Posted on 11/11/2004 9:34:13 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
"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.
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