand against the ruler when his tyranny becomes
excessive. But popular rebellion may have disastrous
consequences: the ruler may suppress the rebellion and
become more tyrannical than before, or those who
overthrow him, fearing that others may do the same,
become just as tyrannical as their predecessors. So what
is the solution? Aquinas says,
"...it seems that to
proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to
be undertaken, not through the private presumption of a
few, but rather by public authority." (Book 1, On
Kingship)
While continental
theologians wrote about interposition, English
theologians and nobles put interposition into practice.
Since 890 AD England had been governed under the legal
code of Alfred the Great, which began with a recitation
of the Ten Commandments. But after the Norman Conquest
of 1066 AD, Anglo-Saxons and Celts felt themselves
oppressed under the more centralized Norman rule.
Finally in the 1200s, chafing under the autocratic
measures of King John, English leaders decided it was
time to act.
On August 25, 1213, a
group of barons and bishops met at St. Paul's Cathedral
in London. Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury
(also known for having divided the Bible into chapters),
read to them the old Charter of King Henry, expounded to
them the doctrine of interposition, and administered to
them an oath that they would conquer or die in defense
of their liberties and those of their subjects.
Two years later, the
barons and bishops commissioned Robert Fitz Walter as
Marshall of the Army of God and Holy Church. On June 15,
1215, they met King John at Runneymeade and compelled
him to either sign the Magna Charta or abdicate the
throne. John signed, and the 63 articles of the Magna
Charta constitute a founding document of English
liberty. Its main significance, however, is not the
rights it contains, which are simply the reassertion of
the ancient rights of Englishmen against the
encroachments of a Norman king, but rather the fact that
the king was forced to sign against his will on threat
of being overthrown.
This was a constitutional
crisis of the first order. It was handled by
interposition -- and we have been blessed with the
results for nearly eight hundred years.
A century later the Scots
practiced interposition against English rule under King
Alexander, Malcolm Wallace, William Wallace, Robert the
Bruce, and others. In April 1320 Robert the Bruce
gathered the Parliament of Scotland at Arbroath Abbey,
where they drafted and adopted the Declaration of
Arbroath, in which they set forth their history as a
free people until the usurpation of King Edward of
England, and vowed that
"...for, as long as but a
hundred of us remain alive, never will we under any
conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth
not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are
fighting, but for freedom -- for that alone, which no
honest man gives up but with life itself."
(Scottish history and
thought have greatly influenced America, especially
Alabama where our state flag bears the St. Andrew's
Cross. When the Scots again fought for independence in
the 1740s under Bonnie Prince Charles and were brutally
suppressed, thousands of them fled to America. A century
later, the next generation of Scottish-Americans became
leaders in the American War for Independence. The
Mecklenburg Declaration, drafted in 1775 by a group of
Scottish Presbyterian elders in North Carolina, bears
striking parallels to the Declaration of Independence.)
Reformation leaders
followed and further developed the Catholic teaching on
interposition. John Calvin declared that private
individuals normally should not undertake the curbing of
tyrants but should follow "popular magistrates" in doing
so:
"For when popular
magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of
kings (as the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among
the Spartans, or Tribunes of the people to consuls among
the Romans, or Demarchs to the senate among the
Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to
this in the power exercised in each kingdom by the three
orders, when they hold their primary diets), so far am I
from forbidding these officially to check the undue
license of kings, that if they connive at kings when
they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the
people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free
from nefarious perfidy; because they fraudulently betray
the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the
ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians."
(Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4,
Chapter 20, 1559 AD)
Other Reformation leaders
who articulated the doctrine of interposition were John
Knox, father of the Presbyterian Church (1505-72 AD),
the French Huguenot author of Vindicae Contra
Tyrannos (1579 AD) who used the surname Junius
Brutus, and Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford in
Lex Rex (1644 AD). Among Catholic and Protestant
theologians alike, I am just barely skimming the surface
because of time and space constraints.
In the 1600s, while the
English colonies of North America were being planted and
populated, England herself was locked in a struggle
between the Puritans in Parliament and the Stuart kings.
The common perception that the Stuarts believed in the
"divine right of kings" is simplistic. Both sides
believed governmental authority comes from God; the
issue was lines of governmental authority. The Stuart
kings believed God gives authority directly to the king.
The Parliamentarians contended that God gives
governmental authority to the people, who delegate that
authority to lesser magistrates (local earls, sheriffs,
barons, members of Parliament), and they in turn
delegate authority to the king. That being so, they
insisted, the king is answerable to the parliament, and
the parliament in turn is answerable to the people.
