Human Rights vs. Natural Rights
Through this redistributive process, human rights actually diminish the dignity of humanity by encouraging the recipients of “free” to rely on government for solutions. This is the complete opposite of natural rights, which require that we look to ourselves rather than to government for solutions.
Human rights are dependent upon a certain place and time. For example, public transportation has not been considered a human right until recently, nor has internet access, contraceptives, or the most frequently emphasized human right as of late, gay marriage. Natural rights, on the other hand, are not reliant upon a certain place and time. They always were and always will be, just as the Creator who endowed us with them.
Our Founding Fathers did not envision freedom for a time or liberty that was dependent upon the whims of men or the rulers of men. Rather, they understood that Western civilization stood or fell on the timelessness of natural rights and the system of ordered liberty into which those rights fit. It is to our detriment that we trade these rights for human constructs which opportunistic leftists invent in order to inch their way into our lives.
Excellent article that well describes the power of changing and emotionally charging the definition of “rights” while also making them transitory. The left is so emotionally immature as to be fickle although I believe they know very well what they are doing to the point of being sinister.
I would add one thought regarding the comment about paying for human rights. Government has long trashed the natural value of wealth as they have trashed the intrinsic value of natural rights. Inflation of fiat currencies resulting from the debt financing of human rights has destroyed the natural value of wealth.
The Great Frontier by Walter Prescott Webb well describes the actions of government as they have tried to regain control of the outbreak of natural rights.
You are falling into the same socialist trap as most do.
There are no Human rights outside of Natural God given rights. Once we define the Natural rights in our minds, there are no Human Rights that can exist without infringing on the Natural Rights of someone else.
If a person supposedly has a Human Right to an education, that is fine, but who is going to fund that education if not the person being educated? You can look at every supposedly Human Right and walk it back to the funding source and you will find that the funding must be provided by the recipient or it is some form of theft from another person.
Each person has the right to use up his life’s energy in any way he or she wishes as long as they do not infringe on the same rights of other people.
If the supposedly Human Rights infringe on any other person’s Natural Rights then those Human Rights are not Rights of that person. They are coersive laws forced onto the population by tyrants and are contrary to the Natural Rights given by Nature’s Creator to all people.
In other words, there are no such things as Human Rights. This is crap fed to weak minded people by the Progressive, Liberal Communists among us.
Very good.
One thing that worries me is how even natural rigths can be used in a distorted way. Muslims claim that Sharia is The law as given by god, as the most natural rights ever.
The way I understand it Sharia gives Muslims permission to do pretty much whatever they want to unbelievers.
My God tells me I have the right to defend myself against those who would threaten my life and that of my family and friends.
And that in a nutshell is the crux of one of our most critical world problems.
It will be resolved. One side will win and the other will lose.
I intend for the winner to me mine.
As they say, their god wants you to kill for him while Christ died for us. IF that does not say it all, try this one from the blogger Kathy Shaidle: “Jesus raised a little girl from the dead; Mohammed had sex with one.”
This is a battle that has raged throughout mankind’s time on earth. The “Utopians” [Plato, Hobbes, Marx] always teach that the elite know what is best for the plebes/serfs. On the other hand, the “Freemen” [Locke, Levin, Smith] show that men are always better off without the heavy hand of princes and governments ruling their lives. Never doubt for a minute that today’s leftist “princes” aspire to total power. See Mark Levin’s “Ameritopia” for an outstanding discussion of this theme.
As for “Sharia” being given by a god to man, the truth is that it became a written document several centuries after the death of the presumed prophet. Robert Spenser has several books of wisdom on this subject. Again, men seeking power via “religion” are no different from those who seek it via political means.
How long after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus were the gospels written?
About 20 years for the synoptics Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and later for the Gospel of John.
You don’t want to go there, Phil. The documentary evidence for the authenticity of the Old & New Testaments is massive. There isn’t an ancient document that comes anywhere close to it.
You may not like or accept the contents, but denying its authenticity is the intellectual equivalent of saying, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, I can’t HEAR you!” while wiggling your fingers in your ears.
The documentary evidence for the authenticity of the Quran is, uh, let’s be very generous and say it’s …. Well, I was going to say “scant”, but even that is too kind to the point of untruth. The evidence is clearly in the other direction.
The critical characteristic of a true right is that it requires no one else’s assent or cooperation; others must simply agree not to interfere with its enjoyment. The application of that test to any claim of a right is all one needs to see all the way through the prevalent Leftist twaddle.
The notion that we have assertive or affirmative rights — rights that others must be compelled to gratify — is at the heart of the entire Leftist enterprise. Their hijacking of the word “rights” is among the most successful — and evil — linguistic kidnappings in history.
They’ve done this in the classroom by referring to the American military as “imperialist”…
Imperialism is a foreign nation invading another to steal its natural resources and labor either by direct seizure or non-sovereign taxes. The U.S. has no history of this, but in these times the “metaphorical” use of key words and let us devolv into the fantastical. It is no longer required that what you say must be factually true or you get laughed out of the room (or the Faculty Lounge), or swept from office, or even have a law enforced.
With the freedom to – well, for the lack of a better word, lie – the socialists have unbridled purview now.
… and in the public square by labeling capitalism as a greedy system whereby people only become rich at the expense of others.
This is why Marx was forced to cover up the fact that workers got wealthier during the Industrial Revolution in England. Lying is a drag, and carries risk. But, lucky for Karl, the allure of OPM drowned out the protests that the whole book was bullcrap.
***
If a fake fact is so broadly accepted that it carries the weight of a real one, then it’s as good as true in terms of mass behavior at the voting booth and many, many other places. This is the definition of fictive reality. We’re swimming in fake facts now, aided in our quest to find our way by a sold out media and a lying academe.
We now have lie-based laws on the books and legal decisions in precedence based on the unreal: globalism, socialism, environmentalism, racism, sexism (sorry, genderism) and secularism.
To pull this off you can have no rule book guaranteeing freedom. This is why the U.S. Constitution is a “living” document now.
QUOTE: Imperialism is a foreign nation invading another to steal its natural resources and labor either by direct seizure or non-sovereign taxes. The U.S. has no history of this, but in these times the “metaphorical” use of key words and let us devolv into the fantastical. It is no longer required that what you say must be factually true or you get laughed out of the room (or the Faculty Lounge), or swept from office, or even have a law enforced
If you try to make an argument that the US has no history of imperialism you will fail. Here are just a few examples:
1. The Mexican War in the 1840′s; we went to war to increase our land holdings in the Southwest.
2. The Indian Wars; we held genocidal wars to take over the local inhabitants
3. The takeover of Hawaii from a monarchial republic after a coup by American businessmen
4. The Spanish American War; we found ourselves with an overseas empire in the Philippines.
It is not factual or true that America has no history of imperialism. Try to bring this up with an educated audience and you will be laughed out of the room. Ignoring historical fact is not a conservative ideal.
