• “ . . . the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God . . . ”

• “all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . . ”

• “ . . . appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions . . .”

 • “ . . . with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence . . . ”

            This is quite significant because what it means is that our rights come from God. Period. Not the state. If they came from the state, the state could withdraw them.
            What happens when a nation is not based on the notion that our rights come from God? One of the books spawned by the Russian experiment into Communism (1917-c. 1991) is Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Koestler was a fellow traveler at one time, but like many others, he became disillusioned by the Communists because of Stalin’s violence. One of the pro-Communist characters in the novel makes a little speech extolling the Revolution and denigrating the only real alternative---a form of government (and human rights) based on Christianity: “I don’t approve of mixing ideologies,” Ivanov continued. “There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community---which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. Whoever is burdened with power and responsibility finds out on the first occasion that he has to choose; and he is fatally driven to the second alternative. Do you know, since the establishment of Christianity as a state religion, a single example of a state which really followed a Christian policy? You can’t point out one. In times of need---and politics are chronically in a time of need---the rulers were always able to evoke ‘exceptional circumstances,’ which demanded exceptional measure of defence. Since the existence of nations and classes, they live in a permanent state of mutual self-defence, which forces them to defer to another time the putting into practice of humanism….”
        In short, there is a world of difference between those governments, like ours, based on the idea that our rights come from God, versus those where our rights come from the state.

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