Through decades of
struggle, the Parliament practiced various forms of
interposition: negotiation, legislation, litigation
agitation. Twice they took interposition further, trying
and convicting King Charles I of treason and executing
him in 1649, and deposing James II in the bloodless
Glorious Revolution of 1688 and forcing him to flee to
France. The following year the English Parliament
reaffirmed the ancient God-given rights of Englishmen in
the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
And as the struggle for
liberty waged in England, the American colonists looked
on with approval. Nathaniel Hawthorne captured their
spirit in his short story, The Gray Champion.
Less than a century later
it was America's turn. Believing the English king and
parliament were usurping their rights and the autonomy
their colonial charters had guaranteed to them, the
colonists came together in the first Continental
Congress of 1774. On October 14 they issued their
Declaration and Resolves that
"...The good people of the
several colonies...justly alarmed at these arbitrary
proceedings of parliament and administration, have
severally elected, constituted, and appointed deputies
to meet, and sit in general Congress...in order to
obtain such establishment, as that their religion, laws,
and liberties, may not be subverted."
After two years of futile
attempts to practice moderate forms of interposition and
resolve their differences with England, in 1776 the
Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence. Perhaps the best-known document of
interposition in history, the Declaration proclaims that
the American colonies are entitled to independence by
"the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." It sets forth
the basic "unalienable rights" endowed "by their
Creator," proclaims that "to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed." The
Declaration then claims:
That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness.
The Declaration cautions
that established governments should not be changed for
light and transient reasons:
But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
Object evinces a design to reduce them to absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their
future security.
The Declaration then sets
forth a list of grievances that, taken together,
establish that George III has exercised tyranny over the
colonies and concludes that "A Prince, whose character
is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant,
is unfit to be the ruler of a free people."
The Declaration proclaims
that "these United Colonies, are and of Right ought to
be free and independent States,." appeals to "the
Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions," rests "a firm reliance on the protection of
Divine Providence," and the signers close by pledging
"our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."
Think for a moment.
Suppose liberty's champions of the past had believed
that one should never resist higher authority.
Archbishop Langton would never have forced King John to
sign the Magna Charta, the Scots would not have fought
for independence, the Glorious Revolution would hever
have taken place, the English Bill of Rights would never
have been drafted, and we today would still be subject
to the English king.
But they did believe in
interposition. Aren't you glad they did?
The Founding Fathers did
not renounce their belief in interposition once America
became independent. They fought to preserve their
independence, and that independence was finally secured
and recognized by the Treaty of Paris of 1873, which
begins with the words,
"In the Name of the Most
Holy and Undivided Trinity."
Four years later they
drafted a Constitution which was designed to, among
other things, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity;" note that "blessings must
come from a Higher Source.
The Constitution was
intended to ensure that government had enough power to
govern effectively, but also to ensure that government
did not become tyrannical and oppressive. Washington
wrote that
"Government is not reason;
it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a
dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
Jefferson echoed that
sentiment in the Kentucky Resolutions:
"In questions of power,
then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind
him down from mischief by the chains of the
Constitution."
Knowing the tendency of
power to corrupt and aggrandize, they designed a
Constitution that would chain down that dangerous
servant and keep it from becoming a fearful master. They
accomplished this end by carefully limiting the powers
of government; by separating the powers vertically among
federal, state and local levels and horizontally among
legislative, executive and judicial branches; and by
providing checks and balances whereby each branch and
level, guarding its own powers against encroachments by
the others, would check and balance the other branches
and levels and force them to adhere to their
constitutional limitations. This constitutional system
has made the United States of America a great and free
nation for over two centuries.
But in recent decades the
system has become unbalanced. Federal power has expanded
exponentially, at the expense of state and local
authority and individual freedom. And the judicial
branch of the federal government has become nearly
absolute in its authority. Checks and balances against
the judiciary still exist, but the other branches and
levels of government seem unwilling to employ them. The
result is that, as Professor Graglia of the University
of Texas School of Law has stated,
"...judicial usurpation of
legislative power has become so common and complete that
the Supreme Court has become our most powerful and
important instrument of government in terms of
determining the nature and quality of American life.
Questions literally of life and death (abortion and
capital punishment), of public morality (control of
pornography, prayer in the schools, and government aid
to religious schools), and of public safety (criminal
procedure and street demonstrations), are all, now, in
the hands of judges under the guise of questions of
constitutional law. The fact that the Constitution says
nothing of, say, abortion, and indeed, explicitly and
repeatedly recognizes the capital punishment the Court
has come close to prohibiting, has made no difference.
The result is that the
central truth of constitutional law today is that it has
nothing to do with the Constitution except that the
words 'due process' or 'equal protection' are almost
always used by the judges in stating their conclusions.
Not to put too fine a point on it, constitutional law
has become a fraud, a cover for a system of government
by the majority vote of a nine-person committee of
lawyers, unelected and holding office for life."
