Our founders boldly asserted in the Declaration of Independence that our nation should exist because the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle it to exist. They further held the God who authored these natural laws endowed everyone with certain, self-evident rights.

By these concepts, every individual has the same God-given equality before the law. There can be none with special, legal “privileges” such as royalty or aristocracy. Likewise, there can be no serfs inherently lacking certain rights.

An even more radical concept in that document is that government exists to protect these God-given rights. Furthermore, our nation’s founding document maintains that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, thus are accountable to them.

In other words, our founders insisted that government must answer to its citizens, not the other way around. However, events recently in the popular press have called this concept into question. [Read more…]