A Law That Is Unchangeable
What did Cicero -- a Roman senator who lived in the first century B.C. -- say that was relevant to Americans in 1776?
"True law," Cicero said, "is right reason conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil."
"This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation," he said. "Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing today, and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings.
"God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer," said Cicero. "And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man."
A law that prohibits the killing of innocent human beings is as legitimate today as it would have been thousands of years ago -- because it is rooted in the natural law that never has and never will change.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the investigative editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation. To find out more about Terence P. Jeffrey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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