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The Two United States: Introduction
by Dan Meador
Gail and I share a life calling—Christian ministry. We believe our nation was established in a unique historical moment, and that the Constitution of the United States emerged as a divinely inspired compact to serve widely divergent interests. It was not something fabricated out of thin air. Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first American constitution for civil government in 1636, basing it on precepts set out in the Mayflower Compact, signed by Pilgrims when they first arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1620, so the fledgling nation had over a century and a half of experience with written constitutions before the Constitution of the United States was drafted in 1787. While the Constitution does not specifically credit God as ultimate authority, many of the men who participated in the Constitutional Convention were also delegates to the Second Continental Congress, and had signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the cause of liberty.
The Declaration of Independence justified severance from British rule by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”—physical and moral law man can neither author nor amend. These are the two great branches of natural law, acknowledged since time in memorial even in civilizations that did not worship the Creator God acknowledged by Christian and Jewish religions. The Constitution preserves these principles by recognizing sovereignty of the people and preserving unalienable rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution must be understood in this context, the lineage being approximately six prior centuries in which principles of English-American common law were time-tested, proven, and articulated.
Central to this understanding is that nobody is above the law, and no manmade law contrary to the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God is or can be legitimate as it is destructive to the body politic and the cultural fabric. Those who usurp power not enumerated in and specifically delegated by the Constitution are in rebellion against man, nature and God—they are reprobate. As they pursue self-serving ends, they breach public trust, threaten peace and domestic tranquillity, and cause injury to countryman and kin. In the end, they bring destruction on themselves as history has proven time and again that tyranny has no friends.
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