OPINION:
It’s 2019 and if this new year should bring anything, it’s a national reclamation of what makes this country the absolute best in the world — the notion that here, in America, individual rights are recognized as coming from God, not government.
There’s a resolution worth keeping, wouldn’t you say?
And it comes on the heels of the swearing-in of several Democrats/socialists into House office who now hold leadership posts, and who’ve decided to spend their opening days on presidential impeachment talk.
“Impeach the motherf—,” is how newly seated Michigan Muslim Rep. Rashida Tlaib put it, just hours after her swearing-in ceremony.
Democrats: These are people who could sure use a good lesson in who employs whom in this nation. But Republicans aren’t all sound on the Constitution front, either.
As Ronald Reagan once said, “We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn’t tell us. We the people are the driver, the government is the car.”
Exactly. These views stem all the way back to our national founding, when it was first established that this government, this system, this great experiment, would be one where individual rights trump those of the collective because — and here’s the drumroll moment — our rights are inherent and natural, bestowed at birth by a heavenly Creator, not doled and decided by a so-called benevolent leader called The Government.
And ’lest we forget: This is the Judeo-Christian god we’re talking about, not the one of the Muslim faith, or Buddhist belief system, or Wiccan tree. Subbing out “God-given” for phrases like “natural” or “inherent” or “inalienable” may fall softer on some secularists’ ears.
It may soothe critics who suggest, as Religion News Service recently wrote, that using the term “God-given rights” is a danger because it opens the door for those of different faiths to bring their own gods into the governing equation — and that could lead to all sorts of confusion.
“History has shown us that what is given by a god can be taken away by those who speak with or for that god,” Religion News Service wrote in piece in December of 2017.
Well and good; everyone’s entitled to an opinion. But nope. Respectfully, I disagree.
Using the term “God-given rights” in America automatically implies the god of the Bible, the god of the Judeo-Christian faith. That’s our history, the one that matters.
Let’s not cloud the matter further by suggesting that founders’ embrace of the rights of all to worship freely, as enshrined in the First Amendment, was one and the same as the founders’ forging of this government based on principles of other faiths, from other gods. Not so. It’s the Judeo-Christian moral compass that’s in our national DNA; nothing else.
Moreover, let’s not cede that point, for whatever reason. Doing so would lead to a path of unintended consequences and democratic-republic demise.
Already we have enough to fight.
We’ve got a new batch of politicians in D.C., and new leadership in the House, who’ve quickly made clear their number one goal is not to uphold the Constitution, but rather to band together and boot this president.
Expect more of the same, at least until the next election.
But truly, the larger fight on which to focus has surprisingly little to do with a specific political seat, or a politician with an “R” button versus “D” button, or a piece of legislation that says this and not that, or that and not this.
The real battle for America starts with each and every one of us doing our part to recapture the essence of America — to recognize, on an individual-by-individual basis, that our rights come from God, not government. And then to put wings to that thought.
And then to take that attitude and demand, in the tone of a caveat, that all in government abide and obey.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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