Principles behind our American Government

WallBuilders had Frank Miniter as a guest this week. They discussed rebuilding our weakened Bill of Rights which had a lot of good ideas. However, David Barton and Rick Green opened the show with a discussion of American Exceptionalism  and the basic principles upon which America was built. I appreciated their explanation and pass them on here.

American Exceptionalism – a set of ideas and philosophy that produce institutions and policies which lead to unprecedented levels of stability and prosperity. Six principles upon which our American system was built: 1. There is a divine creator. 2. That creator gives individuals certain unalienable rights. These are not rights to groups. They are not collective rights. They are individual rights, endowed by the creator not by the government. 3. Government exists to protect these rights.   4. There are moral absolutes that govern our lives known as the laws of nature and of nature’s God.  5. Below the moral law is the social compact which makes up our body of non-moral laws such as the speed limit, building codes, and so forth. 6. If a system of government doesn’t do it’s job you can abolish it and form a new one.

It is not hard to believe that these are the principles upon which our Declaration of Independence was formed. The language closely parallels what we find there. Unfortunately we have been fed the lie so long that our founders were atheists, agnostics, and deists that we are slow to believe our nation had such God-centered founding principles. Please listen to WallBuilders to get a new insights on our founding (which are actually an older, better historically supported perspective).