Inalienable Rights & Libertarianism

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:

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.

"As far as I know, most absolutes of right and wrong (thou shalt not kill, steal, etc.) are also acknowledged by totalitarian governments." ~ Sam Cree

A totalitarian government only embraces principles that serve their purposes in controlling and subjugating the masses.

Totalitarian governments do not think it "immoral" to deprive people of anything included below:

"We hold that what Lincoln referred to as the "sentiments" of the Declaration are the principles of the American Republic. And we understand them to include the following:

All men are CREATED equal. Hence they have equal natural rights as a gift of the CREATOR.

Our duty to seek and follow the will of the Creator is prior to all government. Accordingly, so is the liberty of religious conscience.

The authority of the Creator as prior to all civil society and human authority must be respected for liberty to endure.

There is a natural right to life, prior to all positive law, including the Constitution.

There is a natural right to acquire, secure, and use property for safety and happiness.

Men have a right and a duty to form governments to secure their rights, and to assist one another in striving for happiness.

Men are authorized by the Creator to defend these rights, and accordingly, so are the governments they form. From this authority proceeds the right and duty to defend national sovereignty and security.

Governments are made legitimate by the consent of the free and equal persons who form and sustain them.

Governmental powers are always to be understood as a delegation from the persons who compact to form the political community.

To enjoy the right of political self-government, men must be capable of personal self-government--the virtue of self-control.

A people without decency cannot be secure in its liberty.

The institutions by which the life of liberty is fostered, especially the marriage-based two-parent family, the churches, and other associations aiming at the good life, are to be protected and cherished.

The vocation of citizenship in a free republic is noble and honorable.

Public service, especially in the defense of the rule of law, merits praise and respect.

The right to self-government entails the right to arms by which tyranny can be resisted and new government established when necessary.

Governments may fail in many ways and still be tolerated.

Peace is a precious good, and the people may be well advised to be patient with occasional governmental abuse to avoid rashly unleashing the season of popular passion and violence that will accompany any change in the fundamental form of government.

But the worst failures, tending irrevocably to excessive concentration of power, consolidating the branches and depriving the people of its liberty, or withdrawing the protection of the laws from the people, constitute tyranny or anarchy, and may and sometimes should be resisted, even to the point of rebellion, as our Founders declared.

Free speech and a free press are both required for the practice of responsible liberty, as necessary means by which the people can act together to govern themselves according to the laws of nature and of nature's God.

All persons have a right to equal treatment under the laws without regard to race, creed, or ethnicity.

It is the duty of the people, individually and in their associations, private and public, to declare the principles of self-government, including the fundamental American creed that our liberties come as a gift of the Creator.

Personal religious belief is not a requirement for American citizenship, but acknowledgment of our national belief that human equality and rights come from an authority beyond human will is a moral duty of citizenship.

Its rejection constitutes a denial of natural rights and human equality, and is inconsistent with ordered liberty.

On the basis of these principles, we would like to add a new term to American grassroots politics: DECLARATIONIST. A "Declarationist" is anyone who believes in the principles of the American Republic as outlined in the Declaration of Independence.

http://www.renewamerica.us/readings/principles.htm

"Dear Mullah Tailgunner: "..You sound like a candidate for the Taliban." ~ UMFan

You sound like a bitter moral relativist with an agenda. Who other than a moral relativist would attempt to blur the lines between terrorists and those fighting against them.

And only other moral relativists would be willing to accept a blurred moral equivalency premise.

These sorts hang out together on forums like DU so as to reinforce each others delusions.

What are you doing on a forum that rejects moral relativism and is firmly dedicated to preserving a Constitution that was only put into place to guard absolute moral truths?

What is Moral Relativism or Equivalence?

"...democracy's most numerous and influential educators deny the existence of objective truth concerning good and evil. In other words, they deny the existence of rational standards by which to determine whether the beliefs and goals of one individual, group, or nation are more valid or intrinsically superior to those of another. Reinforcing this relativism is the behavioral doctrine that humanity in general, and their rulers in particular, employ altruistic language like "peace" or "justice" or the "common good" to conceal egotistical motives or dignify self-serving ends. Cynicism is rampant.
"...relativism erodes belief in the truth or justice of their country's cause and thereby undermines their country's ability to persevere in any conflict with regimes whose educators are not relativists".

Karl Marx...adopted Hobbes' reduction of thought to the subrational: "The PHANTOMS formed in the brain are ... bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence." Another perverse mind, exempting itself from its own conclusions.
Amazing how many academic earthlings have made a livelihood teaching this sophisticated madness. I say madness because, if "forms of consciousness" merely correspond to "material premises" or economic modes of production which change from epoch to epoch, or which differ from one country to another, it follows that what humans, hence academics, deem normal or abnormal, sane or insane, has no objective validity. Precisely the relativistic conclusion of anti-psychiatry! And what is most significant, anti-psychiatry was adopted by a neoMarxist movement in the West called the "New Left,"
- Prof. Paul Eidelberg, the Co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East