I have a question for you. If we are and have always been an imperialist nation, why at the end of WWII when the entire world was in shambles and America alone was left in tact and with the one “doomsday weapon” that no one else had along with a completely intact military complex … why did we not at that time give the rest of the world marching orders. Even Russia would have had to knuckle under with the threat of total annihilation. We had dropped 2 bombs. They had no way of knowing how many we had. We could have ruled the entire world. Why did we not? Is there a chance that you could be wrong? Is there a chance we are not imperialists?
I’ve always thought the term “human rights” was just another term for socialism. You saw that very clearly with the ObamaCare debate. Health care was now a “human right” that was to be guaranteed by the government and if it could force you to buy insurance to guarantee this human right, what else could it force you to do? What else will become a new “human right” in the future? Are a free college education, free housing, free food, and a government job all “human rights” too? Once you define free medical care as a “human right,” anything can be considered a “human right.”
“Human rights” is just another government term for taking over more control of your life, just as “investments” means more government spending and “revenues” means more taxes. George Orwell warned us about administrations that use false terms to squeeze even more life out of its people. Are we listening?
A very important book to help see the difference between natural rights and “human rights” and how natural rights interrelate is TEN UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES by Robert J. Spitzer.
He argues that the fundamental natural rights are life, liberty, and property and that if a conflict arises between any of them, liberty trumps property and life trumps both. For example, my right not to be a slave supersedes your right to own me as property, and your right to be free to do with your body what you want can’t trounce my right to life if I’m unborn inside you.
I think Jon Stewart has it right on socialism:
“…Apparently, socialism is like cholesterol. Social Security and Medicare are the good kind. Obamacare is the bad kind, unadulterated socialism, a program where everyone will be forced to buy health insurance in a competitive marketplace of private for-profit insurance companies.”
…or if you prefer the NFL:
STEVE KROFT: But the real key to the league’s success is its unorthodox business model. Under league rules, the teams are required to share most of their revenue with each other, which is always a sticking point with some of the most successful franchises, and the more politically conservative owners. … I mean, that’s socialism, isn’t it?
NFL COMMISSIONER ROGER GOODELL: It is a form of socialism. And it’s worked quite well for us.
“Through this redistributive process, human rights actually diminish the dignity of humanity by encouraging the recipients of “free” to rely on government for solutions.”
I am a veteran of the U.S. Army, and though not a combat veteran I was in the Infantry. I am glad our government identified one day in May to honor those who for a defined period of time put their lives and health on the line for their fellow citizens. I am saddened by this report, however:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COMING_HOME_NEW_VETERANS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-05-27-13-40-57
It seems close to half of returning vets are viewing themselves as “disabled” by their experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, any maimed vets deserve special treatment because of their physical injuries, but this report suggests that a great number of them are claiming to have what can rightly in my opinion be labeled an invention of the so-called social sciences, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It used to be called a syndrome rather than a disorder, however a syndrome is a collection of identifiable symptoms that the afflicted have in common, and this is no syndrome. A disorder can be a random collection of any everyday symptoms whatever, bad dreams, chills, bad memories, trouble sleeping, runny nose, etc.
To a vet who might be tempted to dip his beak in fellow-taxpayers’ assets, this is an open invitation, especially when large numbers of comrades are doing the same thing. An analogy would be an open window to one who might just be a passer-by who usually would not be tempted to commit theft, the old fresh-baked apple pie cooling in the window. As Yossarian, a character in Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch 22″ might say: “If everybody is doing it, I would be a fool not to do it too.
Man-given “human rights” can only be delivered by totalitarian government which has the power to destroy God-given natural rights. Tyrranical governments usually start by confiscating the people’s property (pursuit of happiness), followed by their liberty if they speak out too loudly, followed by their life if they take up arms in self-defense – the reverse order of our Declaration of Independence.
Man-given “human rights” are invariably unequal, so that classes, genders or races of people can be pitted against each other, through the democratic process, in “class struggle.” God-given natural rights (life, liberty, fruit of labor) are invariably equal among all people irregardless of their skin color, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation, thus equal natural rights unite people into “One Nation Under God.”
Without enforcement of the Declaration of Independence as our National Natural Law, and amend our Constitution accordingly, we will continue on our road to serfdom and tyranny – via democracy.
In a tape recorded interview in 2001, Barack Obama deplored the Constitution’s emphasis on “negative liberties” to the exclusion of such things as redistribution of wealth:
“But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.”
These words of Obama infuriate me. They show how ignorant he is. With these words, he displays a remarkable lack of knowledge about the circumstances of America’s founding and the historical temperament of those times. If he knew anything about our founders, he would never use the word “redistributive” when talking about the Constitution. Apparently, he has never read “The Federalist Papers.” Our founders found nanny-state, welfare state governments abhorrent.
What our founders believed in is well-documented in “The 5000 Year Leap,” a book every American should read. And again, I encourage everyone to read “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich Hayek. This book will scare you right to your bones because you’ll be able to see much of what Hayek describes already in play in the Obama administration.
The overarching goal of the framers of the Constitution was, precisely, to place imitations on federal government. They’d seen the excesses of the European monarchies up close and personal.
Those selfsame limitations Barack Obama laments.
The 10th amendment (“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”) has been a joke in Obama circles for some time.
The Illustrated Road to Serfdom
thanks.
Did you even read the post above? Or did you just see the words “Obama” and “redistribution” and leap into full Hayek mode? As he [Obama] said of the Warren court: “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth” and the topic never came up again.
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.
- Barack Hussein Obama (before going nationwide)
The trouble with an extemporaneous event such as a radio interview is that there’s no chance to edit. And Barack’s entire career has been one carefully stage managed drive to power. Here, in this quote, he lets out what he really thinks, what now is apparent from his actions as he world’s most powerful individual.
As has been correctly observed by many, justice sooner or later comes from the business end of a barrel of a gun. Karl knew that when he invented the clarion call for economic justice. Now, we not only have that very big bogey to deal with, we’re getting new stuff like environmental justice, which is whatever Lisa and Barack say it is. And it ain’t good.
God/Creator. Nah, Natural rights, yes. By bringing God into the equation you’re saying anyone including the murdering stupid as bats droppings Wahabists also have it right.
John Locke and our Founding Fathers considered natural rights to be God-given because life, liberty and fruit if labor in pursuit of happiness are equal rights for all people, since all people are equally valued in the sight of God.
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s.” John Locke
“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
“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
“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” Samuel Adams
Man-given “human rights” are invariably unequal which means some people unnaturally – via unjust unequal law – possess superior rights – the very definition of tyranny.
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights [via unequal rights] of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
Sorry; John Locke and our Founding Fathers got it right, and that means you have it wrong.
The god of the Wahabists is one of death (murder), subjugation (slavery) and destructive pursuit of happiness – certainly not the same God as in our Declaration of Independence. They have a lesser god – one which would fit the definition of the Devil – an evil god.
They (the founders) recognized not only our right to pursue and own property, but also to be secure in that property…
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”
~John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Governments of the United States of America, 1787
And to defend these and other natural rights, our Founders recognized that we had a right to keep and bear arms which shall not be infringed.
