Last Updated on October 26, 2016
Have you seen Fred Thompson’s new campaign ad?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rUEYStLxxY[/youtube]
There’s something about this spot that really bugs me, and I’m not talking about that subtle shot of a young Thompson with a young Ronald Reagan. It’s that line about rights coming from God really bugs me. I suppose part of that is that it’s such a blatant attempt to reach out to Christians — as if no other candidate is religious. But there’s another reason that line bothers me.
Do our rights as Americans really come from God? I’m not so sure about that.
Certainly all that we have comes from God. But the rights granted to Americans come from the Constitution, not God. You can argue all day whether it was God’s will that the Constitution was written as it was; still, our country’s founding fathers are the ones who decided what rights we would have.
To believe otherwise is to simultaneously believe that countries whose citizens have less rights must have done something to “offend” God to the point that he curtailed the rights of all of their citizens…just to make a point.
Beyond that, if God alone decides what rights we have, then it seems to me that we shouldn’t vote for anyone on election day: we should spend that time sitting in church praying for whatever we want done over the next four years. And wouldn’t it have been nice if all of us could have simply simply joined hands in prayer five years ago rather than sending our troops in to fight terror?
I just don’t think God works that way.
Especially since one of the rights the constitution grants you is the right to worship some God other than the Christian one, or the right to not worship any God at all. Fred Thompson would have that right taken away.