Would founders call this land a republic?
By: Andrew P. Napolitano
Columnist
..... The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, embraces two value sets. The first is natural rights, and the second is limited government. After 250 years, neither value has survived, and the opposite of each currently prevails in America.
What happened to natural rights?
..... Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration in three days while staying a at rooming houses in Philadelphia. He had been greatly influenced by the British philosopher John Locke is the godfather of the theory of natural rights, which he extrapolated from the natural law teachings of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas.
..... Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) did not argue that humans have inherent natural rights, but rather that the concept of justice demand by human nature should be"naturally just" when addressing claims for protection of persons and property, whether those protections were legislated or not. The "whether legislated or not" is the first known articulation of a higher civil law, higher then the government's own laws.
..... St. Augustine (354-430 A,D.) also did not define explicitly the existence of natural rights, but he did argue hat norms of human behaviors are knowable from the exercise of reason aided by revelation. He is the seminal thinker to express the view that girth and wrong are knowable to all persons, whether legislated or not, and this knowledge - because it is common to all - is itself a higher law. He called this universal knowledge the natural law.
..... St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.) did not articulate natural rights, but he did proceed deep into the ideas of Aristotle and Augustine and taught that all human beings posses innate moral claims and innate moral obligations to honor the moral claims of other persons, and that these claims and obligations are knowable by the exercise of reason.
..... John Locke (1632-1704), whose writings Jefferson read at the College of William and Mary, and James Madison read at Princeton, drew upon all three philosophers to argue that Aquinas' moral natural law claims are really natural rights, and they, too, just like knowing right form wrong, are inherent in our humanity and are superior to the government.
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Locke further argued that rights are claims against the whole world. Thus, your right to be alive, to think as you wish, you say: your right to worship as you wish or not to worship; your right to associate with others; your right to protect yourself and your property; your right to be left alone; your right to own and possess and control property; your right to travel; and your right to fairness form the government are all natural rights, and the exercise of these rights does not require government permission.
..... From all of this, Jefferson wrote that our rights are divinely gifted, individually possessed and inalienable. this is the first value we celebrate on July fourth.
What about limited government?
..... The second value also stems from human nature. Locke tough and Jefferson believed that the ownership of property is absolute. That is, the owner can sue his property as he wishes - without harming others; he can sell or lease it; and he can exclude anyone he wishes for nay unstated reason - including the government.
..... From the view, Jefferson recognized that the only morally licit government was one affirmatively consented to by the governed. Eleven years later, Madison was the scrivener at the Constitutional Convention: two years after that, he cerated the Bill of Rights. Jefferson, Madison and their colleagues recognized the divine hand in the human origin of personal freedom, the natural rights of all persons and the limited nature of he republic they cerated.
..... Then, along came war - the great scourge of national rights and limited government.
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The exaraconstitutional growth of government comes during war and warlike crisis, including he never-declared war with France ion the 1790s that spawned the Alien and Sedition acts, which punished speech critical of the government; the arrest of journalists without charge or trial during he Civil War; the prosecution of pamphleteers against the draft during World War I; the incarceration of Americans in American concentration camps based or race during World War II; the war on terror; which spawned the Patriot act and its warantless spying; the current era's undeclared wars on presidential whim, and the expansion of America's 750foreign military bases into 80 countries.
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To Jefferson and Madison, a natural right was truly inalienable and exercisable against the whole world. It may morally and legally be curtailed only after a jury trial and upon conviction of violating someone else's natural girts. any law or executive command that impairs natural rights was invalid, and there was no obligation to comply with it. on this, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson and Madison all agreed.
..... In a constitutional republic, government may take liberty and property only pursuant to law an only from those who have consented by granting those powers to the government in the constitution that created it; any exercise of any power not consented to by the governed is assaultive of natural rights, is beyond the government's moral and constitutional authority, and is morally illicit and of no legal validate.
..... In an empire, the government has no limits. It does whatever the head of state wants. It denies the enforceability of international norms, enriches itself at the people's expense, takes property without the consent of the governed, violates natural rights, starts wars to please constituent groups, murders people without trial whom it claims have violated tis laws, suppresses foreign people and tells them how to live, and even kidnaps their leaders. its legislature is weak and bullied by the head of state, who imposes his own taxes, promotes blood sport and builds garish monuments to himself.
..... which form of government are we celebrating next month? [07/2026]
..... To learn more, visit JudgeNap.com