Parental Rights Amendment Defended?

Posted on February 19th, 2010 in Articles

In an email exchange with a gentleman associated with the Parental Rights Organization he attempted to defend the Parental Rights Amendment, particularly its Section Two. His defense was disturbing as it revealed that the statist, or totalitarian mindset has infected so many who would be called Christian conservatives.

I was instructed that it was fairly commonplace for the civil government to violate our rights as specified in the Bill of Rights. Specifically he said that the First Amendment right of religion and free speech was routinely violated in the case of someone yelling, “fire” in a crowded theater when there was not a fire!

Surely this man’s explanation, or defense, is chilling and illogical. He argues that to protect a “right” we must write it into the U. S. Constitution even as we acknowledge the “right” of the civil government to violate the specified “right” when it seems to itself good to do so. Does it make you warm and secure to know that your rights are protected by those who have the right to refuse your rights? This is no protection at all. Especially when one considers how our civil government doesn’t feel much constraint to obey the First and Second Amendments.

Here was my answer: “Your example of the alleged violation of the First Amendment in the case of someone yelling, “fire” falsely in a crowded theater is logically false.

The First Amendment, as the others in the Bill of Rights, are in a context and this context was understood and expressed to be the Christian religion and even more precisely the Law of Moses, the Ten Commandments. Witness to this the numerous carvings and paintings of Moses and the two tablets on civil government buildings in Washington, D.C. In other words, when someone yells, “fire” falsely in a crowded theater and he is then convicted and fined for doing so it is not a case of the First Amendment being superseded or set aside for compelling state interest, but rather the violation of the sixth and ninth commandments. He is convicted of endangering the lives of others and of lying. This view equates truth with falsehood.”

Later in this gentleman’s email defending the PRA Section Two he said that this section merely acknowledges the way Washington, D. C. acts today. Well, we ought not accommodate the error of our civil government but confront it. Accommodation to statists will bring the death of liberty and freedom.

This was my reply: “You have argued that Section Two is simply recognizing the way the constitution is now handled and the broad view of the power of the judiciary, legislative and executive branches of our civil government. Sadly, I must agree that this is the present and prevalent view within the beltway. But it is a view that would rightly have been seen as destructive of all constitutional government, and even as traitorous by the framers of our constitution. The present and prevalent view within the beltway is in error. It must be rejected and replaced by our framer’s view. George Washington spoke to this issue when he implored men not ever to ignore the constitution but if they found a change was needed that they should follow the constitutional procedure for amendment. Not to do so, he warned, would be the destruction of the written constitution.”

The website of parentalrights.org was technically very well done, even impressive, but all was not right. The Supreme Court was quoted as settling the understanding of the constitution. Does the Parental Rights Organization accede to judicial supremacy? Our framers declared that each of the three branches of the federal government had equal ultimacy in determining the constitution’s meaning. (This is a trinitarian conception deriving from the equal ultimacy of the three persons in the Godhead yet only one God. Unitarianism absolutizes the one as it denies the three.) In short, the Supreme Court is not the ultimate definer of the meaning of the constitution and their presently adopted evolutionary hermeneutic is antithetical to the framers’ views. Truth requires the doctrine of original intention. Our constitution is not a living evolving document whose meaning today differs from its meaning yesterday or even tomorrow. If the meaning of the U. S. Constitution, or any written document, does not have a settled permanent meaning as intended by those who authored and ratified it, then it will be constantly amended to mean differently than it did originally, yet this amendment process by changing interpretations, violates the amendment process in Article 5 of the U. S. Constitution. Would this not constitute treason? Would this not be a way around the plain, original meaning of the words of our magnificent constitution? Is this not how our Congress, our Supreme Court and our Executives make the constitution mean the opposite of what the words plainly mean?

Would you want to work for me if every day I declared a new, evolving understanding of our contract? Probably not. Do you want to live where the law of the land is ever changing, evolving and has therefore no stated consistent meaning? Better not tell the civil government that it can sit in judgment over the constitution. We were formed to have a civil government under a written constitution but today’s elite want you to think you have a constitution under civil government. Beware, liberty placed in the hands of men will become slavery.

The Parental Rights Organization rightly recognizes that our civil government is at war with the family. Section Two is an accommodation to the enemy not a defense at all but merely an appearance of it. Don’t be fooled into supporting the Parental Rights Amendment as it presently is written. R. J. Rushdoony identified the statist war against the family when he wrote, “The family is the true wellspring of the future, not the state, and the woman is the key to it. The statist school is a citizen-producing factory designed to manufacture people whose every loyalty is eroded. No family ties bind the well-taught statist school product. Thus, all competing institutions or loyalties of family, faith, and heritage are eliminated. The result is a mass man; such a man is easily a rebel, a malcontent, or a drone, but his is not capable of anything but a statist answer to problems, because for him no other agency has any stature or viability. He is a factory product with standardized reactions and responses.” (R. J. Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction, Ross House, 1991, page 218, available from www.chalcedon.edu)