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”
~Jefferson’s “Commonplace Book,” 1774_1776,quoting from On Crimes and Punishment
They tell of variously defined human rights, which at this particular moment include “rights” to education, contraception, public transportation, abortion, and internet access.
Ruth (“the US Constitution ain’t much”) Ginsburg would add a “right to travel” (presumably beyond free subway and bus) healthcare, housing.
Michelle (“food deserts in our cities”) Obama would add a right to food.
In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When
the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to
give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from
responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.
~Edward Gibbon
The Story of the Star Spangled Banner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKfw8nysLA&feature=player_embedded
Leftists, seeking power, are “ism hucksters”.
This Cartoon Seemed Far-Fetched In 1948
“When anybody preaches disunity, tries to pit one of us against the other, through class warfare, race hatred or religious intolerance, you know that person seeks to rob us of our freedom and destroy our very lives.”
The Obama administration has already hired little known racialist Maya Wiley who asserts that “affordable” internet access should be de rigueur in black neighborhoods because it is a right. She almost always accompanies these statements with veiled threats about whites being a minority in 2050 and so “they’d” better get on the ball. That’s the Dem Party and this woman is on youtube.
Obama’s ideal citizen
The Dem Party has found a way to propagandize people to the point where they’ve basically institutionalized failure.
This is why liberals generally hate discussions about Horatio Alger, pulling yourself up by your boots, a meritocracy. The Left is obsessed with the idea white men are sitting on the chest of gays, women and people of color, not just here, but globally, and that’s the long and short of it. So, any response is “just” – sneaking into the country, gaming welfare, 9/11, affirmative action, etc.
Surprise, on a social level, the Dem’s most protected groups are failing. They are taught to look everywhere but to themselves for success and failure.
Hey Tans, this EBT thing looks like welfare w/o the footwork. Who sez bureaucrats don’t like progress?
***
I remember several years ago walking through the tunnel in the basement between the Federal Courthouse and Minneapolis City Hall. The county Finance Center was down there, a big room with a long counter manned by social workers. It was all rat there for all to see, visible through glass walls. The room that day was filled with crowds of hijabbed Somali immigrant gals. Musta been Check Day. All of the women were scowling, the ones at the counter bickering with their servants. It seemed they were pissed off about the hassle they were put through to collect their rightful free money, them thar gubmint checks.
With EBT, I’m sure these Moslimas are no longer put through that needless humiliation. Mark one up for progress. Maybe Prez Barack Hussein should comment on this piece of automation. I wonder if those social workers since laid off.
Yes Alarmed, ain’t progress grand ?
And for Muslims, particularly in Britain, bringing down the west, “the system”, through monetary demands, like welfare, is a conscientious and intentional dimension of “soft jihad” preached as a technique & strategy in jihadist mosques.
People forget that our good buddy Osama was as intent on destroying monetary systems (it wasn’t for nothing that the symbol, the WTC, was twice the target) as he was on doing Allah’s great work and slaughtering those who took issue with his philosophy of life.
If the government (state, local, or federal) is going to get into the “rights” manufacturing business then here is a right that I wish to be created. I want to have the right to be able to know exactly how our taxpayer dollars are being spent down to the last detail. I want us all to be able to Google an individual name or business entity name and see a list of all revenues transferred from the public treasury to that individual or business on an annual basis. The list should include all revenue received regardless of taxpayer funded origin. Government pensions, direct payments, subsidies, healthcare benefits (less individual “contributions”), etc. Then we could each come to a conclusion as to who is worthy and who is milking the system. Maybe a little embarrassment might enter as a factor and relieve significant numbers of grifters from the system. It’s our money so why shouldn’t we have the same “rights” that the SEC insists upon relative to our private investments?
Now this is just silly. First of all, the Constitution makes no distinction between “natural” or “god-given” rights and any other kind of rights. Indeed, Article 9 of the Bill of Rights clearly states that “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Secondly, in The Declaration of Independence, from which the phrase “natural rights” is drawn, those that are spelled out–life, liberty, pursuit of happiness–are described as being among the natural rights of man, not the sum total of them.
So there’s plenty of room in our laws and history for all different kinds of rights to be recognized in the United States beyond those listed or thought of as “natural” or “god-given.”. Please let’s just get real and talk some honest politics here rather than this boodgedy-boogedy “god-given” and “natural” nonsense.
Francis@#4 summed it up nicely. If your “rights” require any more from me than an agreement not to interfere with your enjoyment of them, you are likely creating more harm than good. You have the right to your opinion, however.
Largely, I agree. However, the “new” rights that the left talks about always involve the redistribution of wealth, or the establishment of special privileges, whereas the Bill of Rights and the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” don’t require anything of the sort. I think that is an essential distinction, and helps to define what are and aren’t legitimate “rights”.
Another point I would make is that it’s not clear how the Bible establishes the rights that the Founders believed to be God given. It’s closer to the truth to say that the Enlightenment established the basis for the beliefs of the Founders, which was essentially a rational examination of human nature and the kind of governmental and economic systems that bring out the best in it. Their beliefs were well informed by a thorough knowledge and understanding of ancient civilizations, something sorely lacking in the modern mind, which contributes to the persistent errors of leftist ideology.
JohninOhio….I think that you are working too hard at this. The Founders did not have to look to the Bible nor reference the Enlightenment to come to the obvious conclusion that the Creator (define that as you wish) intended individual liberty for mankind. The obvious intent by the Creator for the lowly skunk was to grant it the “means” by which it could preserve its individual liberty from its ultimate denial which is death. The skunk certainly did not receive the means and the subsequent right (logically assumed, or why would the means of defense have been created in the first instance?) from governing skunks but, obviously, from a greater power which was the Creator of Skunks. I, also, claim my rights as having been bequeathed by my Creator…..not by governing skunks. Simple observation certainly occurred to the Founders.
I thought what I said was pretty simple and straight forward. You, on the other hand, seemed to me to be working too hard at it.
You state that “It’s closer to the truth to say that the Enlightenment established the basis for the beliefs of the Founders, which was essentially a rational examination of human nature and the kind of governmental and economic systems that bring out the best in it. Their beliefs were well informed by a thorough knowledge and understanding of ancient civilizations, something sorely lacking in the modern mind, which contributes to the persistent errors of leftist ideology.”
When I stated that I thought that you were working too hard at this I was referencing the fact that you are leaving too many holes in your argument which serve as portals for attack by anyone trying to impose upon you the notion that there is no such thing as rights received from a Creator. Old-fashioned stuff by a bunch of white guys with silly god-fearin’ ideas that don’t fit modern thinking, you know. Think “self-evident” and replace the word “believed” with “knew” and forget all the stuff about the Bible, Christian belief, the Enlightenment, ancient civilizations, etc.
“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”.
Nothing in the above says that the Founders “believed” that “…they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,…” because it says so in the Bible, or that they were inspired by the Enlightenment, or the ancients, etc. They “knew” it because it was “self-evident”.
yooper
Thanks for looking out for me. But how can anything be self evident without knowledge? And without careful reasoning? If it’s so obvious, why did Jefferson have to make a point of it? It’s self evident to educated, intelligent people, very much in short supply.
