Posted on 01/29/2022 4:03:34 AM PST by MtnClimber
A major gap exists in the contemporary defense of individual rights.
Fortunately, a recent article by Joseph Loconte (“A Brief History of Individual Rights”) enables us to reconsider on how best to defend the “inherent dignity” and “equal and inalienable rights” of individuals in the 21st Century.
In order to follow development of individual rights across “the long road from Athens to America” with Loconte, it first behooves us to pause and test a critical link in the logical chain proposed between Athens and Rome.
Mr. Loconte traces the idea of individual agency back to the ancient Greeks. Beginning with the trial of Socrates -- the Athenian gadfly -- in Plato’s Apology, Loconte proceeds straight to Cicero’s Republic with the declaration that “[w]hat was implicit in Greek philosophy was made explicit by Rome’s greatest statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero.”
While we agree that both sources are important landmarks on the intellectual road from Athens to America, we reject the claim that Cicero simply bears out what is implied by the Greeks (i.e., Plato and Aristotle). Rather, we think that the proposed relationship between Cicero and Greek philosophy actually makes it more difficult to understand and defend human dignity and inalienable individual rights in the modern age.
Let’s being by considering one of the most famous passages from Cicero’s Republic: “the commonwealth, then, is the people’s affair; and the people is not every group of men, associated in any manner, but is the coming together of a considerable number of men who are united by a common agreement about law and rights and by the desire to participate in mutual advantages. The original cause of this coming together is not so much weakness as a kind of social instinct natural to man.”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The left understands none of this. They view society the way a tick views a dog.
I said it before: Biden and Harris are first and foremost, parasites.
Good article. It closes with an appeal to Natural Law. I recall during the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings that he was actually accused of applying natural law, as if it were a bad thing.
I think we are going to find out in the next few years whether or not the American people can still handle Liberty or if the majority require a government that regulates every aspect of their lives. There are certainly enough who are willing to do the regulating.
They view society the way a slaughterhouse owner views cattle.
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