Three Questions

I was at the Kiowa County Courthouse in Greensburg and noted the huge blocks used for the foundation. They certainly don't make buildings like this anymore. The roof was damaged and the windows were broken, but the day will soon come when tourists contemplating the World's Largest Hand-dug Well will also have the opportunity to see a strong old building that withstood an EF5 Tornado. Evidently the fathers of Greensburg understood a solid foundation is pretty important if you want to build something to withstand storms.

Last year I was on my way to one of those candidate forums, and I was thinking about foundations of a different sort. I came up with three questions to ask the potential lawmakers. I tried my questions out on some of those attending while we waited for the coffee to brew. When no one could answer them, an alarm went off in my head.

How about you, are you ready for a little test?

First question: What is an unalienable right? Second question: What is self-evident truth? Third question: Where does equality come from?

If you know the answer to these three questions, you are a very rare Kansan. If you can't answer these three questions, you, like most people I've talked to, got left behind, because we all should know the answers to these questions.

Later that day I was paying for my gas at a convenience store and tried the three questions on the clerk. She laughed and swore she'd never heard those words in her life. I asked the people lined up to buy their lottery tickets. O for four. The third question—the one about equality—started a spirited conversation in which all agreed there is no such thing as equality. Ouch.

From then on, I was on a mission. I tried my little quiz in courthouses, city offices, restaurants, and the check out line at Wal-Mart. When a young woman (a veterinarian) knew the answers, I was shocked. To this day, she is the only one who remembered these questions are answered in the text of the Declaration of Independence.

If you think I'm making this up, I invite you to ask everyone you meet today the three questions. Ask Lawyers, Doctors, College Professors. Ask your spouse. Ask your kids. Perhaps you'll get better results.

That almost nobody is able to answer or even understand these three questions explains a lot about why our government is in such a messed up state. This is not historical trivia.

What is an unalienable right? If you answered Life, Liberty or the Pursuit of Happiness, you misunderstood the question, but you get some credit. The signers of the Declaration of Independence understood rights exist which no government has the authority to give, and no government has the authority to take away. They are God-given rights.

What is self-evident truth? If you think about it, you'll get it. Our founding fathers were universally agreed that certain truths were so fundamental there was no valid rational argument that could assail them. Here is an example of a self evident truth; two and two make four. Here is another example, and it is also the answer to the third question; all men are created equal.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,  that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Created? Creator?

Our State School Board prohibits teaching kids they were created, but I wonder, where do Darwinian evolutionists in the "scientific community" claim equality comes from? The answer should make you shudder. There is no place for equality in natural selection, except among those for whom logic has little meaning. Perhaps this explains why almost nobody can answer the three questions.

Only if we are created by God in His image does the inherent value of each human life inform the government how people are to be regarded and treated. To the logically consistent Darwinian Evolutionist, the state assigns people value based on the principle of collective survival.

As a foundational principle, this is wet sand.

I've talked to lots of Greensburg residents and learned that around 9:45 that Friday night the entire town was doing the one thing you and I would have been doing. . . praying. Not to the State. Not to the scientific community. Praying to God, our Creator.