This past week Katie and I went to the Texas Alliance for Life leadership circle luncheon, which is held once a quarter, and David Barton was the speaker.

He gave a great talk about the philosophy and purpose of our United States government as envisioned and implemented by the founding fathers of our country. In short, the inalienable rights that we say all persons have are given by God the Creator rather than by the government; this tenet is foundational, for if it is the human government that gives rights to persons, it can capriciously take them away just as easily.

I know that this fundamental truth has escaped many Americans today because it certainly escaped me; probably as a result of my atheistic worldview, which I held for many years, I had come to think of rights as coming from the government, and fortunately for us, we happened to have a better government here in the U.S. than most countries in the world did, offering us many rights that made our country a great one.

These rights are the right to life, which the founding fathers vigorously defended, and interestingly, even at the time of the founding fathers, abortion was very much an issue that was debated and argued over, so the right to life back then had this in view, the right to liberty, which does not mean license but rather the freedom to choose the good that the Pope recently talked about, the right to property, the right to practice your religion, and the right to defend oneself and one’s home against intruders.

I bought two of his books, one called Original Intent that traces the history of key judicial cases since the founding of our country and quotes the Justices of the Supreme Court in these cases, showing how modern-day Justices have often contradicted previous Justices’ decisions on spurious grounds; I also bought Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, which is a reprint of a popular book written in 1848 that gives short biographies of each of the founding fathers.