It seems to me that Cecil Bothwell and his readers deserve the truth of the matter. Hiding behind privacy only evades the question and looks suspicious, particularly with regards to the release of Bothwell’s book. Especially by a paper that has such high objectives.
For too many years, the founding principles of naturally inherent or otherwise inalienable rights of our republic have been under attack. Who are the leaders of this assault primarily? Preachers and their “water-carriers.” It was our Founders who established that “the social Contract”(DOI) that exists between each citizen and their representative government starts at a particular time: Birth. In fact it is our birth certificate that establishes and documents our citizenship. Common sense dictates that no act of government can protect that which resides in and is dependent on another person’s body [except] the person in whose body it resides. Yet there is a constant push by certain and particular religionists to “protect the unborn.”
Furthermore, there is the issue of conscience. The North Carolina Constitution is quite clear: “All persons have a natural and inalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience; and no human authority shall, in any case whatsoever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience.” This was derived from what the Founders of Virginia had previously established in George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted June 12, 1776.
A few words of advice from Thomas Jefferson:
• “The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights.” (Letter to J. Moor, 1800)
• “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” (Letter to von Humboldt, 1813)
• “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.” (Letter to H. Spafford, 1814).
— Chuck Zimmerman
Waynesville
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