“Stonewall” above provided this..
“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
That makes it all very simple.
Regards.
Yooper
I would like to have a definition of Hamilton’s ‘divinity’ and your ‘Creator’.
I don’t believe there is a supernatural, self aware benefactor of Man some where out there, or here. I take the universe and it’s laws as an existential given, along with the process of natural selection which made us what we are. Our rights are part of our human nature, which is obvious, not by simply looking inward to what we feel or need, but also by looking outward to what others have felt and needed throughout time, and observed from historical knowledge how societies and governments that were in or out of synch with that sense of rightness fared, in terms of longevity, internal unity, contentment of it’s people and it’s economic success.
If you base your assertion of rights on a supreme being that more and more people no longer believe in, you undermine belief in those rights. The basis of rights has to be seen in a new light, or we will vote ourselves into tyranny.
“I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy; pray for me.” Alexander Hamilton
http://www.faithofourfathers.net/hamilton.html
Science is the process of determining the behavior of matter (the universe) using observation, testing (controlled observation), and reason; with reason defined as the ability to observe, comprehend and accept self-evident truth.
[Reason is] “the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, as it has got by the use of its natural faculties; viz, by the use of sensation or reflection.” John Locke
Faith is any belief undiscoverable by science, which is to say any belief based on that which is unobservable and un-testable, which is to say any belief beyond the discovery of reason and science.
“Where revelation comes into its own is where reason cannot reach. Where we have few or no ideas for reason to contradict or confirm, this is the proper matters for faith… that Part of the Angels rebelled against GOD, and thereby lost their first happy state: and that the dead shall rise, and live again: These and the like, being beyond the discovery of reason, are purely matters of faith; with which reason has nothing to do.” John Locke
Religion contains faith that an eternal God created matter (the universe) with a finite beginning – the Big Bang – a supernatural belief not based on direct observation of that which preceded creation. If the universe was not created by God, then where did it come from? We know from the first law of thermodynamics that without outside force neither mass nor energy can create its self, nor can mass or energy be destroyed; the sum of mass and energy is always constant in any closed system, including the universe it’s self. Mass can be converted into energy, and visa-versa, i.e.: mass and energy are limited to interchangeability (E = MC2), but according to the first law of thermodynamics only nothing can come from nothing. It is self-evident that if the universe was not created by God, then, since it did not create its self, and since it cannot be destroyed, it must be eternal in time, both in the past and in the future – possibly an infinite series of Big Bangs. According to the most fundamental laws of science, a self-created universe is an un-scientific belief – an irrational belief. The most basic laws of science tell us that outside power is a requirement for the creation of nature’s mass and energy. So, we are left with either an eternal un-created God, with no beginning and no end, who created our finite universe with a Big Bang (religion), or we have an eternal un-created universe with no beginning and no end (atheism). Since faith is any belief based on that which is unobservable, such as belief in God, and since no one was or could be present to observe the beginning of a Universe with no beginning, belief in an eternal un-created universe (atheism) is based on faith.
So, johninohio has his atheist faith and I have mine, but my faith is the same as that of our Founding Fathers while his is the same as that of Karl Marx.
“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion… Religion is the opium of the masses.” Karl Marx
Stonewall
I do believe that religion is the opium of the people. but it doesn’t follow that it should be destroyed for the betterment of the people. Some will abandon it because they don’t need it. Others will retain it because they do need it. Marx sought the destruction of religion because it competed with his religion–communism. I am not a communist. I’m a conservative. I say live and let live.
I’m not going to argue religion here because It’s OT. But I will try to correct some false notions you have about my atheism.
I willingly admit that atheism requires faith–in cause and effect–in the apparent absolute consistency of the natural laws we have so far discovered (please spare me the quirky behavior of subatomic particles. We don’t live in that realm). It takes faith to believe that the past predicts the future, scientifically speaking.
It isn’t unscientific to recognize and acknowledge that there is a limit to the applicability of the concept of cause and effect. It’s derived from the universe as it exists, but to take it as an absolute when contemplating the beginning of the universe, a “time” before the existence of time, matter, energy and space is illogical. As Hawking has said, the beginning of the universe was a singularity. There is no model that can describe the pre-universe. It’s closed to us. So given this, it is absurd to look for a “cause”, divine or otherwise. The term in this application is meaningless.
But what is irrational is responding to questions that are impossible to answer with hypothesis that do nothing but give one a fuzzy comfy feeling about life and death. A simple “I don’t know and probably never will” is sufficient. Let us discover who and what we are, then base our economic and governmental systems on that, with the goal of individual happiness and success as a specie.
johninohio,
It is a pleasure to debate with a truly open-minded atheist – a minority within a minority. I hope you don’t mind if I turn some of your ideas around.
I believe that atheism will be the opium of the people if it becomes the dominant faith, but it doesn’t follow that atheism should be destroyed for the betterment of the people, because in its purely personal form it does no harm to its neighbor. Some will abandon atheism because they don’t need it; others will retain atheism because they do need it. Like you I am a conservative; I say live and let live.
In my view the Achille’s heel of atheism is not intellectual; it is moral.
If human rights derive from God, then all men naturally possess equal rights, and equality before law follows as a matter of course. Under God all men are created equal.
If human rights do not derive from a source higher than man (God), then a man (King or Dictator) or group of men (Oligarchy) will make its claim to be the source of human rights – and thereby the source of law – rendering some (themselves) more equal than others. Ultimately equal rights and equality before law requires a source of human rights and law (Natural Law) which is higher than man.
“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
johninohio,
If atheism can express the idea that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by an eternal un-created universe with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the (creative) pursuit of happiness – then atheism will have evolved to a moral position equal to the Judeo-Christian religion of our Founding Fathers. Such a “religious atheism” would, in my mind, be as acceptable, in moral terms relating to real social justice, as my own understanding of Christianity – I suppose it might not be fully acceptable to God – but that is none of my business.
Duvid. Is it not the case that the first ten amendments (the so-called Bill of Rights) were added to the Constitution for the sole purpose of placing limitations upon and, thus, preventing the federal government from usurping or encroaching upon the “natural rights” of private ownership of property and individual liberty? I believe that the answer is an emphatic “yes”. From that it would seem that your statement which includes “….this boodgedy-boogedy “god-given” and “natural” nonsense” is itself rather “boodgedy-boogedy”. Is it not?
Is it your assertion that your basic rights as an individual are nothing more than what other individuals acting in the name of government deem proper for you to possess? If so, good luck with living under that relationship with the governing class.
Duvid Ben Shlomo was simply saying that the Constitution’s existence does not have to be justified by claiming that human rights are bestowed by a Christian supreme being. And I was agreeing with him. However, believing this is important to Christians because it motivates them to stand up for those rights against those who would violate them. Those who would violate them don’t for a minute believe rights are bestowed by a god, so to them, the god talk is meaningless. That’s why we have the second amendment–for those who believe rights are inviolable, whatever their reason for believing that may be, can fight back.
Unfortunately, unlike the 18th century, today’s citizens with nothing more than small arms aren’t well prepared to resist a modern army. Moral suasion and superior numbers are the only advantages we have.
