Our God-Given Rights

Dan Fefferman August 24, 1975 Washington, D.C. Secretary-General of the Freedom Leadership Foundation

Adopting the Declaration of Independence

Let us remember the purpose for which the founding fathers of the American nation came to this country several centuries ago. As all of us learned in school, the first people to settle in America came here in search of religious freedom. They had been refugees from religious intolerance in Europe, and they came here seeking for a way to be able to worship their God in freedom according to their own customs and their own conscience. That ideal of religious freedom became the bedrock, the foundation, for the American nation and has remained the cornerstone of our nation’s commitment to freedom throughout its history.

All of us are familiar with the words of the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: that the framers of the Declaration considered a certain truth to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. So from the very beginning of the American Revolution, the very beginning of the American nation, the commitment of our country was to the idea that God had endowed man with certain inalienable rights. Therefore, all men had a responsibility to protect each other’s freedom.

It was this idea that differentiated the American Revolution from other so-called democratic revolutions, particularly the French Revolution. It was this commitment to the idea of God-given inalienable rights that prevented mob rule or the tyranny of the majority. The first people who were involved in forming the Constitution of the United States, the first presidents, the Federalist essayists were all very much involved with the problem of achieving democracy on the one hand, that is rule by the people, and of protecting the individual’s inalienable rights on the other hand, because it’s very easy for a majority of the people to institute tyranny upon a minority of the people.

Students of political science and political philosophy since the time of the American Revolution have often given credit to the framers of the Constitution for achieving a document which allowed for collective or democratic rule in a sense, and at the same time protected the freedom of the individual and provided a way for this democratic process to evolve throughout the centuries.

The American Constitution and Declaration of Independence and their commitment to God-given inalienable rights is also the primary document which differentiates our nation from the other major bloc in the world — the Communist bloc. In the Divine Principle we teach that the formation of democracy was God’s will to break down the old feudal and monarchical rule because of the corruption of the central figures of that era.

There emerged in democracy two distinct camp… the Cain-like faction and the Abel-like faction. The Abel-like faction was characterized by the American Revolution and by British democracy, and the Cain- like faction was characterized by the French Revolution, the mob rule that ensued from that, the tyranny that ensued from that and finally on up through to the Marxist Revolution which took place in Russia in

1917. This was the culmination of the Cain-like trend within democracy. We say democracy in that theoretically Communism is rule by the people.

Allegedly the people institute the dictatorship of the proletariat upon the minority of the landowners and bourgeoisie. So this is supposed to be a kind of democratic tyranny. Even theoretically, then, the Communist Revolution is very different from the American Revolution, for the American Revolution seeks to achieve democracy and at the same time the protection of individual rights. In effect, though the Communist Revolution was not even a tyranny of the majority. It was a tyranny of a very small minority who were acting in the name of the people but in fact did not represent the people’s desires at all. This is what Leninism is all about.

We teach in the Divine Principle that it’s the responsibility of the person representing Abel to win over Cain, to become one with him, and to lead him to be able to make his offering to God in a humble, acceptable and successful way and it’s interesting that nowadays when we teach that we’re entering a new era that many people talk about the convergence of the democratic and communistic systems. There is something to this, for if we look at some of the indicators it’s certainly true that in many areas the two systems are coming closer together, particularly if we look at the economic organization of the two societies.

Communism has had to adopt a more capitalistic kind of system. Originally the Leninists instituted a very strict kind of communistic system, but with the failure of that policy Lenin had to institute the new economy policy, NEP, and this was a system which allowed for there to be at least partially an open market on which people could buy and sell goods. Now of course this differs from one communist nation to another communist nation, but it is true that in the realm of economics Communism has become less doctrinaire.

At the same time the democratic world has moved increasingly towards socialism, towards a greater degree of state control of the material of society, the wealth of society and of the production of the things which the people need. It may be possible for there eventually to be a correct balance between the idea of collective control of the means of production and of the productive relations and also of individual freedom to be able to buy and sell on the open market. This is not really such a central concern, at least not to me.

There’s also the idea of convergence in the area of what the interests of the two nations are now. At one time it was though t there was a commitment by the Soviet Union to use every means that it has at its disposal, stopping at nothing, in order to achieve world dominance. But with the emergence of nuclear power, I think it’s true that it’s in the interests of both the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid any major nuclear confrontation. This is one of the primary assumptions of detente and I think that that particular assumption is also a valid one. So it is in both countries’ interests to avoid a nuclear war.

And there’s also a kind of convergence which I call technocratic convergence. That is, those areas or those centers of society — the educated people who are involved in technology and who are in communication between the Soviet Union and the United States — find themselves with increasingly large areas of common concern, find their personalities to be pretty much compatible with each other and don’t seem to have too many differences.

A lot of the technocrats in the Soviet Union don’t believe in the Soviet ideology and they are just representing their nation’s interests. This has had the effect of convincing the technocrats and diplomats on the American side that the whole Soviet leadership is not really committed to its ideology. That I would challenge.

There was another area of convergence which people used to point out which they don’t point to so much anymore and I think it’s an extremely important one — liberalization. The idea was that Communism was softening, that there was increasing liberalization and of course as I already said in the realm of economics that may be the case. But, in the area of human rights it is by no means the case and the actions of the last six or seven years have proved that, starting with the Brezhnev doctrine which asserted that the Soviet Union would not allow any country within its orbit in Eastern Europe to significantly liberalize. It would consider it a threat to its own territorial integrity if a country such as Czechoslovakia became too democratic or bourgeois.

