To the editor:

There is a growing interest in what one Kansas judicial appointee has called “a higher law” and “forcible resistance” to valid court orders. There is a “higher law” – in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, China and Cuba. The U.S. Constitution is the highest law here. The Supreme Court settles disputes regarding it. Judges and elected officials are sworn to uphold the Constitution, not higher law.

Higher law arguments are ancient and include Augustine and Aquinas. They presumed a static political order and human nature needing coerced moral uplifting. Aquinas claimed civil society cannot create moral virtue and itself must be judged by a higher standard to which all human action must conform. Biblical texts justified these ideas which played out with fateful consequences with Luther, Calvin and Hooker. With them the state was obliged to enforce the outward observance and profession of religious doctrine. This split otherwise stable social orders into intolerant and warring factions. It was one of the main reasons our forefathers abandoned Europe for America and is responsible for our founding fathers insistence on the separation of church and state.

Representative democracy can tend toward regression (rapacious plutocracy) or dogmatic systems (high-minded higher law). Higher law proponents are the obverse of Marxists; they would replace philosophical and economic ideas with ancient theological ones with the same negative outcome for democratic free inquiry and personal development. Defunding education and the arts further restricts critical thought and experimentation necessary for innovation and enterprise. Restricting free, democratic life reduces citizen opportunities and their liberties.