Dakota Beacon

When John Adams made the statement, “The Constitution was written for a moral and religious people and is unfit to govern any other,” one must ask, “What did he mean?”

He may have been referring to the difficulty of interpreting the Constitution and its application to the lives of the people it was originally crafted to govern.

As conservatives, we understand this to include the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” as the stopping off place for such an endeavor. This principle is not only championed by pastors or ministers, but even the more secular enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Charles de Montesquieu, who adhered to the value for civil law of the universal moral law to love others found in the Bible.

Montesquieu observes, “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would without a doubt, have every nation blest with the best civil, the best political law because these, next to religion are the greatest good man can give and receive.”

John Locke asserted that the legitimacy of man-made laws comes from the law of nature and God. The law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men and elected officials, including local legislators. Some examples could be a Congressman who goes against the law of nature to support gay marriage in opposition to the party platform or the legislator who votes against the rights of parents to decide what’s best for them.

Locke goes on to explain, “The fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it.” 

These thinkers, along with a passionate group of founders and leading voices in early American life, acknowledged these God ordained and given laws as the basis for a new nation and the standard for United States civil law. Even writers who deny their divinity have acknowledged that the matters contained in them are deemed to make man better. Man-made laws are legitimized—made worthy of obedience because they abide by the higher moral law.

James Wilson, a U.S. Justice of the Supreme Court Justice and author of "Lectures on Law 1790-1791," asserts “Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends and mutual assistants…these two run together. Divine law, as discovered by reason and moral sense, forms an essential part of both.”

Rather than argue the case further, I choose to go back to John Adams’ quote about the fitness of the Constitution to govern our nation in its current state of moral decline. I think we as a people need a plumb line, a fixed point of reference which does not change with the wind. We need something set in stone, like the ten commandments which carry the weight of a higher authority.

Man is accountable to almighty God, who never changes the standard but responds with righteousness, mercy and justice. The truth written in our founding documents is self-evident and transcendent. To bring morality and religion into the discussion of the application Constitution is a must!

Gary Emineth is the former NDGOP state chairman and host of "Open Range" on BEK TV.