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"Either our rights come from God, as our Declaration of Independence says, or they come from human choice. If they come from human choice then our whole way of life is meaningless. It has no foundation."
Dr. Keyes made the above statement in 1999 while being interviewed on PBS as a candidate for the Republican nomination for President. His statement separates human choice and God's intentions. It's a most pessimistic view of humanity, claiming in effect that people cannot create their own institutions, that people have no ability to learn from mistakes. His view is unhistorical, denying the progress that society made in giving up the divine right of kings. People make choices, and some choices are better than others.
The United States Constitution -- the bedrock of our freedoms -- was a product of cooperative statesmanship and compromise, and, unlike religious commandments, it was built for continuing human deliberation -- as in the creation of amendments. And it was built for human deliberation regarding applications of the Constitution to matters specific.
Copyright © 2005 Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/com/keyes.htm