[America Out Loud] Beneath the surface of the oppressive COVID-19 "public health" policies and practices, another phase in the great human struggle emerged and continues to afflict us now. The struggle is nearing the tipping point that could set back humanity to something more dismal and unending than the Dark Ages.The struggle grows from two distinct and competing answers to the questions, "What is a human being, and what value does each one have?"
THE VIEW THAT WE ARE BEINGS WITH INHERENT AND INVIOLABLE WORTH
One view says that humans are indeed "beings." This means they are fundamentally spiritual in nature and, as individuals, possess inherent and inviolable worth. From this essential worth grows their right to take responsibility for themselves in making the most they can out of life while recognizing and promoting the equal inherent and inviolable value of all humans.
This view is inherent in our biological and social relations. It begins with the love of parents for their children and the love of individual adults for each other. The great strength of humans is rooted in this mutual concern for each other. From earliest times, humans were bound together in extended families that hunted and gathered together and who, together, survived and triumphed over the challenges of life within nature.
However, it took religion to enable humans to see beyond their extended families to believe that all human beings have inherent and inviolable worth. The concept begins to unfold in the Hebrew Bible with the concept that humans are made in the image of God and should treat each other with universal ethics and laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and the rudiments of what will become the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would have them treat you. It flowers in the New Testament with the more explicit declaration of the Golden Rule and then the concept — the incredible ideal — that we humans should love one another as God loves us.
This Judeo-Christian inheritance led the Founders of this nation in 1776 to write and sign the Declaration of Independence, finding in God our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 and the Bill of Rights in 1891, the United States of America came fully into being — the first government ever created for the preservation and advancement of the individual freedom of its citizens. To say that these principles have made America "exceptional" hardly captures the reality that no other nation in history had ever created a government based on the inviolability of individual human rights as expressed in its founding documents.
The War of Independence was essentially a conservative revolution, and it led to a conservative Constitution aimed at implementing the rights that colonists largely enjoyed before King George began taxing them without representation and then sent his troops to enforce submission to his will.