A further problem with
judicial review is that many judges no longer feel bound
by the plain wording of the Constitution and the intent
of those who wrote it. The result, as Chancellor Kent
once wrote, is that judges feel free to "roam at large
in the trackless fields of their own imaginations." And
if they are not bound by the plain letter of the
Constitution as intended by its Framers, their power is
virtually unlimited.
Good arguments can be made
for judicial review, at least in a limited form. But
does judicial review really mean that every time a
federal judge issues an order, every other branch and
every other level of government must salute, say "Yes
Sir!" and march in lockstep to the beat of a federal
judge's drum. As a Professor of Constitutional Law for
20 years, I challenge anyone to show me any language in
the Constitution that gives federal judges such absolute
power. Such a notion would fly in the face of the
Framers' basic belief that no one branch or level should
have such absolute power. Many leading Americans have
emphatically rejected this notion. For example, Thomas
Jefferson wrote in an 1820 letter,
"You seem...to consider
the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all
constitutional questions -- a very dangerous doctrine
indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism
of an oligarchy. ... Our judges are as honest as other
men, and not more so... . They have, with others, the
same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of
their corps.
... The Constitution has
erected no such tribunal, knowing that, to whatever
hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party,
its members would become despots."
President Andrew Jackson
refused to enforce orders of the Supreme Court with
which he disagreed. Abraham Lincoln declared that
"...if the policy of the
Government upon vital questions affecting the whole
people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the
Supreme Court the instant they are made in ordinary
litigation between parties to personal actions, the
people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having
to that extent practically resigned their Government
into the hands of that eminent tribunal."
And Theodore Roosevelt
wrote,
"It is the people, and not
the judges, who are entitled to say what their
constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it
belongs to them and not to their servants in office --
any other theory is incompatible with the foundation
principles of our government."
University of South
Carolina Law Professors William J. Quirk and R. Randall
Birdwell, in their book Judicial Dictatorship
(New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997), note that
"The philosophical
assumptions of judicial review are so inconsistent with
democratic theory that there is along tradition of
resistance to it. The resistance, today, is a largely
underground movement that exists outside the normal
academic and law school curriculum. Historically, the
members of the resistance are an impressive group. The
include the great democratic presidents: Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Abraham
Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
They include the great constitutional scholars: James
Bradley Thayer, The Origin and Scope of the American
Doctrine of Constitutional Law (1893) and John
Marshall [a 1920 book by Thayer]; Louis Boudin,
Government by Judiciary (1932); Edward S. Corwin,
Court over Constitution (1938); Henry Steele
Commager, Majority Rule and Minority Rights
(1943); and Learned Hand, The Bill of Rights
(1958). Who made the Court, as Learned Hand asks: 'the
arbiters of all political authority in the nation with a
discretion to act or not, as they please?'"
Chief Justice John
Marshall firmly entrenched the principle of judicial
review in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
In that opinion he declared that a law repugnant to the
Constitution is null and void. But if an Act of Congress
is null and void if inconsistent with the Constitution,
does not follow that the order of an unelected federal
judge is also null and void if inconsistent with the
Constitution?
At some point we must
stand up and say to the federal judiciary, "Enough is
enough! You have usurped powers that the Constitution
has not delegated to you. You have imposed upon the
rightful authority of the states." But when do we reach
that point?
I believe we have reached
that point when a federal judge tells the people of
Alabama that they may not place the Ten Commandments,
the moral foundation of law, in the Judicial Building of
the State of Alabama -- and when, to add insult to
injury, they vaunt their sculpture of the Greek goddess
Themis at the federal court house just a few blocks
away.
The issue is more than a
monument. The issue is whether a judge may acknowledge
the existence of transcendent moral absolutes and use
those absolutes as he interprets and applies the law.
Many pastors have
criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to legalize
abortion in Roe v. Wade (1973) and to legalize
sodomy in Lawrence v. Texas (2003). But what is
wrong with a court legalizing abortion and sodomy, if
God's Law has no place in American courts?
I have known Chief Justice
Roy Moore for many years. In this case, and in the
earlier Etowah County litigation, I have traveled with
him, worked with him, dined with him, worshipped with
him, prayed with him, argued with him, and I know him to
be a man of unquestionable sincerity and impeccable
integrity. He has taken a stand, and risked the
ruination of his career on that stand, because he is
firmly convinced this is the only honorable course to
follow. He believes he has a duty to God and to the
people of Alabama, under the oaths he has taken to
uphold the United States Constitution and the Alabama
Constitution, to restore the moral foundation of our
law.
