At OCPAC’s next meeting, we will evaluate the 2019 legislation which made it to the Governor’s desk. We will apply conservative principles to determine the bills that will be used to grade our legislators in the Oklahoma Constitutions forty-year-old Conservative Index (the index began in 1979).
What we know as conservative ideas have their roots in classical liberalism. (Hence, Dr. Everett Piper’s favorite speech title, "Why I am a liberal and other conservative ideas.") With foundations in Christendom, classical liberalism opposed political consolidation of power and unlevel playing fields. Classical liberalism opposed government interference in economic systems, education, family, and church life.
Early in the 20th century, these ideas morphed to concepts more interested in a heavy-handed elite controlling family, education and the economy. Modern liberalism promotes utopian ideals, and wealth re-distribution. It has become illiberalism, promoting the deprivation of liberty for the higher ends of philosopher kings and is best known under a variety of forms of Marxism.
What once was known as liberal now carries the label conservative. The ideals of liberty (conservatism) are found in the foundations of Christendom. The Magna Carta of 1215 was also known as the Magna Carta Libertatum, Latin for the Great Charter of the Liberties. Clause 39 contains political ideas familiar to most Americans:
“No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgement of his peers, or by the law of the land.”
The phrase, “law of the land,” reflects the foundations of Western Civilization and the concept of the rule of law as opposed to either the “democratic” rule of a majority or the tyranny of a few. A group of pastors in Magdeburg, Germany built upon these ideas when they wrote wrote “The Magdeburg Confession”.
They wrote that all authority on earth is delegated authority. Authority delegated to man from God. They stated that all those in earthly authority must make no law contrary to the Word of God. Hence their statement that, “divine laws trump human ones.”
Like the 56 principled patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence, these pastors were prepared to back up their declaration of the liberties inherent in the Law of God against tyrannies. In 1550, 468 Magdeburgers lost their lives successfully defending the city and their Confession. The failed effort of Emperor Charles V cost him 4,000 troops in the year-long siege. Emperor Charles lost the battle and the valiant pastors of Magdeburg, Germany gained the influence of many nations.
Had it not been for the leadership of these pastors and the support of the city of Magdeburg, the Reformation might not have shaped the history of Europe and the United States as it has.
If we are to see the recovery of American culture, we must return to these concepts of Christendom which have shaped the leading nations of the world. No less a legal mind than Sir William Blackstone affirms the role of the Word of God in the development of nations when he states:
“It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law. And they are found only in the Holy Scriptures.”
~ Blackstone Commentaries, 42
Join us this Wednesday as we evaluate key legislation from the 2019 Oklahoma legislature.