I believe Duvid ben Schlomo may be the serial troll “Schlomo” from FrontPageMag.com. Typical leftist claptrap.
Our money is not our property, money is a system that only a state can manage. This is in the constitution. Further,it diminishes no one’s dignity to rely on the fire dept., the armed forces, the post office, and a myriad of other services making our country great that you ‘conservative’ writers so conveniently forget. Oh, until you need them. Then you just love that ever present unemployed working class.
This is in the constitution.
Then why did the feds pass that law making it a crime to trade in a preferred currency such as gold instead of the dollar?
It’s not a crime to trade with gold. You can buy good and services with gold, scrip, or goats as long as the seller is willing to accept them. You only need greenbacks to pay taxes.
It’s not a crime to trade with gold. You can buy good and services with gold, scrip, or goats as long as the seller is willing to accept them.
All true, but mark my use of the word currency above. Even if small denomination gold coins or bullions could be made generally acceptable, they still wouldn’t be very current. One could try to do business in recognizable private coins, but good luck getting past the taxes and regulations. Liberty Dollars is the present day example of an alternative, but lo and behold the feds just moved in to declare them “contraband” and stated they were “duty bound to confiscate them.” Some currency that.
So yes, you could barter on a third party currency of any kind, but effectively it’s not an option for doing volume business. This reality is much like you could enforce the nation’s sovereignty by enforcing illegal immigration laws, but doing that would be against the law in most cities, and maybe everywhere if Eric the Red wins his lawsuit to force Arizona to not enforce its version of the law that the feds, under both RINO and globo-socialist, have declined to enforce.
I’m not sure what your comment has to do with the concept of natural rights which are basic to our identity as human beings and have no societal requirement for their approval or their funding.
The social services to which you refer are not rights but simply services provided by the collective.
OZZY:
That’s absurd. Of course our money is our property. It represents our energy, time, knowledge and talent that we used to produce something of value for others. We use that money in exchange for the products and services produced by the very same efforts of our fellow men. The money was printed by the government, but not for their exclusive use.
Police and fire departments are provided by states and cities, not the federal government. Those activities are not mandated by the US Constitution. The post office is a government service mandated by the Constitution, along with several other services. But this doesn’t amount to socialism, certainly not to the level that exists today, as well as the socialism your buddy Obama and his friends are working to impose on us in the future.
As an atheist/agnostic with Jewish cultural background, I never gave the “creator” clause in the Declaration of Independence a great deal of thought, not until the rise of the conservative blogs and other conservative media emphasized it. And as a child of the 50′s I always thought of “human rights” more of an aspirational idea, as in “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, a United Nations thing. I was a big United Nations geek, I had a great UN stamp collection (I hope my brother still has it). There’s another category of rights that you’ve overlooked, and those are “civil rights”, i.e. rights guaranteed by government, that you have termed “human rights”, these include equal access to public accommodation and employment. I would characterize “gay marriage” as you put it, or marriage equality for gay/homosexual couples, as either a civil or natural right (right of freedom of association).
I’m not sure that freedom of association can be defined as marriage. I don’t see marriage as a natural or civic/assertive right but a particular mode of civic organization.
Equality of access to various public services is simply definable under the term of ‘equality of treatment as a citizen’. I don’t see how the term ‘rights’ gets into the definition. As others have pointed out, the problem with using the description of ‘rights’ in reference to obtaining social services is that the claimant begins to assert that they are ‘his’ by virtue of being human rather than ‘his’ by virtue of being a contributing member of the society.
So, is education a ‘right’ by virtue of my being human and thus, others must pay for it. Or is it a provision of ‘equal access’ by virtue of my being a citizen and a contributor to the costs of this service?
Public education has been so ubiquitous in this country, at least through high school, that I never thought of it in terms of ‘rights’ per se. It just seemed like a service that communities provided through their taxes, like garbage collection and police and fire departments. The ‘right’ to equal access to this service has been guaranteed by legislation under the moniker ‘civil rights’. I hope I’m not belaboring the obvious. So, I guess you can call it anything you want.
Marriage is not a civil right, as if a government creates it.
It comes before government or any civil organization. As the most basic form of human society, marriage has its own intrinsic nature which a civil organization or government can recognize and to some extent regulate but they cannot legitimately alter it.
If a government or even a church created marriage, it could change the definition at will. But it didn’t so it can’t.
This will be called bigotry, but a government cannot legitimately say a man can marry a man or a woman a woman because that is not in the nature of marriage.
So, then marriage must be a natural right. But marriage has a slew of civil consequences, enshrined in law, created by mortal legislators, from the joint filing status of the IRS, to preferential inheritance rules (IRS again), to hospital visitation rules, to…. (I could go on, but you get the picture). And, just as we needed our first government document to protect our natural rights, through the Bill of Rights, we have through the years seen fit to safeguard other rights to the citizenry, equality of access to public service without regard to race, creed, or gender comes to mind, and these laws have been called collectively “civil rights laws”. Now, some citizens are interested in having those civil consequences of marriage endowed on them and their life partners of the same sex. Other people dispute this and regard this as an assault on their relationships. My own opinion, is that this last statement is nonsense, magical thinking. Denial of marriage privileges to homosexuals is not going to make homosexuals go away. Granting marriage equality to homosexuals is not going make them recruit your children.
Marriage isn’t a natural right, but rather a natural AND religious imperative. I assert this is a significant difference. Government has been involved with the institution of marriage (creating legislation, etc.) historically to support the social good it provides.
Exactamundo. And since many religious institutions are just fine with it, and it’s a societal good, as you say, then marriage should be available to same sex couples. Thank you.
It’s funny, not so long ago my teacher asked us to write an essay and one of the subject that could be chosen from was “human rights”. The teacher expected us to write about how scandalous it was that it was not applied everywhere… or something similar. He didn’t expect me to write a paper similar to this article boldly stating that the problem with the declaration of human rights was the declaration of human rights.
But I still wonder why it widely accepted. I’m sure that if you made a poll asking :”Universal declaration of human rights, good or bad?” you would get 99% good.
I know not everyone believes in a creator, and if they do they might not believe in him the same way as the next guy; therefore, when it comes to rights I think that “faith in a higher power” should be left out of politics and law in this modern time we live in. That’s our human right.
John Locke and our Founding Fathers considered natural rights to be God-given because life, liberty and fruit if labor in pursuit of happiness are equal rights for all people, since all people are equally valued in the sight of God. These giants, upon whose shoulders we stand, had faith in a higher power which was injected directly into American politics and law. Sorry buddy; I’m with them, and therefore not with you.
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s.” John Locke
“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
“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
“The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.” Samuel Adams
Man-given “human rights” are invariably unequal which means some people unnaturally – via unjust unequal law – possess superior rights – the very definition of tyranny.
