With regard to civil causes, subtleties almost too contemptible for refutation have been adopted to countenance the surmise that a thing which is only not provided for is entirely abolished. Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and abolition. But as the inventors of this fallacy have attempted to support it by certain legal maxims of interpretation which they have perverted from their true meaning, it may not be wholly useless to explore the ground they have taken.
The maxims on which they rely are of this nature: “A specification of particulars is an exclusion of generals”; or, “The expression of one thing is the exclusion of another.” Hence, say they, as the Constitution has established the trial by jury in criminal cases and is silent in respect to civil, this silence is an implied prohibition of trial by jury in regard to the latter. Publius, Federalist Paper 83
Alexander Hamilton, pictured above, was brilliant. He was an impulsive person as great intellects often are, and his reasoning was such as to take few, if any, prisoners. The passage above exemplifies the point.
When the Constitution was first proposed, its detractors zeroed in on the fact that it did not guarantee a trial by jury in civil causes. But Hamilton pointed out that there is a quantum difference between not providing for a right and abolishing it. He emphasized that silence and abolition are not one and the same. How true!
Fast forward to today. Academicians like Isaac Kramnick and Laurence Moore, followed by a host of others, argue that our Constitution is “godless.” Why? Because it, unlike the Articles of Confederation, is silent about “God.” This silence, such critics seek to instruct us, means that the founders intended to create an entirely secular republic. L. Scott Smith’s book, America Unraveling, explodes this myth, and I encourage everyone to buy the book and to read it. Go to www.lscottsmith.com.
Hamilton was the one who wrote President George Washington’s “Farewell Address” in which the first President extolled a common culture and highlighted the value of religion and morality. He was anything but a secularist. But, aside from the historical deficiencies in the “godless Constitution” argument, what do you think he would say about the reasoning on which it relies? Can there be any doubt? He would maintain that it is unquestionably flawed, because “silence” does not amount to “abolition.”
The Supreme Court has uncritically followed Kramnick and Moore, along with other academic gurus, in its embrace of secularism. The matter of God and religion, we are told, has no positive place in American public life. The Court has mandated that there be no prayers or devotional Bible reading in public schools, no posting of the Ten Commandments in public outside a secular context, and no heartfelt celebration of Christmas or Easter in the public square. Mr. Obama, when speaking recently at Georgetown University, even requested that during his address officials cover a Christian symbol which would have been otherwise visible to the public. All of this amounts to a complete denial of the generically protestant mindset which pervaded the country’s culture since Plymouth Rock and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
This loud secular refrain is the only one we hear from the tendentious media. It is the point of view with which we have become indoctrinated. Need I belabor the point that it is wrong-headed and misguided? The founders, when giving us the Constitution, did not start from scratch. Our Constitution sprang from a common culture, with deep roots in England and Protestantism. Our culture is therefore aptly described as “Anglo-Protestant” in character. The multicultural hodgepodge that we see in America today is nothing but a nightmare of which the founders could scarcely have dreamed.
Please understand that I am not advocating a society in which only one race, ethnicity, or religious perspective prevails. Far from it! I am, on the contrary, advocating a return to our cultural roots and away from multiculturalism. Three cheers for the Great Melting Pot, which has so sadly and unfortunately been relegated to a dark hole filled with relics from America’s past.
I hope that my readers will begin to see the “godless Constitution” argument for precisely what it is – secular propaganda! It has no basis in history and is, if Publius is to be believed, hopelessly flawed in logic.
When was the last time you stood up for American culture against secularists and liberals from the Far Left and exclaimed, “Enough is enough.”?
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