Posted on 11/11/2004 9:34:13 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that consent is the basis of morality and therefore that any activity - prostitution, "assisted" suicide, you-name-it between consenting adults ought to be legal. Libertarians also believe that man "owns" himself, and therefore may do anything to himself he pleases - use drugs, commit suicide, again, you-name-it.
It is logically impossible for Libertarianism to be America's founding philosophy.
At least 30 years ago, most Americans could quote the beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:
"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."
Whether you say UNalienable or INalienable, understanding the concept of rights you can't give, sell, or trade away is key to understanding Christian freedom.
First, let's be clear what each of these rights are and where they come from. The right to life is pretty straightforward. All rights arise from the prohibition of moral rules, and the right to life comes from God's rule that says it is wrong to kill innocent people. Although you can't give it away, you can forfeit your right to life when you initiate the use of deadly force against another without first having been threatened with deadly force by the person you attack. This is why God had to command us to use capital punishment, and gave us examples in the Old Testament to show that self-defense was justified. Otherwise, since God's rules apply all the time, we might be confused into thinking that the commandment against murder prevented us from resisting someone who was trying to kill us, or punishing one who had killed another.
To understand the right to "liberty" we need to know what liberty is. Say you have $100, and you were planning to buy your self a real nice dinner with it. Then a thief steals your $100. You have lost the "liberty" to control how the $100 is spent. You have lost liberty.
The same analysis applies if someone makes you a slave against your will. You have lost the "liberty" to control how your labor is employed. The slave owner takes this liberty from you.
We lose "liberty" whenever someone violates God's moral rules. The right to liberty is a command to government to prevent and punish those who would violate God's moral rules.
The right to the pursuit of happiness is similar to the right to liberty. The right to liberty recognizes that we lose our liberty when our fellow men violate God's moral rules. Protecting our liberty is the reason we command government to set up police forces, armies and navies. They protect us from foreign aggressors and domestic criminals. But what protects us from government itself?
Protecting us from government is the work of the right to the pursuit of happiness. This right does not mean license to do whatever gives us pleasure. We cannot molest children, say, and claim the protection of the right to pursue happiness.
This right is based on the idea that God made us in such a way that we cannot be truly happy unless we follow God's moral rules. As a political right, then, the right to the pursuit of happiness is a right to be free from a government that commands us - or just allows us - to do what God forbids, or that forbids us to do what God commands, or just allows.
For example, God does not command us to have children, but if we are married, he allows us to engage in the activity that can result in reproduction. China, however, forbids people to have more than two children. China thus forbids what God allows, and it interferes with the right to the pursuit of happiness of its citizens.
The U.S. government allows its citizens to have abortions, though it does not (yet) command abortions as China does. Nevertheless, simply by allowing evil - the murder of the unborn - the U.S. government interferes with the right to the pursuit of happiness of both born and unborn citizens. It allows citizens to commit evil that will cause them pain and remorse later.
Okay, we know what these rights are now, but why is it important that we not be able to give or sell them? After all, if two adults consent to some voluntary transaction, shouldn't government allow them to engage in it?
The answer is unalienable rights cannot exist if consent, not God's rules, defines what is right and wrong.
If consent defines what is right, there is no inalienable right to life. Imagine I'm a poor man but want to leave a large inheritance to my children. Say I agree to "star" in a snuff film - to be killed on camera in return for a big chunk of cash which I will bequeath to my kids. If government honors my contract with the producer, it has just thrown my inalienable right to life out the window. It has also thrown God's commandment not to murder innocent people out the window, too.
Likewise, say I want to be a prostitute, and other consenting adults want to hire me for sex. No one else is involved, right? Why shouldn't government honor my agreement with my "johns."
This situation is a bit more subtle, but presents the same conflict - either consent is the basis of right and wrong, or God's rules are.
If the "john" is married, clearly there is an external cost to allowing prostitution. The john's wife has a right to fidelity - the husband's faithfulness - created both by God's commandment against adultery and by contact - by the husband's promise. But the external cost of prostitution is imposed not only on the wife, but also on society. Marriage is a bilateral monopoly that increases human productivity by taking many transactions out of the market. When the costs of prostitution are not stopped, they reduce the value of marriage. At the margin, there are fewer marriages, and society - all of us - loose the savings that marriages produce. We are all made poorer.
But what if the prostitute's customer is single? Surely then nobody else is involved and we ought to allow the consensual prostitution, right?
We can answer this question by looking to see whether God's rules apply to us as individuals at all times, or if they only have force when we interact with others. The truth is, of course, that God's rules apply to us at all times. What we call "virtues" arise from the application of God's moral rules to the self. For example, if I do not have the virtue of thrift - if I spend my money like there was no tomorrow - I rob myself of my future consumption. The virtue of "thrift" arises from applying God's moral rule against theft to the self.
To return to our example with the prostitute and the unmarried customer, God's moral rules for sex tell us that sex is the physical manifestation of a spiritual union between a man and a woman brought together by God. To use sex as just a meaningless recreational pursuit violates this rule. But applying this rule to the self - even when that "self" is unmarried - gives rise to the virtue of chastity.
Is there a practical reason that government should encourage chastity by refusing to enforce a contract for prostitution - or the same thing, heterosexual or homosexual promiscuity - between two unmarried people?
The answer depends on whether using sex in a way that violates God's rules can really increase the welfare of the individuals who engage in that activity. All sin appears pleasurable for a short time, but in the long run it produces more costs than benefits.
In the case of adultery, the momentary pleasure must be weighed against the risk of disease and the cost of the losing the true happiness that can only come from following God's moral rules. The lesson of history is that prohibiting prostitution is not a rule without a reason. Every society that has bowed to the desire for a short term pleasure that is less than the long term benefits foregone has fallen - look particularly at Greece and Rome.
