Replies

The one point of your post (and the Founder's rhetoric) I disagree with is the notion of inalienable rights. In my opinion, no such thing exists, if they were inalienable they wouldn't have been routinely violated for most of human history, which involved inslavement, subjugation, and servitude of one group of people to another (e.g. Medieval serfdom, slavery in Ancient Greece and Rome, etc).

Instead of inalienable rights, history is about a struggle for power, and part of that power struggle is the fight of the subjugated against subjugation. "Rights" only arise when the subjugation ends, which can usually only be achieved through violent struggle. Sometimes this struggle creates a worse despotism than the one it displaces (French Revolution, Communist Revolutions), sometimes it creates something far greater and enduring (the American Revolution).

"if they were inalienable they wouldn't have been routinely violated for most of human history"

This is a really terrible atheist fallacy, the logical conclusion of this is that there is no God at all.

The use of the word "inalienable" does not mean that rights cannot be usurped - the alienation of rights is merely evidence of government lacking in credibility. The word usurp exists for (among other reasons) this very scenario. These rights are inalienable because they are a gift from God, as Blackstone taught us very plainly.

The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the faculty of free-will.

Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 1, page 126.

Even under usurpation rights are still inalienable, BTW. A human/human government can cover up the rights and prevent the expression of said rights, but those rights never actually go away. The rights given to us from God are a part of our fabric. Being a part of our fabric, that, is what makes them inalienable. They cannot actually be taken away but through death. The rights can only be prevented.

This is exactly why many of the Bills of Rights are worded as they are. Government is not the source of rights. God is the source of rights.