The Pursuit of Happiness

Posted in: News By House Divided on June 24, 2019

Ever since July 4th 1776, American’s have had a special reverence for the Declaration of Independence. It’s been called America’s Birth Certificate. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, said it was “an expression of the American Mind”.

Contained within the Declaration are the most quoted words in the English language: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….” America was founded upon these values.

The Signers of the Declaration believed human beings are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. How did they get that idea? In a message delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965 at the Ebenezer Baptist church, King explained, “You see the Founding Fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago Dei…is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected…and this gives them uniqueness…There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God”.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) seems to agree. Recently she said “…we’re all God’s children, there’s a spark of divinity in every person…we respect the dignity and worth of every person”. When is a person infused with the “divine spark”? When is a person entitled to respect, dignity and worth? Is it at birth, two days before, two weeks before, when the fetus has a heartbeat? Pelosi didn’t say.

America betrays her founding principles whenever human life is devalued. We’ve seen this in the words of Roger Tanney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1836-1864, who wrote that African-Americans were “beings of an inferior order” so much so that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect”. Tanney authored the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court case that declared slaves were property. Tanney did not believe that all human beings are created equal. His racist decision was the tipping point in America’s struggle against slavery.

Today, America stands at another cross-roads of values and beliefs.

On June 10th, more than 180 top executives from U.S. companies sent a message to lawmakers in states that have enacted “heart-beat” laws, laws restricting abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected. Their letter appeared as a full page ad in New York Times saying, “…strict abortion laws are…against our values and (are) bad for business”.

On June 11th, during an interview with the Des Moines Register, presidential hopeful, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D – N.Y.) declared, “I think there’s some issues that have such moral clarity that we have, as a society, decided that the other side is not acceptable”. She compared pro-life views to racism and went on to say it is wrong “…for President Trump and other ultra-radical conservative judges and justices to impose their faith on American’s…” Gillibrand seems blind to the fact that she aspires to impose her own brand of faith on Americans who don’t share her beliefs on abortion. In Gillibrand’s America, laws that restrict abortion are immoral and pro-life views are unacceptable, akin to racism.

Gillibrand, and other Democrat 2020 presidential candidates, reject any efforts to place restrictions on the abortion procedure. Why? Because, as Hillary Clinton observed, “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.” Clinton and her fellow Democrats have forgotten our founding values: the right to life is not given by the constitution, it is given by God.

Is Clintons “unborn person” a being of an inferior order? Does this “unborn person” have no rights which we, as a society, are bound to respect? The Signers of the Declaration risked their lives, their fortunes and there sacred honor to set forth the self-evident truths that each person has a God-given right to life, liberty and the right to pursue personal happiness. But the right to liberty, as well as the right to pursue happiness, are meaningless in the absence of life. Our Founding Fathers never meant for one person’s pursuit of happiness to deprive another person of their right to life.