“From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.” Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler, this passage always raises some introspection in me, as I trust it does in you as well. And with this continuum in mind, where would you say we are as a generation with respect to the time honored principles our nation was founded on?

By now you’ve surmised, mine is not a typical political campaign that panders to the electorate. As an independent candidate, I instead feel led to use a different tact by calling your attention to the perils we’ll face if the erosion of traditional values, which have protected and prospered this country, continues unabated.

Given the advances of medical science and the pace of change in our cultural mores, a brave new world is dawning that threatens to eclipse a foundational principle that sustains our humanity, namely the sanctity of life. Yet even angels fear to tread on existential issues that are in the purview of the Almighty, alone.

If life begins at conception, shouldn’t it follow that embryos are sacrosanct? If God claims to know us before He knit us together in the womb, who presumes to usurp this relationship? If marriage and its offspring are a reflection of the triune personhood of God, why would we attempt to sanction its counterfeit? And if the life Giver is also sovereign over death, dare we evoke it before its time?

Perhaps it’s the billions pending in matching government funds that animates lobbyists, who plead on behalf of experimentation that has yet to bear fruit. Or maybe it’s the hundreds of millions at stake, if the abortion industry were to lose its federal mandate, or the gay lobby was to persuade its constituents to shop elsewhere. Follow the money, and most moral conundrums become clear.

And rather than engage in voter referendum or majority legislation, lobbyists prefer instead to venue-shop for sympathetic courts that will overturn the will of the people. Taken together, it warrants question of judicial legitimacy when the U.S. Constitution is deemed a “living document,” and new precedent emerges from thin air to protect privacy rights that the ancients deemed reprobation.

When it comes to humanity’s moral imperatives, has the abundance that liberty set in motion – given way to the complacent apathy that Tytler warned of? If the Constitution’s framers acknowledged an inalienable right to life, bestowed by the immutable God over the caprice of government, will this generation relent in protecting those innocents bound to die from rights born of expedience?

When writing Democracy in America, historian Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that our national greatness is inextricably tied to its continued goodness. He gave voice then to what our conscience still attests today, that regardless of where society’s whims would lead us, God’s word is forever settled in heaven.

Said differently, the notion of American exceptionalism has never relied upon human nature, but rather ascendant ideals that call us to purposes bigger than self. Considering the accountability our citizenship assumes and the great cloud of witnesses that surround us – let it be said of this generation “they chose life.”

For more information on protecting the existential right that will either defend or discard the next generation, visit http://www.tannerforsenate.com/sanctity.htm

Let’s heed the advice of our better angels,