That’s well compiled...straightforward, thanks.
BTTT
The worst thing you can do to a progressive is to make them think about facts. You do that and they will hate you until their dying hour.
Thanks...well done article.
I encourage everyone to actually read the entire Constitution...its not long or all that difficult.
Bkmk
For years I have wondered what did the Framers mean by this phrase. Did We mean just themselves, the elite, educated, landed gentry or did it truly mean all of the people? Opinions welcomed.
Yup.
The Framers’ term is properly understood as the public good, meaning measures in the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
Open the door.
Beyond safeguarding individual rights, government is to promote the well-being of the society that created the Constitution.
Wide open.
OUTSTANDING post, Jacquerie.
The pledge “to establish justice” reflects the underlying premise of the Constitution to secure natural rights. Accordingly, the most that can be established is a government that prevents injustice. Progressive hijacking of the term and turning it into fuzzy social justice does not secure natural rights and is anathema to natural law.
Life Is a Gift from God
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.
But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.
Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
What Is Law?
What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
A Just and Enduring Government
If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail among the people, in thought as well as in deed. It seems to me that such a nation would have the most simple, easy to accept, economical, limited, nonoppressive, just, and enduring government imaginable — whatever its political form might be.
Under such an administration, everyone would understand that he possessed all the privileges as well as all the responsibilities of his existence. No one would have any argument with government, provided that his person was respected, his labor was free, and the fruits of his labor were protected against all unjust attack. When successful, we would not have to thank the state for our success. And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost. The state would be felt only by the invaluable blessings of safety provided by this concept of government.
It can be further stated that, thanks to the non-intervention of the state in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in a logical manner. We would not see poor families seeking literary instruction before they have bread. We would not see cities populated at the expense of rural districts, nor rural districts at the expense of cities. We would not see the great displacements of capital, labor, and population that are caused by legislative decisions.
The sources of our existence are made uncertain and precarious by these state-created displacements. And, furthermore, these acts burden the government with increased responsibilities.
The Complete Perversion of the Law
But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
/Bastiat
The worst thing you can do to a progressive is to make them think about facts. You do that and they will hate you until their dying hour. - fella
the vast majority of Leftists substitute passion for reason - Jacquerie
Education/be prepared BUMP!
I recently posted the thought that there is a ban on abortion in the Constitution after all. Here are the salient points:I think there is one bridging phrase to the Declaration of Independence that is in the Constitution, which can be seen as a link to "unalienable rights."
PreambleWe the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Note the use of the phrase "Blessings of Liberty." They didn't say "liberty," they said "blessings of liberty." They also capitalized Blessings and Liberty. Why?
In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders said:
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.Note the use of capitalization for Life, Liberty, and Happiness. Also note that these refer to the rights endowed by the Creator, which would be blessings. By this language, is it possible that Founders meant the Constitution to establish a government that secured the blessing of the unalienable right to Liberty?
Therefore, when they spoke of "securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity," wouldn't those referred to as "our posterity" be the unborn children who were also "blessed" with the right to Liberty, and the other unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence?
How can the Founders believe that they were securing Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness for our unborn future if they were also writing abortion into the Constitution?
-PJ
I suggest that the Constitution defines who are natural born citizens at the very beginning of the document.
Preamble"We the People" are citizens of the United States. "Our Posterity" are the natural born who follow -- the children of the People. The Constitution was "ordained and established" to "secure... Liberty" to its citizens and their children. Whom else was it crafted to secure?We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Naturalized citizens can become a part of "We the People," and then their children can become natural born citizens.
It's right there in the first words.
-PJ