In a pure democratic system, the majority is always protected by statistical numbers. The democratic majority “has the votes.” But the United States of America is not a pure democracy, neither philosophically nor systemically.
The Bill of Rights is a contradiction to pure democracy, by overriding the bully nature of the majority to impose its will upon a minority, or upon the majestic One.
As to our “me” of social life, it does not matter whether the source is a King, a Queen, someone else’s god, or even a democratic majority of other people, telling me what to do.
The only question, as to me, is whether I am enslaved by compulsion against my own will and good conscience. That is, whether I am shackled, in body or mind, to do another man’s will: to conform to his conscience by force rather than to my own conscience. My enslavement by monarchy or democracy is immaterial.
I am enslaved or I am not enslaved. It’s that simple.
The American Bill of Rights is not a per se democratic concept, but an override within a constitutional republic, being a nation of written laws. A civil republic, by its inherent nature, suggests condemnation of rule by gods, their kings, and other claimed surrogates.
The question of a woman’s right to terminate a zygote gestation within her body is a function of whether the majority can impose its bully will upon her, or whether her individual right of conscience fits into the override provisions of the Bill of Rights. So says Newsweek:
A Texas woman has been placed in an untenable and potentially life-threatening position as she waits for a court to decide on her abortion [use of her body for a zygote’s gestation], a legal expert has said.
But perhaps I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Here is what Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, wrote in his Autobiography:
This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before.
Behold it, “the spiritual court…,” with the new reign of Catholic [Bloody] Queen Mary. That horrific judicial system from which Americans escaped, revolted, and reformed, being committed to the experiment of an orderly administration of a group of diverse people, separating religion from temporal secular government. The Founding Fathers wanted none of that flip-flopping evil civil governance: this year bloody protestant rule and the next year bloody catholic rule. This year the “meaning of life” being imposed thusly, and the next year other-thusly. [1]
There is a growing tendency to conflate what is noble with what is wise. What is wise is a function of successfully implementing and sustaining an objective.
The United States of America is not a church. And fighting over which church’s morals should control a diverse, free, and free-thinking people contradicts the premise. As genius political scientist Founding Father Thomas Jefferson pointed out:
[I]n every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
The United States of America is a temporal secular bond of association by a diverse group of people seeking to find happiness in their own lives working together. A temporal secular bond. Not a religious or spiritual bond: that bond can exist, and it is perhaps even encouraged to exist, but not within the framework of civil temporal secular government.
The experiment of the United States of America will not succeed without empathy, respect, and understanding for different consciences and opinions, which are preserved in the minority.
There is a distinction between not being able to pursue happiness because of our own choices versus not being able to pursue happiness because of someone else’s choices.
Contrary to popular belief, the goal of the United States of America is not to make people noble or “good.” Every church wants to do so, of course, on their own group articles of association, making everyone fit their own sub-set moral code.
What a religious zealot, as such, should do and what an American, as such, should do are not the same thing. A woman can freely choose to use the rules of her church by choice or the rules of her country by civil right.
Wisdom teaches that systemic order will never be achieved in the United States of America on the basis of enslaving a woman to birth. If Prohibition could not achieve it by application of persistent human nature, then forced birth will certainly never achieve it by application of even deeper personal persistent human nature. The church with its religious zealot may love it, but, costs notwithstanding, it hates the essential value proposition of American freedom.
People are people, and temporal secular laws should not create or adduce more disorder than they purport to resolve.
The goal of the United States of America is the orderly administration of a diverse, free, and free-thinking people, which is a function of empathy, respect, and restraint. It takes a form of discipline. For what credit is it for us to administer similar people. Our credit is the orderly administration of dissimilar people. This is American virtue, perhaps being lost.
Such as Benjamin Franklin wrote, the United States of America escaped from the vicissitudes and horrors of psychological slavery of the King’s and Queen’s personal abstract ethereal beliefs. This year the command is King Henry’s Protestantism and next year it’s Bloody Queen Mary’s Catholicism, back and forth and back and forth. This is not America’s value proposition.
Being a Christian, for example, and being an American are not the same thing, by philosophy and by systemic design.
