Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Monday, July 05, 2010 10:01:47 AM
“The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” [John Adams]
Re: http://townhall.com/columnists/JosephCPhillips/2010/07/05/independence_and_the_right_to_private_property
Note that Adams appeals to the ‘laws of God’. In a culture with an open Bible, men have an authority by which to judge the laws of the state. A culture that rejects its authority opens itself to the abuses of a lawless state. Adams uses the term ‘public justice’ as that which upholds the sanctity of private property. This is the role of legitimate government.
When a government substitutes social justice for public justice it becomes illegitimate because it must violate the laws of God in order to be the arbitrators of its own fairness policies. What authority does the state have in administering social justice? Stealing another man’s property is prohibited in the Law. Promoting a political policy of envy and class warfare is prohibited under the command not to covet what another man owns.
What greater contempt for the laws of God is there is advocating the murder of the unborn and the normalization of sexual perversion called abomination in the Bible. These are violations of conscience from a lawless state that is quick to point out the injustice of human bondage, but is blind to its own injustice and corruption.
But the greatest injustice is when the state presumes the role reserved for free men instructed in the Law and the Gospel and in so doing turns liberty into tyranny.