“Law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights [unequal rights] of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
I agree with you Aaron, and thank you to Stonewall for apropos quotations from our Founders. As I said on another post here, as a person from a “radically secular” background, I never paid attention to the “creator” part of the Declaration. I thought “self-evident” and “inalienable” were enough. And that “governments were instituted among men, deriving just powers from the consent of the governed”. No creator here. This was a radical departure in the 18th century, when most old world societies still had monarchs who professed divine right to rule (although that concept had been fading fast for decades). And even G-d needed the civil authority of the church through the Middle Ages to work his will on earth. Fast forward, now it’s up to us to divine the immortal’s purpose in our lives. It’s a bit lonely, but will we have the courage to move forward to meet the challenges of this new day?
The medieval so-called divine rights of kings represented a system of unequal rights where some (Kings, Princes, Bishops and Priests) were more equal than others, and was thus a form of tyranny, as it was the basis for unequal laws. God is not the author of unequal rights and unequal laws – man is. God does not need any civil authority – not the Church – not a King – not a Marxist or Fascist oligarchy – not an Islamo-Fascist oligarchy – all of which fly in the face of God – because each establishes a tyranny of unequal rights and unequal laws.
What are you talking about? True, God does not “need” anything, but God did establish both the civil authorities (cf. Romans 13) and the ecclesiastical authorities (cf. 1 Timothy, Matthew 16:18 and John 20:23), for His good purposes. Claiming that these institutions are worthless is nothing short of rebellion against God, and how dare you claim for yourself the authority of a bishop!
“Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God… For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil.” Romans 13
Considering the fact that the Medieval and Renaissance Monarchies of Christian Europe engaged in the self-serving system of collectivist feudalism, where the Kings, Princes, Bishops and Priests rode on the backs of the common man (their serfs), and since they frequently engaged in unjust wars of aggression; it is reasonable to conclude that not all of the “higher powers” referred to in the New Testament are ordained of God. The same, of course, can be said of modern Marxist, Fascist and Islamo-Fascist dictatorships. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that those who resisteth the unjust power are in obedience with the ordinance of God.
“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” Thomas Jefferson
“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?” Thomas Jefferson
“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.” Abraham Lincoln
I do not claim the ecclasiastical authority of a Bishop, but I do claim God’s gift of reason. BTW, Christian Bishops, like all men, are subject to jealousy, envy, greed and violence. Some Christian Bishops have chosen evil (rejection of the Holy Spirit) in spite of the teaching and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Unfortunately, the Left has this one wired. They aren’t just “making up” new rights; they are “unpacking” classic natural rights. They aren’t interested in natural rights in principle – as a bunch of potential “opportunities” that we are “free” to “take advantage of” if we so desire. They want to give everybody everything they need in order to exercise those natural rights to the fullest. “To the fullest” implies “equally.” They consider it unacceptable that some people have the resources to exercise their natural rights to the fullest while others do not. In their view, it is the government’s job to make up the difference.
I don’t know whether this is a sincere belief or an Alinsky-esque attempt to “make the other side live up to its principles.” I suspect the latter, since Leftists are never tired of telling us what a farce the Constitution is because everybody isn’t equal in every way. Are they trying to build a better society or are they constructing some kind of reducto ad absurdum, carrying the promises of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to their literal extreme?
Human Right or natural right, you can’t have a modern society where only 10 or 15 percent of the population is educated.
This is the weakness of Hawkins’ argument.
Though seeing the basket case the public schools are in, I am compelled to believe that it will be parochial schools that are responsible for educating people. You can’t read the Bible if you can’t read.
the theory of natural rights ….
“Natural rights are rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable. In contrast, legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by the law of a particular political and legal system, and therefore relative to specific cultures and governments.”
“The theory of natural law is closely related to the theory of natural rights. During the Age of Enlightenment, natural law theory challenged the divine right of kings, and became an alternative justification for the establishment of a social contract, positive law, and government — and thus legal rights — in the form of classical republicanism. Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by some anarchists to challenge the legitimacy of all such establishments”
Also note how “rights” are being used to purchase votes. The ideas of a “right” to high-speed internet, free college education and student loan bailouts, free healthcare, etc., are all being trotted out by this administration in order to buy votes from the young and others who have deliberately never been taught otherwise by the public schools. These things are just baubles dangled in front of the eyes of the easily distracted so they don’t notice their true rights are being stolen from them.
Could you supply a link to these dastardly cowards who are claiming all these new rights to high-speed internet, student loan bailouts, free healthcare? I want to drag them out into the light and push their heads into a bathtub.
Excellent article, although I would not call leftists “masters” at using words but persons determined to distort meanings in order to achieve their objective. We can be “masters” too if we draw deeply upon or nation’s heritage, as author Hawkins did here. We don’t need to inflate the leftists’ egoes to acknowledge their deceit.
“Magical thinking,” eh? Just because government is needed to secure our rights, does not mean that there is no limit to how government defines them. A relationship between two persons of the same sex is not a marriage, and therefore there can be no right to it. Merely sneering at those who defend marriage and the natural differences between the sexes will not set aside what is universally known and understood, except those under the domination of their untamed passion or their intellectual conceit in taking contrary positions at various with common sense.
“Our money is not our property, money is a system that only a state can manage.”
What kind of clueless nonsense is that?
First: “Our money is not our property”
MONEY is a representation of value used as a means of exchange. That value can represent several things:
The hours, skills and effort you provided to an employer, who paid you in “money” (more accurately, in units of currency). Your skills, your effort and the time out of your life – bloody well are your property, unless you are a slave, providing them for no recompense.
A measure of commodities: food, clothing, a house, whatever. Once purchased by you, using the money obtained by your labor, those commodities bloody well are your property as well.
A measure of services. You pay a service provider (Doctor, Lawyer, Hooker) for their services with the value represented by the money paid for your services. Whatever you paid to the service providers, well, now it’s damn well their property, unless you’ve captured them as slaves.
“Our” property? There is no “our”. My life, my time, my labor, my skills, are not “our” property. They are MINE. And MY money, honestly obtained, is MY PROPERTY, which I will exchange to someone else as I see fit. Want proof? Try and make me provide my labor to serve your purposes for no recompense. You will fail. Only the Government, by application of FORCE, can “appropriate” an excessive portion of the value received by me for the provision of my labor, and get away with it. And whether they know it or not, there are severe limits to how much they can get away with.
“money is a system that only a state can manage”
Balderdash.
The CURRENCY we use is a legal fiction. Fiat currency. Up until 1913, the Government performed its correct purpose by guaranteeing the integrity of the coinage. That is the meaning and intent of the portion of Section 8 of the Constitution, which states” The Congress shall have the power to coin money . . and regulate the value thereof.” Up until 1913, that meant minting coins with set amounts of gold, silver, nickel, and copper content, and controlled (i.e., “regulated”) the measures and units of measure involved. The result? Averaged out from 1776 to 1913, the purchasing power of the Dollar was very little changed. The purchasing power of a 2012 dollar has decreased, cumulatively, to 1/25th (or less, depending where you look on the Federal Reserve’s website) from that 137 year average. The point is not that “money is a system that only a state can manage”. The point is that the state MUST manage the currency CORRECTLY and HONESTLY. Fiat currency, as we have now, is a fraud and a cheat. It allows Government functionaries to produce “money” out of thin air for questionable and fraudulent purposes, and in the process destroying the purchasing power of the currency. Thereby devaluing our property, our labour, our savings, and the efficiency of our economy.