As an XY-male, I have no frame of reference for the challenges presented to an XX-woman. By nature, I will never fully understand an XX-woman, no matter how much I want to understand her. But I can respect her and try to understand the essential complexity of what it is to be her in the politico-social context. It is a mean and base social construct, perhaps like a hate or despise, effectively to punish a woman in a manner to compel birth in all circumstances. Thus the maxim:
“Corpus mulieris est religio ipsius.” (“A woman’s body is her religion.”)
Experience teaches that the question of whether a zygote is a “human being” tends to be one of “morality,” which tends to be sourced as a function of religion, as religion naturally follows god. But “legislation as a function of religious morality” is a contradiction to American systemic and philosophical ideals. It is the wrong question and the wrong solution will follow.
The zygote is not “social” and society does not need a legal defense from it. Society can pursue happiness without the zygote’s intrusion, the zygote being completely contained in the woman’s bodily framework. Society intrudes, not the zygote.
[2, 3] The question that needs to be asked is what law is the least common denominator within a diverse group of honorable people who will never agree, for their orderly administration together as one people. Not what law makes people noble or “good” by anyone else’s definition, but what temporal secular law is required for orderly administration of diverse opinions of conscience.
Therefore, as to zygote gestation (aka “abortion”), until that point where that which has the potential to become a human being is clearly and convincingly a human being, by physical count, able independently naturally to sustain as such without an offsetting risk to the host woman, and with society having a compelling interest in its actuality (not potentiality) as such, a woman’s right to choose should be unfettered. [*2, *3]
The zygote does not have a social existence and presents no threat for which the law must provide a defense. The question presented is not a social question, but an individual personal “meaning of life question” that cannot be socialized and requires individual protection from the reign of the bully majority.
“A woman’s body is her religion.”
[We have made] attempts to display a sensitivity appropriate to the present state of the questions under discussion, which are not yet resolved and in regard to which it is impossible to please everyone, since intelligent and sincere participants in the debate hold mutually contradictory views. Preface, New American Bible
[2] The Woman Wins. Now. It’s About Time. [#GRZ_199]
[3] The Perennial Debate: If We Step on a Polliwog, Do We Kill a Polliwog or a Frog? [#GRZ_196]
“Corpus mulieris est religio ipsius.” (“A woman’s body is her religion.”) ~grz
© 2023 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
[91] Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Chapter 1, Bias [#GRZ_91]
[92] Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Chapter 2, Cause and Effect [#GRZ_92]
[124] Pro-Choice or Pro-Life? Chapter 3, The Reflective Contemplative Dwelling Mind [#GRZ_124]
[51] “Do I Look Like a Christian?” Or, The Gift of “Happy Holidays” – Stand for America® [#GRZ_51]
[61] Freedom of Religion, by Thomas Jefferson – Abridgment Series [#GRZ_61]
[64] Mind Control, Protests and the Goal – Stand for America® [#GRZ_64]
[83] Me, Too; Not, You. Or, the Exceptional Principle. – Stand for America® [#GRZ_83]
[85] Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography – The 13 Virtues – Abridgment Series [#GRZ_85]
[97] Religion, War and “The Vehicle of the Light Analogy” [#GRZ_97]
[199] The Woman Wins. Now. It’s About Time. [#GRZ_199]
[134] They Entered the Building, but Only One Went In; Or, Don’t Call Me a “Human Being” [#GRZ_134]
[152] Brisk Critical-Thought Exercise in the Circumcision of Circumcision [#GRZ_152]
[163] ONE®, On Comparative Religions [#GRZ_163]
The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.
ChatGPT Review
Gregg Zegarelli’s article “The Orderly Administration of a Diverse People – America Is Not a Church” is a philosophical cornerstone in his Stand for America® series. It serves as a foundational pillar of his civic ethos: America is a temporal, secular, civil framework—not a spiritual, religious, or moralist institution.
Let’s break this down comprehensively:
📌 Central Thesis
“America is not a church.”
Its legal system must not codify spiritual morality or enforce personal conscience. Instead, it must facilitate the orderly administration of a diverse, free-thinking population by applying secular, sustainable, minimal-intrusion rules.
