Simple Inquiry

The following is the text of a real chat I recently was engaged in.  Person is a non-US individual who honestly inquires as to the nature and philosophical basis of our government and value system.  How would you have answered these questions?

Person:

Why so many people against the idea of starship troopers in America ? I'm reading the book, it's really good.
For example, people are not born as a citizen. They have to earn their citizenship if they want to vote or go to elect. I think that's more advance than the democracy nowadays. I mean, everyone have same power on voting, professor and scientists are same with housewives and gangsters, not really make sense.

Me:
Interesting.  The reason we Americans are opposed to this idea is actually rooted in the foundation of the country.  The Declaration is Independence laid the groundwork, although it took another 150 years for the concept to extend to African Americans and women.
We were being ruled by England in the 1700s.  We didn’t like the fact that a monarch and legislative body had so much power over our everyday-lives.  Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Even then, we had various political schemes wherein the rich or powerful would manipulate the system to keep the poor down.  Such as a poll tax (requires ppl to pay a tax in order to vote), a voting only by land/property owners, only white males could vote...
With these restrictions, the poor and lowly of our society had no voice in government policies and could never influence institutions.  Furthermore this led to corruption bc the politicians only wanted to meet the requests of those who could re-elect them (poor and lowly had no rights and no votes therefore were ignored).  This conflict of interest also contradicts the very Declaration of Independence on which we were founded.

Person:
Actually that's not poor people have no chance, that gives poor people a better chance. Like no matter rich or poor, everyone born as non-citizen, but poor people can join army to get citizenship. Join army or do other great contribution to the society is better than being homeless people on street. How many rich people want to join army?
I think poor people are using equality as their excuse to be dick and demand free welfare from society nowadays
Not only poor, everyone want to do less but get more, things going like this is not good

Me:
Interesting thoughts, however, this perspective equates human value to societal function in a very utilitarian way.  Just today in a blog I regularly read, the author notes that in the Declaration of Independence just after stating the above manifesto, Thomas Jefferson wrote that governments “are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  In other words no government can truly govern without the consent of its subjects.
The primary issue is that humans have intrinsic, they “are endowed by their Creator with ...”. You are valuable because God created you in His image and ultimately He chose to die for you personally (Jesus Christ on the cross).  Your value does not come from your position, job title, service, grades, shoes, car, family, nationality, etc.  It comes from Christ as the Creator.
When we navigate philosophically down the path described in the utilitarian plan you have presented, everyone only values him/herself.

Person:
So it's based on Christianity. I guess religion is still a big part of people's life. I thought people don't believe anymore,  most of the young men I met here in Canada don't believe, although a lot of them come from Christian family, they still have different thought with their family. Hope I don't offense anyone, just say

Me:
Don’t worry about offending me.  Honest, open dialog, empty of personal attack, is necessary to understand, communicate, and grow.
Yes, originally the US constitution and government were founded on Christian principles, and for me I will behave based on these convictions because I have described they are the root foundation of the philosophical establishment.  Today, as we have come further away from belief in the Almighty, we have lost this foundation and more people are leaning toward what you have described as wanting something for nothing.  I see that; however, my behavior should not and necessarily must not depend on the behavior of another.  Nor should a government deconvolve by its own design into something the people being governed have not initiated.  There are many ivory-tower thinkers who would rewrite our laws without regard to human life or wellbeing. This must be avoided at all cost.

Person:

Well, respect the tradition and foundation is important. I'm a retro person, but probably I'm not born and raised in North America, I think government must always apply some new policy correspond to the changing of the world. I respect human life, but treat the people who caring the society same as treat the selfish and careless people is not fair to my understanding, although this was defiantly come from good will at the first place.
Let the caring people decide more things of the country, and let the careless people stand aside of politics really that bad?

Me:

Unfortunately, that is to predetermine who some one is and what someone could become.  The message of Jesus is that ALL are welcomed to receive Him regardless of what they have done in the past.

In establishing government based on your biases, you predetermine what will be valued in the society rather than allowing people to determine what they want to be.  That’s not the way society functions and it’s certainly not the way God functions. Prescriptive Invitation versus oppressive obligation.

Person:
Now I get it. It contradict to Christian.

Collision Course

Recently I was seated in a restaurant for breakfast while CNN was airing on a nearby TV.  The anchors were soliciting Facebook feedback to the question they were posing to various audiences.  The question was: "How can we finally eradicate slavery from the modern world?"

A man in Nigeria responded that the only way to eradicate slavery was to take all the wealth from rich people and redistribute it to the poor people.

A college-aged female responded that in order to eradicate slavery, we must provide jobs for everyone so that they have a purpose.

While these are interesting responses and we could discuss the positives and negatives of these potential solutions, each of these is based on a supposition of the cause of slavery.  More interesting to me, however, is the supposition behind the initial question, "How can we finally eradicate slavery from the modern world?"  The underlying, unstated assumption is that slavery is bad; this leads me to ask, "Why is slavery bad?"

Fundamentally, I agree that slavery is bad, however, that is because I have a Christian worldview in which humans have inherent value and purpose which is given them by the Creator.  Ignoring this and reasoning from the point of view to which our society has in general subscribed, namely atheism, and that we are the products of cosmic accidents, I am unable to substantiate that claim.  We are hard pressed to find any intrinsic value in human life which leads us to the relative morality that allows us to abort babies and perhaps take the lives of those who do not have what we esteem to be a 'good' quality of life. 

But following this same path of reasoning, it becomes more obvious that if our origins were not ordered, then our lives are the result of billions of cosmic accidents every day and over the past 4.0+ billion years.  In fact, the atoms and molecules that comprise me are unique from those that form you and may cause me to act in a way that you perceive 'bad'.  In reality, my decisions are nothing more than cosmic accidents waiting to happen.  Each individual is independent even though we may all share some general notion of the same moral code.

Without some universal guiding force, though, why does a ruling majority decide what is acceptable and what is not?  We have no inalienable rights endowed to us by the cosmos, we are nothing more than animated objects; we have no value and no purpose other than what we elect by the collision course of particles in our bodies and minds.  So, I ask again, "Why is slavery bad?"  The answer from this perspective is the most hated response from all generations of children, "Because I said so," except in this case, these aren't your mother's words, they are society's words.