Our Founding Fathers knew this. In the Declaration of Independence, signed by the Continental Congress in 1776, it is written, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights ..."

Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the other signers of the Declaration were making a philosophical point: Rights come only from a creator of rights.

If rights were given to us by our individual selves, imagine the chaos that would result. If I insisted on my self-serving rights and you insisted on yours, where's the common ground on which to argue if our rights should conflict with each other?

If rights were given to us by other men, such rights would be of little value. What mortal has the authority to grant rights? In a political system where a tyrant hands out rights, the rights can be traded or removed according to the tyrant's needs.

If rights were given to us by democratically elected representatives, we'd still run into a problem. Elected officials are subject to transitory political pressures. A clique temporarily in power can act like a tyrant. The rights would not be anchored to a solid foundation. Some standard or natural law would be needed as the foundation on which to hold the representatives accountable.

Legitimate government does not create rights; it enforces rights that already exist. If rights were created by society, then every minority would be at the mercy of the majority. But it is the fact that rights are transcendent and independent that permits social criticism and reformation to be successful. It is because government itself is subject to a higher moral law that we can identify and rail against unjust laws.

Of course, people have differing views about the nature of the creator or law-giver. Many believe that no such being exists. Nevertheless, the system can work even when atheists acknowledge that meaningful rights can come only from a source outside our sphere of conflicted needs and self-righteous rationalizations. If the word "God" bothers you, substitute "transcendent source" or some other phrase that recognizes that rights come from beyond ourselves.

Some argue that the idea of creator or law-giver is offensive because they see such a God as vengeful. Who would want to make pledges under a God who is a bully? But the Pledge of Allegiance and the Declaration of Independence do not specify a vengeful deity; they do not talk about the personality of God.

The pledge and the declaration limit the characterization of God to a basic concept, a source. We don't need to know about the personality of God to appreciate that a creator is the source of unalienable rights.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is being used by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court to dismantle the Pledge of Allegiance. But one could just as well argue that there should be a separation of toxic philosophy and state. Toxic philosophy is being used in an effort by some intolerant people to drive all religiously informed viewpoints from the public square.

If the words "under God" are stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance one wonders what would replace them. Would the pledge then read, " ... one nation, under the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, indivisible ..."? Heaven forbid.

Mark Thornhill is the North County Times editorial cartoonist.