Moreover, as we’ve seen from the writings of Solzhenitsyn, the ideological control within the Soviet Union has by no means lessened. Those people who seek to challenge the state’s authority to exercise complete control over their minds have found themselves put in mental institutions on the grounds that they’re insane when in fact they’re political prisoners. Those people who’ve engaged in political activities in opposition to the state have found themselves exiled to Siberia or even executed. So, in the area of human rights there has been no liberalization.

Another important point is that there has been no liberalization in the area of the ideological struggle. We

have pointed to this time and time again. The Soviet Union is committed to an intensification of the ideological struggle during the period of detente and they assert this openly in their theoretical writings. Their actions prove that they believe what they are saying and for once their actions and their words become one in this instance. In other words, the Soviets say that they are committed to intensification of the ideological struggle and their actions show that they are committed to that intensification.

Throughout the world we see that the Soviets and other communist nations have increased their ideological and psychological warfare against the United States while the United States has only weakened its commitment to convincing the people that the U.S. represents a good purpose. I think that the recent experience in Vietnam is a very painful but very clear example of this, where we were willing to give every concession, every compromise. The communists waged unrelenting ideological war even right here in our own cities until finally our people lost their will to fight and as a result the struggle against totalitarianism in Vietnam and Cambodia collapsed.

There’s one final area of convergence which people talk about but in which there can be absolutely no convergence and that is the question of whether or not God exists. People talk about a Marxist — Christian dialogue: that the social gospel can be applied in a way that reconciles Marxism and Christianity; that you can go to church on Sunday and be a good communist the other six days of the week; that Jesus died for our sins, that he saved in the spiritual realm, but Marx was right as far as action goes in this physical world of ours.

It is our belief that there can be no compromise in this particular area, that the struggle against Communism ultimately is a struggle for the existence of God and for the ideal of His coming kingdom upon chis earth which Jesus Christ caught us to pray for 2,000 years ago.

In every communist nation today, the official state doctrine is atheism. In a sense the official state religion is atheism. And in most communist countries there is a very active campaign to educate the young people from their very earliest experiences in school against religion. In fact, in the Soviet Union, those children whose parents are teaching them religious values often end up taken away from their parents and educated in a state-controlled school in which they’re indoctrinated to believe in the teachings of Marx above the teachings of Jesus.

So, in the area of liberalization of human rights, of relaxation of the ideological war, and of the fundamental philosophical question as to whether or not God exists there is absolutely no convergence between democracy centered on the ideal of God-given inalienable rights and Communism which emphasizes collective rule without any guarantees for the individual.

Cain and Abel must become one centering on God’s will. Cain must ultimately offer his sacrifice in conjunction with Abel, through Abel; Cain muse come to God through Abel, and Abel muse teach Cain how to make his sacrifice acceptable to God. I would say that in this area of convergence between the democratic and communistic systems, the fundamental question is religious freedom.

It is our commitment to God-given inalienable rights which really differentiates us from a totalitarian system. In the Declaration of Independence, it is all-important to realize that those rights are God-given, not just self-evident parts of nature and not just theoretical rights that some man got together and decided should exist. They are eternal, unchanging, inalienable, God-given rights. If there is no religious freedom and ultimately an atheistic system is established there can be no inalienable rights because those rights are given by God.

In the struggle between Communism and democracy, Communism is an avowed enemy of God. Therefore it’s not only the right of religious people to oppose Communism politically and by other means, including prayer, it is the responsibility of every religious believer to ensure that religious freedom is maintained in the free world and that religious freedom is extended to all of God’s people. We are commanded by Jesus to preach the Gospel to all the nations and we are told that the end of the age will finally come when the Gospel of the Kingdom is preached in all of the nations of the world. So until religious freedom exists in every nation including the most totalitarian communist nations we have not completed our responsibility to God.

It is the Communists’ purpose to undermine the faith of the American people in the purpose of our nation, in the goodness of our nation and in the trustworthiness of our leaders. God created America to be one nation binding together many nations, blessed materially to stir the other nations of the world and to be an example of freedom combined with responsibility, an example which shows that people can act of their own free will and still fulfill their responsibilities to their fellow man and to their nation and to the world. With the communist challenge there fell to America another awesome responsibility and purpose and that is to defend the world against the threat of communist aggression. It has been the communist purpose to undermine faith in our national purpose. We have the right and the responsibility to affirm that national purpose.

Also, the goodness of America has been challenged. Alexis de Tocqueville has often been quoted as saying that America is great because America is good. America has done many good things for the people of the world. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, when he came to this country and spoke at the Washington Hilton, criticized our nation very strongly on many accounts but one thing he urged us to realize was that we are still a good nation, that we have given more to the world than any other nation, and in fact we are probably the only nation in the world that has on occasion given selflessly without expectation of return. It is our purpose, then, to reaffirm the goodness of America, to stand up and be patriotic when it’s not popular to be patriotic, to say that America is good when all that it’s popular to do is criticize.

Thirdly, the leadership of America is under challenge. The communists and others have challenged the trustworthiness of American leadership. Certainly no American leader is perfect, but if all we do is concentrate on the imperfections of any one human being we are going to find serious error. We’re going to find grounds for not trusting him, we’re going to find that he’s corrupt because every one of us is corrupt. Every one is a sinner. All of us have fallen short of the glory of God.

In terms of national leadership it is our responsibility to reaffirm our trust in our nation’s leaders, to reaffirm that America needs strong leadership in this age, and on the tribal or church level it is our responsibility to affirm that we have the right to follow our leaders if we want to and those of us who’ve been struck by the message of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who have felt God calling us to this ministry, not only have the right to follow but al o have the responsibility.