America today is under attack by people who claim to champion freedom but who, in reality, champion a philosophy that would destroy freedom because it would destroy our inalienable rights. These people call themselves "Libertarians." They claim that the basis of right and wrong in interactions between people is only consent - not God's rules - and that society has no power to impose any standard of right and wrong on individuals in how they use their own bodies. Libertarians think prostitution, drug use, and suicide should all be legalized.
John Locke answered the Libertarians more than 300 years ago. Locke said, in his Second Treatise on Government, that merely having the power to engage in an activity does not make it right. For Locke, as for America's Founders, the only true source of right was God's moral rules. But if consent is the basis of right and wrong, there can be no inalienable rights, because one can always consent to give his rights away.
We may legitimately question whether we want to use law, the coercive power of the state, to enforce God's rules or rely on extra-legal sanctions like social norms. The answer is always that we want to use the enforcement method that produces the greatest benefits at the least cost. For example, we could not afford to put policemen in every individual's bedroom, so we have traditionally relied on social norms to enforce moral rules relating to sex.
But the lesson of the last 150 years of American history is that evil first attacks and destroys social norms, then changes the law.
Rights arise from moral rules. But the moral rules that create our law are simply whatever a majority of citizens believe is right or wrong. If we want Godly laws, we must bring a majority of citizens into agreement with God by introducing them to Jesus Christ.
"You are your brothers keeper."
Nice to see you are finally owning up to your socialism.
The article derails right here.
The double negative here can be translated into "the right to the pursuit of happiness means we must have a gov't that makes us do what God commands". You've just attempted to argue for a theocracy.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
LQ
The anarchist coalition of junkies, pimps, and homos are the friends of the extreme left in America, the Christian Right are their enemies.
btw, only commies claim that Jesus was a liberal and a socialist.
There is no liberty without morality.
You nailed it, LQ. The "arguments" stated above are exactly the same as those used by the mullahs in Iran, or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
This is one of the reasons that Jefferson used "Natures God" and not any single religions "god" in the Declaration of Independence, and why the Constitution forbids the establishment of a State religion in the Bill of Rights.
"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."
Whether you say UNalienable or INalienable, understanding the concept of rights you can't give, sell, or trade away is key to understanding Christian freedom.
I searched my copy of the Constitution and it seems the word Christian was omitted.
It's also one of the more incoherent articles I've seen here in awhile. I tried tracking through the arguments but kept finding that it repeatedly tried to prove an assumption by making that same assumption and went around in circles.
LQ
Did you, or did you not just post that? Does it, or does it not, match socialist dogma? Be as Christian as you want, right up until you start being as socialist as the leftists. Then expect to get called on it.
Personally, I don't want the Sky Pilot's Union advising me on which rights are alienable.
You are not property. You are a human being.
Amen. On that we agree. So why post an entire screed the tries to point out how much everyone owns everyone else and how all morality flows directly from your particular brand of priesthood?
The Declaration of Independence refers to "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" but also to the "Creator," as well as "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world," and "with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence."
Humane Laws are measures in respect of Men, whose actions they must direct, howbeit such measures they are as have also their higher Rules to be measured by, which Rules are two, the Law of God, and the Law of Nature; so that Laws Humane must be made according to the general Laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive Law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made. - John Locke, Two Treatises on Government
The Constitution did not forbid the establishment of state religions. The first amendment protected state establishments from encroachment by the establishment of a national religion. Many states had established churches after the ratification of the Constitution. Only after the Civil War and the passage of the fourteenth amendment was the Bill of Rights applied to the state governments.
You assume that if no one else owns you, then you must own yourself. Not so. No one owns you. You are not property and you cannot do whatever you want with yourself.
Man. Trying to decide what load of crap to address first was difficult until I realized that since the whole article was based on this flawed premise, the details didn't matter. Consent and morality are two totally different animals. While they may agree at times, often they do not. If you were to state that 'libertarianism holds that consent is the the basis of legality', it might be closer to accurate, but then that makes the rest of the article pointless. Your aticle equates morality with legality. Using the Christian idea of morality (which I personally ascribe to) as a basis for legal code is the definition of a Theocracy.
All laws are based on morality. Christianity has always been recognized as part of America's common law.
Now, you are just contradicting yourself. Or, you just aren't smart enough to see it? I assume you are alluding to God owning me? Which God? Odin? Jehova? Buddha? Who says that particular God owns me? Your priests? Mine?
Better still, aren't those claims of ownership between me and whatever God/s I adhere to and not up to any State entity? If a State acts in a Gods name and claims ownership of me, how is that different from the socialists "God" that is the State itself?
This is fun beating you up with your own lack of anything remotely close to logic. You make it almost too easy.
Bravo Sierra. Prove it. It isn't in the Constitution. It is no where in Blackstones. It isn't in the USC anywhere.
The Founders were not stupid -- they understood quite well what they were doing when they attributed our "unalienable rights" to the action of a Creator.
Here's your assignment: try to logically derive the idea of "unalienable" principles without reference to a Creator.
You can't do it without resorting to self-defeating utilitarian (or otherwise relativist) arguments that render moot the whole idea of "unalienable rights."
The next step is to ask whether the logically necessary Creator is equivalent to a Christian God (which is what I think TG's point boils down to). On that score, we can only observe that the "unalienable rights" have historically been enumerated by Christian culture, and few if any others.
Certainly the tenets of Christianity are fully consistent with the unalienable rights we take for granted in the US, even if we do not consistently follow those tenets.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.