In his letter to the Daily Post deriding my recent column about ‘natural law’, Robert Landbeck demonstrated that he didn’t actually read it. At the outset he says, “I find it bordering on the absurd, that anyone can continue to be an apologist for natural law theory or theology in this day and age.”
At no point did I “apologize” for natural law; I merely briefly chronicled its history in multiple societies from ancient Greece, to the American Indians. Nor did I suggest any theological connotation, other than that within the historical chronology I mentioned Thomas Aquinas – along with Aristotle, Cicero, the Iroquois Confederation, and Henry David Thoreau. It’s quite clear Mr. Landbeck is projecting his own anti-religious bias onto what I wrote.
Mr. Landbeck then falsely attributes a plethora of our current woes to the influence of natural law. He wrote, “Natural Law has left the human condition in considerable deficit in terms of ethical, moral and spiritual understanding. And now with issues so pressing, so urgent, so grave and divisive the world can barely discuss them, let alone address and resolve them: A despoiled land, sea, air and even space, possible environmental collapse, a divided nation, a new arms race and a Doomsday Clock with barely a minute to midnight. So where does progress come from?”
Since, for the past two centuries, natural law as been in significant decline as a source of societal mores, replaced by ‘positive law’ — which is law enacted by government — it would seem all those problems he lists are far more likely to have been caused by government, than by nature. Given that, it would seem “progress” clearly does not come from more government-made laws.
There is a simple example of natural law that every child learns: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Does Mr. Landbeck suggest that is an obsolete concept in “this day and age”?
Gary Beatty
Sharpes, FL and Pagosa Springs, CO
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