Government “management” of the US Dollar has become a con game to steal as much from the citizen as possible.
Any competent metal shop, striking consistent coins of precious metals, and any competent private bank issuing notes redeemable in those metal coins could do an infinitely better job of maintaining the integrity of the coinage as directed in Sections 8 than the frauds we now have in D.C.
And as far as what someone else “just love(s) when you need them” . . . your opinion is utterly without value.
OK, OK. / Rant off.
What utter nonsense! Herewith a few points contesting yours:
1. Money IS a medium of exchange. As soon as you take it in exchange for your work, it ceases to hold any of the value of that work. Instead, its value is the value of what you can then buy with it, i.e. what goods you can exchange for it.
2. In order for the markets to function, the value of money in terms of particular goods and services MUST change. Why? Because the value of goods and services in terms of money MUST change in order for supply and demand for each of those goods and services to tend toward equilibrium. This applies to the labor market as well.
3. Property is a legal fiction which is maintained to more efficiently adjudicate possession of goods by households and other entities and transfers of goods between them. Thus you may possess money as a matter of fact, but it is the law, i.e. the government in its judicial role, which establishes that the money you possess is your property.
a. As noted above the value for which you can exchange the money you possess can and will change over time due to the operation of the markets.
4. Our currency is not purely fiat currency. It is backed by reserves consisting, in the main, of federal debt, i.e. “monetized federal debt”.
5. In addition, remaining principal on loans issued by private banks are also money, i.e. “monetized private debt”, thanks to the “fractional reserve system”. These constitute the “ledger money” to which Professor and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke refers.
a. It is this creation of “debt money” by private banks which is the biggest scam and redirection of wealth to favored family and friends. As someone once remarked, “the best way to steal from a bank is to own one”.
6. Basing the value of a currency on quantities of precious metals not only limits its usefulness as a medium of exchange but places control of that public function under the monopolists who can — and will with that incitement — control the supply of those precious metals.
7. Private banks gave us unlimited fractional reserve banking and its attendant boom and bust cycles. That is, booms when the private banks feel like lending money out — inflating the money supply — and busts when they figure the people are too deep in debt to repay.
a. The LAST thing we would ever want is control of the money passing from a government elected by the people to gold hoarders and private bankers!
b. Yet that is PRECISELY what we have had, with a few notable exceptions, one of them being the Civil War under President Abraham Lincoln.
c. Excluding the gold hoarders is not significant under the fiscal-debt based Federal Reserve Note.
“Property is a legal fiction… you may possess money as a matter of fact, but it is the law, i.e. the government in its judicial role, which establishes that the money you possess is your property.”
Not true. Property is the fruit of an individual’s labor, and since an individual’s labor is part of himself, the fruit of labor, by Natural Law, belongs to the laborer, thus private property is not established by the government in its judicial, executive or legislative roles, but by God’s self-evident Natural Law.
“God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho’ all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man… Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” John Locke
I disagree with both sides on this, Jefferson’s eloquence notwithstanding. Rights have always been a legal fiction, for both the governed and the governors. My book presents my alternative conception more fully than I can here.
Natural (equal) rights have always been a moral truth, frequently corrupted by legal fictions (unequal law).
“There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. He who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man.” Cicero
“All are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.” John Adams
Since the UNiacs & pals are interested in setting out “new” rights, here’s one from Abe Lincoln: the right to *revolution.* In his First Inaugural he recognized the legitimacy of the people’s altering their government, “or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”
Sorry, but I reject the premise that our woes are due to evil manipulation by those silver-tongued devils of the left. ‘Fraid it’s worse than that.
In the case of natural law, what you’re looking at is the wisdom of natural law philosophers down the ages versus the doodling of (not by coincidence hard-to-define) political scientists and social, usually socialist, engineers. The philosophers — starting with the Stoics, through Rome, Grotius, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Paine, Hegel and about a zillion others up to and including the Declaration itself — are usually seen nowadays as a bunch of dead white men, best abandoned.
And the main reason it happened is because we let it happen. Fortunately, the pendulum is shifting at last, on this and many other issues; there are many, many battlefields where the war will be fought and won.
The time for convenient fictions is over. The way the mess actually happened isn’t complex: the vacuum left by the silence of decent people is always filled quickly, by nonsense, innuendo and abuse. If an easy scapegoat doesn’t show up (usually it doesn’t), those who fell asleep at the wheel tend to run around mumbling how busy they are. At the very least, the effect is to preserve the status quo, since vested interests by definition thrive best when the status quo is preserved (Romney and Obama, Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee).
That is what we have to change, and it’s got less to do with slick wordsmiths on the left than it has with our own shortcomings. The stakes are the highest. Romney is at best a leaky cork to stick in the hole for a while.
We need much more, and it’s the labor of generations. Meanwhile, some new Tom Wolfe please write The Bonfire of the Teachers.
The way the mess actually happened isn’t complex: the vacuum left by the silence of decent people is always filled quickly, by nonsense, innuendo and abuse.
Yes.
And yes to Bonfire of the Teachers, public education having become a means of spreading and entrenching the insanity.
Your points are well taken. But who are “we”? Our slide toward totalitarianism didn’t just start say, 50 years ago. It became visible to anyone paying attention about 100 years ago and has been surging ever since. But it’s roots lay in the 19th century. What can we do in the next 50 years that will be more effective than that which freedom loving people of the past 100+ years have attempted, unsuccessfully?
Personally, I think it will take a complete collapse of the economy, and revolution, and perhaps a breakup of the US into two or more sovereign nations.
I would argue that the slide backwards has been especially intense in the past 50 years or so, and not at all unintentional.
Ideological subversion/psychological warfare
The functional effect of ‘natural rights’ being God-given is that no human authority or government can revoke or otherwise interfere with them. In that bare-bones structural sense, the ‘God-given’ operates as an anchor or Ground that is somehow beyond any human authority to tinker or withdraw.
But it seems to me that there is more to it as well. The Framers created the American system and structure in a Moment in Western and world history when the Afterglow of Christendom and the Medieval Synthesis of the Judeo-Christian (not to be confused with current American religious ‘Chhristian fundamentalism’) was still strong, even though the Enlightenment had more or less formally moved beyond that Synthesis and its Ground.
Thus the Framers could avoid formal government reliance on ‘religion’ while simultaneously they could count upon the general ‘Christian’ consensus that was still very much alive among the majority of the American populace.
And that corpus of Christianity’s thought – theology and political thought – provided the unique Ground for the American Experiment: a benevolent God in whose Image all are made / which Image imparted a fundamental dignity to all humans / and thus certain ‘rights’ flowing from that Image and that dignity / which rights were beyond the power of any human authority to revoke or deny.
No other world religious system provided such a matrix. A matrix which provides both a template of what it means to be genuinely human and of what fundamental boundaries a government must be bound by.