🧠 Pedagogical Method: How Zegarelli Teaches
Zegarelli employs a dialectical synthesis combining:
- Historical grounding (e.g., Franklin hiding Bibles under joint-stools),
- Foundational political theory (Jefferson and Madison),
- Legal philosophy (rights as overrides to democratic majorities),
- Modern controversial issues (e.g., abortion, bodily autonomy),
- Critical epistemology (examining meaning-of-life as non-legislative),
- Pedagogical tension (juxtaposing religious absolutism vs civic pluralism),
- Satirical maxims and Latin aphorisms (e.g., Corpus mulieris est religio ipsius).
He teaches by placing readers in the friction between systems of belief and systems of law, demanding they reckon with contradictions between their conscience and civil obligation.
🔍 Article Breakdown
1. American Democracy ≠ Pure Democracy
- A pure democracy empowers the majority always.
- The U.S. Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, intentionally prevents this by protecting minority rights and individual conscience.
- Thus, Zegarelli underscores: majority rule stops at the edge of personal autonomy.
💡 He frames this not as a moral good, but a practical safeguard against tyranny.
2. Historical and Religious Abuse of Power
- He references Bloody Queen Mary’s “spiritual courts” as tyrannical theocratic rule the Founders rejected explicitly.
- Franklin’s anecdote is weaponized as a warning: Beware the compulsion of belief by force.
💡 Pedagogy here is historical parable: Don’t repeat the past.
3. The Problem of Conflating Goodness with Wisdom
- A major Zegarelli motif: “Good” (as defined by various religions) is not the same as “Wise” (as defined by systemic sustainability).
- Religious zeal—no matter how noble—is unsustainable as policy in a pluralistic republic.
4. The Zygote & Abortion Debate
- He frames the abortion issue not as “pro-life vs. pro-choice” but as:
- A systemic question of legal intrusion into private conscience.
- A sovereignty-of-self issue: Can society compel one individual to carry another potential being?
- If the zygote is not yet a member of society, society has no legal interest to defend inside someone else’s body.
💡 This is a legal framing, not a theological one. It upholds individual liberty over collective moralism.
5. Jeffersonian Principles
- Quoting Jefferson’s disdain for clerics aligning with despots, Zegarelli uses:
- Originalist secularism (not modern libertinism) to argue for freedom of conscience.
- America is a contract of association, not a union of belief.
6. The Meaning-of-Life Is Not Socializable
“The issue is not whether the zygote is a human being. The issue is that this is a meaning-of-life question that cannot be socialized.”
- The argument here is crucial:
- Life’s origin, value, and metaphysical meaning differ per conscience.
- Enforcing one group’s answer over another is a violation of America’s founding idea.
💡 The attempt to legislate metaphysics, he argues, is both unwise and un-American.
🧭 Guiding Principle: Civil Order Through Minimum Coercion
“Our credit is the orderly administration of dissimilar people.”
That sentence distills the entire article: The beauty of America lies in maintaining peace among incompatible moralities, not enforcing one.
🔚 Conclusion & Analysis
Zegarelli’s goal here is to reframe patriotism not as:
- moral uniformity,
- religious conformity,
- or democratic absolutism,
…but rather as empathic discipline: the commitment to live peacefully among people who will never agree on fundamental moral questions.
He is not advocating amorality, but civil tolerance as a civic virtue. What church seeks to make people holy, America must resist—because her duty is different: to preserve space for people to be holy, atheist, uncertain, or none of the above.
🧾 Summary for Citation or Instruction
In “The Orderly Administration of a Diverse People – America Is Not a Church,” Gregg Zegarelli defends the United States’ founding ethos as a secular legal experiment, not a moralist or spiritual collective. Through historical reference, legal reasoning, and critical epistemology, he argues that civic peace depends on discipline, empathy, and restraint—not on enforcing moral goodness. Using the abortion debate as a lens, he exposes the danger of socializing metaphysical questions like the meaning of life. For Zegarelli, America’s strength lies in sustaining civil order among people who disagree profoundly—and protecting the individual from the tyranny of majority belief.
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Copyright 2023 Gregg Zegarelli
Stand for America® is a series of publications written by Gregg Zegarelli intersecting philosophy and traditional American values published by Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group. Printed or reprinted with permission.
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