The First Principle of Liberty: Natural Law (Part 1)

For the next several weeks we will focus on W. Cleon Skousen’s book The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle that Changed the World. In it Skousen lays out 28 Principles of Liberty. I’ll spend some time on each—understanding them and internalizing their truth is critical, now more than ever. I've broken the first principle up into three posts.

The first Principle of Liberty is this: “The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.”

Skousen tells us few understand Natural Law, and he argues the best way to grasp it is to study Cicero. In his writings Cicero presents the case for “recognizing and identifying the rules of ‘right conduct’ with the laws of the Supreme Creator.” That is, “once the reality of the creator is clearly identified in the mind, the only intelligent approach to government, justice, and human relations is in terms of the laws which the Supreme Creator has already established. The Creator’s order of things is called Natural Law.”

Skousen goes on to discuss the “major precepts of Natural Law which so profoundly impressed the Founding Fathers.”

First, “Natural Law is Eternal and Universal.” Cicero referred to NL as “true law,” and argues that if we try to escape law through disobedience, we fail, because NL “cannot be altered. It cannot be repealed. It cannot be abandoned by legislators or the people themselves, even though they may pretend to do so.” Sound familiar? Think of it this way: Abortion is always wrong, no matter whether our government says it’s right. Something may be legal without being lawful.

Second, we have been given the ability to reason. We enjoy a much more rich “quality of mind” than does the animal kingdom. Both Cicero and our Founding Fathers “viewed this as a special, divine endowment from the Creator.”

Tomorrow we will look at the remaining precepts in the first principle which influenced the men who wrote the Constitution. . . .