Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Declaration of Independence, not the US Constitution, is our National Foundational Document

We're often told that the USA is not a Christian nation. However, Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, justified the Civil War, and by implication his Emancipation Proclamation (freeing the slaves in the Confederate States), by appealing to the Declaration of Independence as our foundational document, even more foundational than the US Constitution. That Declaration serves as the very core piece of why we were justified in seceding from Great Britain and in forming a new nation, and why the Civil War was fought.

That Declaration states quite clearly that "all men are created equal", and "that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights", and that "governments are instituted among men" to secure these rights.

That document further states that the signers are "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world" for the rightness of their declaration, and did so "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence".

So when Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, he referred back to this document as the justification for the US, and for the subsequent Civil War, so that we, "one nation, under God", might resolve to be dedicated to the unfinished work of the signers of the Declaration, and so that our nation "shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

I say all this to say this: the US Constitution, while being our supreme law regulating our government, is not the supreme law (or even supreme document - the Declaration is) that regulates our nation. A US President who reminds the people of this is a president who could turn the country back to its Creator, and to our unalienable rights, and to freedom.

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