Do people have unalienable rights? Or can a religious, ethnic, or political majority justly do whatever it chooses to a religious, ethnic, or political minority?

At a time when a Princeton University professor is arguing that a nation can justly kill the handicapped or infirm if doing so increases the total sum of its citizen's happiness, this is a hot question . . .

And it is being fought out in the New Jersey Legislature at this very moment!

State Senator Gerry Cardinale and State Assemblyman Michael Carroll have introduced legislation which would have New Jersey's public school students recite a 20-second passage from the Declaration of Independence each day, following the Pledge of Allegiance. The specific phrases to be recited are those proclaiming that people are created equal and endowed by God with unalienable rights. Many organizations have their members recite creedal statements because their experience proves that reciting basic p rinciples encourages respect for them. Cardinale and Carroll intend for their suggested recitation to encourage our children to respect unalienable rights.

Belief in unalienable rights has helped preserve American liberty by causing the nation's religious, ethnic, and political majorities to restrain themselves and not amend away the Constitution's protections of religious, ethnic and political minorities. It has also moved Americans to fight for social justice. The phrases Cardinale and Carroll want recited are those that propelled the abolition movement, the suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement. They constitute the propositions to which Abraham Lincoln said our nation is dedicated.

So why do some legislators oppose Cardinale and Carroll's bill?

Opponents say that the phrase "all men are created equal" is offensive because it excludes women. But the bill requires teachers to inform students that the word "men" in the Declaration's 18th century usage refers to all humankind. Therefore, one suspects opponents have other objections. After you debate them, the real reason for their opposition becomes clear. They know the bill would encourage respect for unalienable rights, but unlike the bill's supporters, they do not want New Jersey's child ren to believe in this traditional American principle.

We live in a post-modern world, and the defining characteristic of modern philosophy is the belief that all truth is subjective and relative. Modernists may value principles such as freedom of religion, but they deny the existence of objective moral tru ths and of unalienable or God-given rights. They want citizens to feel free to change the principles they value and the principles their government protects -- including, if people choose, rights like freedom of religion. At the heart of it, the battle in Trenton is between legislators who want America to recommit itself to its traditional conception of unalienable rights, and modernist legislators who want to sever this commitment. I support the traditionalists.

America's founding generation put justice above democracy. They dedicated this country to the principle of unalienable rights and drafted constitutional provisions to limit our otherwise democratic government from acting against these rights. They crit icized the democratic absolutism of the French Revolution's modernist philosophies because they believed that what the majority wills is not always right.

Europe went in a different direction. There, modernism became dominant. Modernism's belief that there is no such thing as unalienable rights begat socialism: the belief that the power of the state should not be limited.

History shows where these different American and European ways of thinking led. At the same time that America's commitment to unalienable rights led it to becoming more free and just, the growth of socialist thinking in Europe led Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany to becoming murderous.

Americans sacrificed to defeat these socialist regimes. But one wonders if our sacrifices were in vain. Socialist thinking is gaining currency in America. The difficulty that Cardinale and Carroll are having in passing their bill is one sign of this. The tenuring of that professor in Princeton is another. In the past, he would have been derided for justifying murder. But today, he is being heralded as a cutting edge thinker.

America's democratic socialists do not think of themselves as socialists. They simply see themselves as supporting the right of majorities to work their will. They say they support rights, but by this they mean civil or government-given rights, not the unalienable rights of traditional American thought that government can never justly take away. They say they support limited government, but they want the limits on government to be moveable whenever the majority chooses.

America is at a crossroads. Will America continue its historic striving for justice, or will it descend into a despotism of the majority? The direction it goes may be decided in the New Jersey Legislature. The State Assembly has passed Cardinale and Carroll's bill with the intention of recommitting America to its historic national principles. But the legislation will die in the State Senate if New Jerseyans do not call their State Senator and demand that they pass the bill also.

I urge the reader to make this call immediately. There are American principles worth fighting to preserve. Our traditional concepts of truth, justice, and unalienable rights are among them!

Let Governor Whitman Know That You Think That This Bill Should Be Signed!