Alabama has an
unprecedented opportunity to stand in the gap with Chief
Justice Moore and resist this federal usurpation of
state authority and federal dismantling of America's
Biblical heritage. If the Governor, the Attorney
General, and the eight Associate Justices had stood with
Chief Justice Moore, if Governor Riley had issued the
call on statewide television for Alabamians to come to
the Judiciary Building by the thousands to stand against
the removal of the Ten Commandments, if the pastors of
Alabama had joined in calling upon their parishioners to
respond with a massive but peaceful protest, Judge
Thompson could not have enforced his order, and the
federal judiciary would have had to retreat.
I regret that the eight
associate justices did not join with Chief Justice Moore
as did the Justices of the Supreme Court of Utah in
1968. In Dyett v. Turner, 439 P.2d 266, the Utah
Supreme Court stood against the usurpations of the
Warren Court, stating:
"The United States Supreme
Court, as at present constituted, has departed from the
Constitution as it has been interpreted from its
inception and has followed the urgings of social
reformers in foisting upon this Nation laws which even
Congress could not constitutionally pass. It has amended
the Constitution in a manner unknown to the document
itself. While it takes three-fourths of the states of
the Union to change the Constitution legally, yet as few
as five men who have never been elected to office can by
judicial fiat accomplish a change just as radical as
could three-fourths of the states of this Nation. As a
result of the recent holdings of that Court, the
sovereignty of the states is practically abolished, and
the erstwhile free and independent states are now in
effect and purpose merely closely supervised units in
the federal system.
We do not believe that
justices of once free and independent states should
surrender their constitutional powers without being
heard from. We would betray the trust of our people if
we sat supinely by and permitted the great bulk of our
powers to be taken over by the federal courts without at
lest stating reasons why it should not be so. By
attempting to save the dual relationship which has
heretofore existed between state and federal authority,
and which is clearly set out in the Constitution, we
think we act in the best interest of our country.
We feel like galley slaves
chained to our oars by a power from which we cannot free
ourselves, but like the slaves of old we think we must
cry out when we can see the boat heading into the
maelstrom directly ahead of us; and by doing so, we hope
the master of the craft will heed the call and avert the
dangers which confront us all.
But by raising our voices
in protest we, like the galley slaves of old, expect to
be lashed for doing so. We are confident that we will
not be struck by 90 percent of the people of this Nation
who long for the return to the days when the
Constitution was a document plain enough to be
understood by all who read it, the meaning of which was
set firmly like a jewel in the matrix of common sense
and wise judicial decisions.
... When we bare our backs
to receive the verbal lashes, we will try to be brave;
and should the great court of these United States decide
that in our thinking we have been in error, then we
shall indeed feel honored, for we will then be placed on
an equal footing with all those great justices who at
this late date are also said to have been in error for
so many years."
I deeply regret that the
other Justices have not seen fit to join with Chief
Justice Moore in resisting this federal judge's attempt
to prohibit us from acknowledging the Ten Commandments
as the moral foundation of law. But other judges,
legislators and public officials have stood with Chief
Justice Moore, and it is therefore of crucial importance
that the people of Alabama rally to the Chief Justice's
defense.
In the crisis that is upon
Alabama today, pastors have a special responsibility to
inform their people and inspire them to action. Lord
Acton observed,
"...when Christ said
'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and
unto God the things that are God's,' He gave to the
State a legitimacy it had never before enjoyed, and set
bounds to it that had never yet been acknowledged. And
He not only delivered the precept but He also forged the
instrument to execute it. To limit the power of the
State ceased to be the hope of patient, ineffectual
philosophers and became the perpetual charge of a
universal Church."
During the American War
for Independence, America's clergy led the way for their
people to become involved. In Boston the "Father of the
American Revolution," Sam Adams, proclaimed
independence, and he was echoed by the "Black Regiment,"
the black-robed New England clergy who preached
independence in pulpits throughout New England.
Throughout the colonies, clergy of many faiths called
upon their parishioners to answer their country's call.
Today Alabama faces a
constitutional crisis of similar proportions: Are we
subject to the higher Law of God? Or is law simply what
the government says it is? Are human rights unalienable
because they are the gift of our Creator, or are they
simply negotiable privileges that government can give or
take away at will?
Is Chief Justice Moore's
battle for the Ten Commandments a "lost cause?" There is
no such thing as a lost cause until the last chapter of
history has been written. Various new legal moves are
underway, and the Spirit of God is at work. But
regardless of the outcome of this case, we must take a
stand for what is right. A century from now, as
Americans seek to put the pieces together and rediscover
the moral foundation of law, they will remember what we
did in Montgomery in that hot summer of 2003. And as my
wife reminds me, God will remember even if no one else
does.
And in the evening of your
life, when your grandchildren ask what you did during
the constitutional crisis over the Ten Commandments,
what will you tell them?
"For if thou altogether
holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there
enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from
another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be
destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the
kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14
Godspeed,
John Eidsmoe
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