Efforts to have solidly-grounded ‘natural rights’ (which, I agree, are vital) without the ‘God’ bit strike me as akin to wanting the use of the ship without getting it or yourself wet. It is precisely the ‘Beyond’ origin of the rights that makes them impervious to human tinkering, and it is precisely the nature of the Christian Creator that imparts the template of genuine human-ness.
Thus it provides – to use the pithy German – “Grund und Grenze”: both the Ground for the right and the Boundaries that Shape the human and limit the government.
The post-1972 American Left has sought to toss all of this. The ‘non-religious’ Right seeks to somehow retain it without the ‘God’ bits. I don’t think either approach can end successfully or well.
I remember once I was on web page that dealt with discussions about Richard Dawkins. There was all kinds of posts by people fawning all over Dawkins including one whose profile described himself as a “…37 year old post graduate student studying in England” I asked if Dawkins were get his wish to see the elimination belief in God from worlds population would that then end the concept of “rights endowed by their creator” since there is no God to endow man with. Of course I received angry tirade response from the poster accusing me of accusing Dawkins to be a fascist or NAZI.
Richard has been doing some waffling of late
(For the record, Rowan Williams (who has been on my sh!t list since mouthing some words about the inevitability of Sharia) has since resigned.)
Have you seen pictures of Rowan Williams in his Druid suit?
Human rights/social justice are positive laws guaranteed by the state. What people forget is that they have real costs, and ultimately have to meet test of general utility: are you worth your keep?
A classmate, Dr. Daniel W. at NIMH sadly thought that I just never saw the truth of social justice. I feel that I am in good company with Thomas Sowell on this one. In Dr. Dan’s views, Hopkins 69 are a bit racist, believing at the time that he believed that my failure was like colorblindness.
People do it so they can claim a pass for their bad behavior.
I sure want some a$$hole like Dr. Zeke Emanuel or Kathleen Sebelius (or one of her 15 non-medical, bureaucratic council members) deciding whether or not I’m worth my keep.
Leftists are turning the word “justice” into a dirty word, attaching it to every one of their own agenda items…climate justice, food justice, you name it, and they’ve attached “justice” to it, trying to clothe their raw power mongering in holier than thou words.
Blind Lady Justice blushes at the perversion.
Since you mention one of my favorite guys Sowell…
Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.
~Thomas Sowell
Mystical references to “society” and its programs to “help” may warm the
hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in
the hands of bureaucrats.
~Thomas Sowell
I thought he was mixing things up a little bit. The “human rights” named – education, contraception, public transportation, abortion, and internet access – add up to making some people work and pay for these items so that others can get them for free. All for the sake of fairness, of course. In that vein, I think we can include medical care, clothing, quality housing, TV, air conditioning, a college education, and cell phones.
Summing up, “human rights” consist of two parts:
They are commodities that are bought and sold in the open marketplace
Some people have a right to receive these commodities without paying for them
OK, great, and welcome to redistibutionalist America. But how does gay marriage or same-sex marriage get lumped in with the above? My libertarian streak makes me wonder why the federal government is in the marriage business in the first place.
I can accept the concept of having a license to drive a car, fly a plane, or perform surgery. I really don’t get the concept of something like a fishing license (is there a competency test?) other than to generate revenue for the state and (more importantly) to get the population used to the idea that the state exhibits some degree of control over everything in human affairs, both public and private.
Same sex marriage to me is a freedom as opposed to a commodity. Is it a form of expression or spiritual belief? Maybe or maybe not. It seems we do have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of association, though. If anything, same sex marriage seems like it falls under that heading.
But agree or disagree with the idea of same sex marriage, it’s still not a commodity in the open marketplace that some people are entitled to receive for free, and same sex marriage shouldn’t be lumped in with a laundry list of free stuff the government hands out under the name of “human rights.”
My libertarian streak makes me wonder why the federal government is in the marriage business in the first place.=quote
I too, am of the libertarian persuasion. But I can see why the state may have cause to get involved in it’s institution. Not at the federal level however.
In the interest of children, should children not have a right to be raised by their natural parents if possible? Should it not interest the state to have a means to hold parents legally accountable for the actions and welfare of their children? Is it not in the interest of the state to advocate the best environment possible for the raising of future generations of tax paying citizens? If children are taken out of the picture, what reason would the state have in advocating the institution?
Like our liberal friends are so fond of pontificating, it’s for the children.
Libertarian? Do you not more rightly mean “Licentiotarian?” Is it not the Libertarian view that as long as one “does no harm to anyone else they may do whatever they wish”? And wherein is it possible to determine that you, from your finite subjective view, have done no harm?
We do not know, but suppose those 2 naked men in Florida, one who is in intensive care with half of his face chewed off and the other dead from 4 bullets for chewing off said face, suppose they had agreed to that arrangement? Do you intend to defend and proclaim that such an arrangement, did no harm or would do no harm to others? Outlandish question? Not when you consider something quite similar happened in Germany a few years ago. How about something less drastic; Muslim wife beating. Good Muslims of both genders agree to it. Should it be allowed. Female circumcision? Where even in some cases the may even child is in agreement?
Licentiotarianism collapses under its own weight. Man is incapable of being just apart from the Creator who gave us our rights. We have for a half century as an act of government been rejecting Him. To quote B. McQuire, “We’re on the eve of destruction.”
“Where in some cases the child may even be in agreement?
Who needs to proof read?! obviously, me
This writer is confused. Natural rights and human rights need not be in tension. In fact, they’re both perfectly good terms to describe the same thing.
The problem comes when what is meant by “rights” is subtly shifted, whether or not the actual name changes.
The rights in our Constitution are negative rights–they are things the government may NOT do, e.g., infringe on free speech, unreasonable search, etc.
Too many people today (including Obama) want “rights” to mean positive rights–things that people have right TO–education, WiFi, housing, etc.
But rights TO something means, ipso facto, that those things must be provided by someone, and hence they intrude on rights AGAINST the government doing certain things.
That is the key issue, not some half-baked and confused rambling about two terms that are really perfectly good synonyms.
Buzz the crux of the question … from whence rights?
It is sad that our author did not close the loop on the true culprits of the loss of our God given natural rights. As the old axiom goes (roughly) “We have found the enemy … it is us.”
There is a giver of rights and Mr. Hawkins briefly makes reference to Him but not what our relationship should be with Him. He is the giver of gifts. We (particularly Americans) accepted the gifts but much like the prodigal son, have taken those gifts, the inheritance that he always meant for all mankind, and we have wasted those gifts on “profligate living,” rejecting our Father’s rules which He only provided for our protection.
How is it now that we expect Him to restore us to “sonship” and restore those rights He originally meant us to have if we will not return to Him. Must we finally find ourselves longing to eat the slop of the pigs we now serve before we return to Him?
The Declaration of Independence addresses two fundamental questions: Where do our rights come from? What is the purpose of government? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 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.” I contend that the primary driver of America’s success is rooted in the understanding that the rights of man come from God and only God can take them away. Also, the legitimate purpose of government is to secure our God-given rights. Excerpted from “Erroneous Drones: Savings the Economy from Legions of Self-Destructive Liberals” http://amzn.to/NLG7Z2