On voting

Winner, Life as a Vet Student
Tiffany Beck, Mississippi State University

American and Traitor.  These are not two words commonly employed in the same breath in this country. Yet over 236 years ago, this allegation became a harsh reality for 56 Americans with a mere brush of the pen.  By signing the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, a company of highly esteemed and well-educated citizens pledged “[their] Lives, [their] Fortunes, and [their] sacred Honor”¹ for the establishment of an independent, separate Nation.  Their promises to this freshly conceived country were not empty.  Nine of the 56 signers died during the American Revolution and never tasted national freedom.  The British captured and tortured five signers, and the homes and lands of many more (17) were ransacked and burned.  But how does this dabbling in colonial history relate to deciding on a candidate for the Office of the President of the United States nearly 250 years later? 

The answer is because the past is the key to the future. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a law professor at Harvard Law School in the late 1800s and a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court Judge, appreciated the necessity of interpreting the future in light of the past.  He once said, “When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.  A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”² The basic principles that guided the Founding Fathers in their separation from Great Britain and the establishment of an independent democratic system need to be the same basic principles that guide us in our political decisions today. In 1863, President Lincoln declared: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”³.  With this introduction he not only set the birth of the United State of America at the writing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 (as opposed to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1788), but also reiterated the importance of the political precepts espoused in it.

What were these basic first principles that motivated a group of plantation owners, lawyers, ministers, merchants, and physicians⁴ to break away from their mother country and begin a revolution that would shake the world?  Lincoln himself asked this same question when he remarked in Independence Hall in Philadelphia on February 22, 1861, shortly before his inauguration, “I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world.”⁵ This concept that the precepts of the Declaration are universal refers to what is known as natural law.  Natural law has its roots as far back as ancient Greek and Roman thought, and is based on the belief that “all human beings are aware of certain laws that exist for the purpose of governing human conduct and protecting the rights of individuals”⁶. These rights are discovered through first principles and immediate, logically discoverable precepts, as opposed to rights that are created by those in power (referred to as positive law).  In other words, these natural laws are “self-evident” truths¹.  By appealing to the existence of a natural law outside and above the positive law of the British government the colonists were justified, in fact morally obligated, to throw off such government in order to obey overarching first principles, among them “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”¹. In brief, this entails:

…That all persons have a right to life because they are uniquely valuable.  That this value is intrinsic and not dependent on a person’s race, gender, social status, stage of development, or ability to contribute to society.

…That all persons have the right to freedom.  Not the freedom of permission, which says one can do or not do whatever one chooses (that is anarchy, not civilization), but a freedom of personal integrity that allows one to pursue and achieve one’s fullest potential as a well-educated, contributing member of society without the hindrance of an oppressive government.

…That a person has the autonomous right to choose how to spend her money, time, and efforts as long as those choices do not directly or indirectly infringe on the rights of others to pursue their happiness. In the words of J. Budziszewski, a professor of government at University of Texas at Austin, that “[e]xcept to deal out justice to aggressors, no one may rightly take away or impair either the life or the means of living of another”⁷.

So when choosing how to cast one’s vote this electoral season, instead of relying on political party lines, look to the lines of a document crafted by some of the greatest political minds in history.  Let the principles found there be the plumb line against which one measures the campaign claims of the candidates.  Which opinions concerning foreign policy, defense spending, abortion, education, health care reform, the role of government, and job creation align more closely with protecting the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all its citizens – Mitt Romney’s or President Obama’s? Listen to the debates (as opposed to translations by media commentators) and study the track records of the candidates. If you are having difficulty locating condensed, easily accessible information on the stances of the candidates on top issues, several websites offer free “Voting Guides”^{see 8}.  Let us hope that we do not cheapen the sacrifices that have paved the road to our freedoms by being flippant with our ballots this November.

Sources

1.     1. Declaration of Independence, 1776.

2.     2. Peter, Laurence J., Peter’s Quotations (New York: Bantam, 1977), 244.

3.     3. Gettysburg Address, 1863.

4.     4. "Signers of the Declaration of Independence”, U.S. Constitution Online, [http://www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html]; Accessed 3 Oct 2012.

5.     5. Alder, Mortimer J., Haves Without Have-Nots (New York: Macmillan, 1991), 219-20.

6.     6. Geisler, Norman L., Unshakeable Foundations (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 190.

7.     7. Budziszewski, J., Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Downers Grove, Ill,: InterVarsity, 1997), 105.

8.     8. "2012 Presidential Election Voters Guide”, Crawford Broadcasting Company, [http://www.crawfordbroadcasting.com/~kbrt740/CBC%202012%20Voter%20Guide.pdf]; Accessed 5 Oct 2012.