Tea Party Youth Constitution Challenge – 2023
NATURAL LAWS by Elizabeth C and How They Influenced our Founders as They Created the US Constitution
What are Natural laws? Natural laws are a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct. These principles influenced the Founding Fathers very strongly. According to The Constitution Leadership Initiative, most believed that natural law was a gift from the Creator. Natural law also sparked natural rights.
The Pennsylvania Constitution states, “That all men are born equally free and independent and have certain natural, inherent, and inalienable rights. Among which are, the enjoying and defending of life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety”.
The New Hampshire Constitution affirms this idea, saying that, “All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights, among which are the enjoying and defending of life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.”
We, as the United States of America, still believe in upholding these natural rights throughout our country. Such as, if you were saving up for a new bike, and you finally earned enough money babysitting to buy the one you wanted nobody can take it away from you just because they find it to their satisfaction. You have a natural right to possess property.
Whether we be male or female, black or white, no one has the right to dominate someone else without their consent. The Virginia Constitution states, “All men are by nature equally free and independent.”
The US government also runs a social contract. Social contact is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection.
Theories of a social contract became popular during the Scientific Revolution among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and the obligations of subjects. Social contract is used in our everyday lives, though sometimes it seems so natural that we don’t really think about it. Such as, if you are an employee, and you apply for a job, you are signing a contract saying that you will give up something valuable that you have, your labor, if your boss gives up something valuable that he has, your pay.
In closing, a Founding mother, Mercy Otis Warren, proposes, “It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy, to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government.”
Written by Catherine S.
Congratulations, Elizabeth, and thank you for participating in our Constitution Challenge at http://www.teapartyyouth.us/constitution-challenge.html. Invite you friends to join you in learning more about our Founders and their brilliant work that produced our miraculous Constitution!