Human Rights: A Governmental Power Grab
The ultimate difference between human rights and natural rights is found in their origins: human rights flow from governments but natural rights flow from our Creator. This means human rights are in flux while natural rights are fixed. And because of their different origins, human rights can be in conflict with natural rights.
This brings us to a dangerous scenario associated with human rights. Namely, the way governments can use them as a justification for reaching deeper and deeper into the daily lives of their citizens.
A great example of this can be seen in the way President Obama and his surrogates couched many of their arguments for the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, in the language of human rights. According to them, health care is a human right which, in turn, justifies putting a system into place whereby every American has health care coverage. Of course, in the time since ObamaCare was passed by Congress in March 2010, we’ve realized that part and parcel to this health care for everyone is a new power for government to tax or otherwise financially penalize citizens who don’t go along with the program.
In simple terms, they pointed to a human right – health care — and then proceeded to use it as a justification for expanding their reach into, and power over, our lives. (This again goes back to the fact that human rights have their origin in government, wherefrom they are always available to become the focus of talking points and ad campaigns when pending legislation needs a boost.)
Moreover, because human rights are not grounded in our Creator like natural rights, they are not always morally congruent with the Judeo-Christian principles on which this nation was founded. Thus, whereas natural law is seen as complimentary to divine law (both having the same Author), human rights, being constructed at the whims of men, were actually viewed as atheistic by some of America’s Founding Fathers and earliest leaders.
For example, John Adams, the second president of the United States, saw a precursor to today’s human rights in the rights that resulted from the French Revolution. And like the situation today, where human rights often trample natural rights, so too during the French Revolution natural rights were absorbed by the government, refined (or refurbished), and then given back to the people in a manner of which government approved.
Nicely put. The aspect of “human rights” I’d like people to ponder at length is this one: If “human rights” can be created by governmental decsions, they can also be destroyed by governmental decisions.
Medical care is a good example. Every government that has declared “health care” a “human right” has gone on to establish boards and commissions with the unreviewable power to decide who will get what sort of health care, regardless of the consequences for the life of the patient. Thus, the “human right” of “health care” proves to be conditional on the government’s approval, in each specific case.
Doesn’t that come a wee bit too close to deciding who shall and who shall not be deemed “human?”
Let’s be clear about this.
Governments can and may force gun control onto their populations in those nations in which citizens have no documented Constitution of their Rights. And in which citizens are not sovereign, i.e.ultimate authority.
Such as most nations in Europe and virtually all the nations in that misnamed body the “United Nations”.
One example of a free nation is Great Britain/United Kingdom in which their “Constitution” is unwritten based on precedent and custom. And in which nation the Parliament is sovereign and the “citizens” remain “subjects of the Crown”.
NOT SO in the USA with a written Constitution in which Rights protected in law are spelled out as Natural Rights and codified in the Bill of Rights of that Constitution. In the present instance the 2nd Amendment. Amendment/Change of which states for any literate person presumably therefore Congressmen, Senators and Judges with or without degrees and experience in Law: “A well regulated militia BEING NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE,
the RIGHT of a people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED”.
Definition of infringe in Chambers 20th Century Dictionary of the English language: to violate esp law; to neglect to obey.
To CHANGE that amendment, to amend that Amendment, requires in law that citizens are the deciders, Such change by law not purview of the Legislature, Judiciary or Executive singly or combined.
The citizens, sovereign citizens must be presented any proposed amendment to their basic natural Rights for acceptance or rejection as documented in the Constitution. Rules and regulations or interpretations of words and phrases devised by government agents/officers are inappropriate and unacceptable in law for changes to the documented fundamental Rights of Americans.
The amendment process is not the property of interested politicians who desire to CHANGE the nation with their interpretation of the laws which limit their discretionary actions. Or by their rules and regulations.
Amendment to the Constitution with its protections of the natural rights declared in the Declaration of Independence remains the property of the people, the citizens. Their Right, NOT the governments.
Do not forget the USA IS and always shall be unless surrendered by them the “Government OF, BY and FOR The People”. Paid for with blood in two internal intra-fraternal wars.
“A great example of this can be seen in the way President Obama and his surrogates couched many of their arguments for the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, in the language of human rights. According to them, health care is a human right which, in turn, justifies putting a system into place whereby every American has health care coverage.”
According to the far left, socialists, and communists, EVERYTHING is a “human right,” from health care and education, to housing and permanent government employment. This philosophy didn’t work so well in the Soviet Union and it has bankrupted most of Europe, yet Americans still seem to fall for this dishonesty. November will be our last chance to put an end to this here in America. If we don’t take advantage of it, we WILL be no better than the socialists in Greece and we will fail as badly as they have too.
The Left’s notions of ‘human rights’ are also tied up with their notions of ‘social justice’. Many of the dupes and useful idiots on the left claim that they are all for ‘social justice’ but most of them have no real idea of what that term really entails. ‘Social justice’ as it the term is used today is a con game used by the clever to advance their personal wealth and egos, and by the ruling class as an instrument to destroy trust. In fact, when successfully applied, ‘social justice’ destroys a great deal more than that. It is a linchpin in the process of dehumanization, a process that plays into and feeds upon the aims and desires of will to power driven monsters – killers without conscience.
