By Larry Craig

Our country has never been more divided or in more turmoil than it is today. I lived through the Civil Rights and Viet Nam eras, but those were more focused protests, while today we are divided on just about everything.

I wanted to figure out why. I wanted to know how we got here.

I read an article in the paper about what it means to be an American. After reading the answer given and thinking about the overall divisions in the country, I knew something was missing from the discussion.

Then I saw it — an issue so fundamental to everything that is going on, and nobody was even talking about it. And what’s more, this is the issue that will determine the future of our nation in every way that matters.

The single most important issue facing our country today has to do with what it is that defines America. The common definitions of what it means to be an American today are missing the point, because, frankly, they aren’t going back to the original sources.

The best description of what America is is found in the Declaration of Independence:

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

God gave human beings unalienable rights; rights that precede and supersede government; rights that the government cannot restrict, modify, or take away; rights that are not dependent on polls, consensus, votes, or Supreme Court rulings.

But wait a second.

What God gave people unalienable rights, and how did the Founders know that He did?

Every nation in the world at that time had their god(s) and their religion(s), but no other nation had unalienable rights.

It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights to people, and the Bible and Christianity were seen as the vehicles God used to reveal Himself and His purposes to humankind.

God gave unalienable rights to human beings. The courts would call that a religious opinion. The Founders called it a fact.

If you don’t have the Bible and Christianity, then you don’t have unalienable rights. And if you don’t have unalienable rights, then you don’t have America, at least the one for which our Founders fought a war in order to be able to create it.

If you separate the Bible and Christianity from the foundation of our country, or if you deny the existence of God, or if you lump all the religions together as being equal with no religion being more important or more true than another — if our government cannot favor one religion over another, then you don’t have unalienable rights.

Government cannot give unalienable rights. Unalienable rights require a Higher Power, an authority higher than the government that the nation as a whole accepts. If there is no higher power, or if that Higher Power is not the God of the Bible, then you don’t have unalienable rights. You only have what rights the government will give you, and those are two very different things.

Unalienable rights have to do with things that you are free to do without the government’s permission, interference, or restrictions. This is what our Founders meant by liberty, or freedom.

Government rights generally require the government to compel other people to do things for the sake of the people who have now been given these rights. Usually this will require enormous amounts of money. This is the primary reason that our country is now $21 trillion in debt. So many people have a right to so many things, there isn’t enough money to pay for all of them.

Liberty, freedom, and unalienable rights require a very high personal moral code that everybody recognizes and lives by, otherwise it will lead to anarchy.

For almost 200 years, the moral code of our country was the Ten Commandments. But that was ruled unconstitutional, because they were considered to be religious sentiments.

They were replaced by tolerance, equality, fairness, and diversity. And so now unalienable rights like free speech and religious expression are frequently in conflict with higher secular values, and secular values don’t promote the societal cohesiveness and personal self-restraint needed to let the right of bearing arms continue without enormous government control, including apparently confiscation.

The incredible turmoil and division that our country is experiencing is coming from people trying to impose a vision of our country on a country that was built on a different vision.

We no longer teach these founding principles to our children, because they are considered religious. And we certainly aren’t teaching them to the millions of people who have been and still are moving to our country. In a generation or two, the vast majority of the people in our country will have no idea about unalienable rights, and we will have lost our country as surely as if we had been taken over by a foreign power.

Our country is now near the tipping point where the majority of the people voting will have no concept of unalienable rights and the moral code required to live with them. Jefferson said that if our government does not secure our unalienable rights, we have the obligation to alter or abolish it and institute new government that will most likely effect our safety and happiness.

Those of us who believe in the founding principles of our country need to stand up and demand our country back. If the original Founders were alive today, there already would have been a second American Revolution.

Please visit my blog at poligion1.blogspot.com for articles I have written on politics, culture, and public life.