KIRK ON THE COMMON LAW

A couple of months ago, I noted that Newt Gingrich had discovered the Fundie lecture circuit and has been begun mining it. I wondered if this indicated that the Fundies were going to make a political comeback and perhaps they are, if this report on Ralph Reed is true.

Reed to refashion coalition
Conservative Christians appear ready for 21st century approach.
By Aaron Gould Sheinin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Ralph Reed believes conservative voters of faith need a Christian Coalition 2.0.

And the man once dubbed the “right hand of God” by Time magazine is returning to the arena where he had his greatest success to try and make it so.

“This is not going to be your daddy’s Christian Coalition,” Reed said in an interview to describe his new venture, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “It has to be younger, hipper, less strident, more inclusive and it has to harness the 21st century that will enable us to win in the future.”

I suppose this will also mean a return of the tiresome argument that American laws are based directly upon God's laws and I think using Russell Kirk, a major conservative thinker, to refute this specious claim is worthwhile. In his book The Roots of American Order, page 187, Kirk correctly points out the real origins of our laws:

In the United States, many of the civil liberties originally guarded by the common law were incorporated into the "Bill of Rights," the first ten amendments to the federal Constitution. ...the Jeffersonian Bill of Rights amendments were simply a reassertion if common-law principles. In its origin, American personal iberty perhaps owes more to the common law than to any other single source.