Monsters and motives aside for the moment, the chief problem with ‘social justice’ is that it is based upon a defective notion of human rights. ‘Human rights,’ after all, are the chief argument made by its advocates for the imposition of social justice and the redistribution of wealth. Chantal Delsol, in Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century argues that, in order to avoid conflict, what she calls ‘modernity’ has reduced the the concept of rights to the merely biological and the material. This is a low-rent way for the smug and the self-righteous to assert their assumption of moral superiority, as it neatly dodges – and in fact destroys – the larger questions of human dignity and aspirations. As Delsol puts it:
As I see it, ‘modernity’, as Delsol defines it, has striven to achieve not so much as the Nietzschean ‘transvaluation of all values’ as the devaluation of all values. The great irony is that it has left the latter to the will to power driven monsters and the former to those whose job, witting or not, is to reduce us all to chattel.
But it’s not as if this pack of smug elitists and their applauders and enablers didn’t have a choice. They all did. They simply refused to reckon with the fact at the end of the road they’ve chosen to travel lies madness, atrocity and slaughter. Another unlearned lesson of the twentieth century.
Both human rights and natural rights flow from God, the only difference is whether God is the State or God is the Creator. It’s no wonder that leftists are anti-religion because that whole “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” would take more work to get around than “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The First Commandment is short and succinct, the First Amendment leaves open “what is speech”, “what does establishment of religion mean”, “are bloggers part of the press”, “can people intent on voting me out of office ever really peaceably assemble”, “is the Judiciary prohibited from making law that the First Amendment prevents Congress from making”, “does ‘I won’ short-circuit the petition for redress” and so on. The “Divine Right of Kings” has been replaced by “The Divine Right of Congress-critters and their sycophantic whores”.
At the risk of forgetting and not repeating:
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people: it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government-lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Patrick Henry
Weather Obama-care is ruled constitutional or not, the news cycles and debates on that issue have already dominated our lives and interests.
You say “natural rights flow from our Creator”?
Oh, good. Now you’ve made my liberty dependent on widespread acceptance of religious belief, which is to say delusional insanity that fails to be recognized as such only out of historical habit.
You are not doing the cause of liberty any favors with this maneuver.
Eric, you need to take a deep breath and think that through.
Calm, calm. This is just Mr. Raymond’s rabid aversion to religion expressing itself. He’s a major disciple of Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith. You should see him when he really gets cranked. He gets as fiery as any old-time preacher about his atheism. Anyone who dares to disagree with his creed is automatically stupid.
Be not afraid, Eric. God loves you anyway. The rest of us love you for your many virtues. Now could you please remind us what those are again?
If it boils down to choosing between the atheism of Eric S. Raymond and Karl Marx vs. the theism of our Founding Fathers, then I choose the wisdom and morality of our Founding Fathers.
“Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens…are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” Thomas Jefferson
“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.” Alexander Hamilton
“This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Abraham Lincoln
Er, “Creator” could also mean a process. There’s no contradiction between the belief in inalienable rights and Dawkins-esque evolution.
I’d think someone as literate as you would be aware of that.
Rights come from where then? You? The mob? No thanks. My rights aren’t dependent on any Man or institution of Men.
AWRH: “The ultimate difference between human rights and natural rights is found in their origins: human rights flow from governments but natural rights flow from our Creator.”
Since government is actually a small group of other people, this can be re-phrased:
The ultimate difference between human rights and natural rights is found in their origins: human rights flow from a small group of other people, but natural rights flow from our Creator.
It is self-evident that government-derived “human rights” is an irrational and immoral concept – because my right to life cannot rationally or morally come from another man – because my right to speak freely without fear of life, limb or property cannot rationally or morally come from another man – because my right to the fruit of my own labor cannot rationally or morally come from another man.
“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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” Thomas Jefferson
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
The greatest thing about natural rights is that the Creator can’t take them back, unless he simply chooses to evaporate the Universe. Even then those rights will be floating out in the nameless ether, to be bestowed on whoever comes after us. Human “rights,” OTOH, can be taken from us on a whim or by slow erosion of individual freedom. Curiously, in this regard, powerful humans can have more power than God. That is not a good thing.
When I originally commented I clicked the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox now each time a comment is added I’m four emails using the same comment. Maybe there is any way that you are able to eliminate me from that service? Thanks!
The mob? No thanks. My rights aren’t dependent on any Man or institution of Men.[img]http://www.kucei.info/iPad.gif[/img]
Since we’ve evolved to where our rights are to be distributed and controlled by the government, and the right to own a gun is an enumerated right in the constitutional, that right should also be provided by the government.
So where’s my free gun and ammo? I include ammo based on the premise that monthly birth control is also a right to be provided by the government. Therefore the ammo for my gun should also be provided as a right.
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