Marxism incorporates, at the verbal level and the intellectual level, the values of liberal democracy in its assault on liberal democracy and this is precisely why it entraps so many Western intellectuals who are themselves serious liberal democrats. Thus the slightest restriction on, let's say, the presumption of innocence of the accused is said to demonstrate the absence of the rule of law. The slightest failure of an electoral system demonstrates contempt for political equality. Any use of force in international affairs establishes the lawless character of the society. Now, it is a short step from having demonstrated that a country like the United States is not a law-abiding society to demonstrating that it is lost and that it is like any other lawless society. The Soviets can always claim "We are no worse than you. Even if we are a lawless society, you too are a lawless society, we are no worse than you." This is the "logic" of the doctrine of moral equivalence. If practices are measured by abstract, absolute standards, practices are always found wanting. The communists who criticize liberal democratic societies measure our practices by our standards and deny the relevance of their practices to judgments concerning the moral worth of our own society.
...It's perfectly clear that the tendency to self-debasement, self-denigration which has been so brilliantly commented upon by the French scholar Jean Francois Revel and others recently is rooted in this practice of measuring Western democratic societies by utopian standards. There is simply no way that such measurements can result in anything but chronic, continuous self-debasement, self-criticism, and finally, self-disgust. The problem of dealing with this is complicated by the fact that the values in question are our own values. The response, of course, must be that it is not appropriate to judge actual social practices by utopian standards of political values.
- from The Myth of Moral Equivalence, by Jeane Kirkpatrick, Imprimis, January 1986, Vol. 15, No. 1

How does Moral Relativism creep into U.S. foreign policy?

"There is extraordinary danger in treating terror and democracy equivalently. There is extraordinary danger in placing the burden on your friends, because you are scared to tell the enemy the truth".
- Congressman Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Speaker of the House of Representatives, April 9, 1997, criticizing the Clinton administration for pressuring Israel but not the Arabs.

How is Moral Equivalence being used in an effort to usurp Israel's ethical advantage?

Israel's enemies appear to be poised to secure through skillful use of moral equivalence and other techniques of ideological warfare what they could not do with tanks, missiles and warplanes. The Arabs' goal remains the acquisition of territory vital to Israel's security and, in the process, the delegitimation of the underpinnings of Zionism -- that is, the 'historical connection of the Jews to Palestine....'
...The Israeli leadership and many in the American Jewish community have unintentionally played into this latest bid to establish moral equivalence between the principally Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the so-called "victims of Zionist aggression."
- Frank J. Gaffney, Center for Security Policy Director, U.S. Senate Caucus Room, 16 March 1994
At the end of the [Pope's] historically significant visit [to Israel], the bystander's conclusion must be that the pontiff was admirably evenhanded. He urged an end to "anti-Jewish feeling among Christians and anti-Christian feelings among Jews" - as if persecutor and persecuted can be considered on the same moral plane.
He likewise seemed to balance the suffering of the Palestinians, which he judged as excessively prolonged, with the suffering of the Jews at Christian hands, which had gone on for 2,000 years and which culminated in the Holocaust.
Even if only remotely implied, this equation is in itself a colossal affront. It not only dwarfs the Holocaust but imposes culpability on its Jewish survivors. It sins by omitting the basic fact that the Arabs were belligerents, and cruel aggressors at that. The Jews never harmed Germany.
- from ANOTHER TACK: Masters of our fates, by Sarah Honig in The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition, April 7 2000
In the United Nations, of course, genocide is regularly charged against Israel and only Israel is regularly described as violating the Geneva Convention. Along with the terms go the documents in which the values are enshrined and codified. What further complicates this is the effort not only to redefine values but to eliminate any epistemological standard - any standard of proof - by which events might be objectively observed and through which we might have appeal to the double bind in which the semantic falsification puts us. Totalitarian ideologies, including Marxism, are inevitably, invariably, anti-empirical. Not only do they deny that there is any sort of objective truth, they deny effectively empirical verification and procedures of empirical verification because they make truth, and not only truth, but reality, dependent on power relations, i.e., truth and objective reality are ultimately defined in a totalitarian ideology by those people who hold power.
- from The Myth of Moral Equivalence, by Jeane Kirkpatrick, Imprimis, January 1986, Vol. 15, No. 1

Wouldn't there be peace if we treated our 'enemies' as our friends?

...I must now say a word about Muslims and the Arab-Islamic world. In that world relativism has no foothold. Yet, everywhere in that sprawling domain Arafat is embraced as a brother--a brother in Jewish blood. This barbarism is of ancient vintage, as I learned even from an emancipated Arab scholar. Thus, in the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, an historian influenced by two illustrious Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, boldly declared that "Arabs are people who[se] ... savagery has become their character and nature." To this day it is only in Arab-Islamic states which amputate human limbs for trivial offenses
Indeed, during the last two decades, almost a million Muslims slaughtered each other in a war between Iraq and Iran; 100,000 Muslims and Christians butchered each other in Lebanon; 20,000 Arabs were murdered by their own countrymen in Syria. And what is more, after ravaging Kuwait, his Arab neighbor, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein won the support of Israel's own Arab citizens despite his threat to incinerate them along with the Jews! All this bloodshed is done in the name of a religious doctrine which thinly adorns a hard core of evil aggressiveness.
Intimately linked to Arab bellicosity is mendacity. In this century, an emancipated Arab sociologist, Sonia Hamady, admitted that "Lying is a widespread habit among Arabs, and they have a low idea of truth." They lie not only to "infidels" but to each other. Another indication of a flawed religion no one questions in an era of cultural relativism.
...[Here is] what an exceptional and thoughtful Arab of old might think of Jews who made agreements with their mendacious and unrepentant enemies. Here is what Ibn Hazm of the 11th century wrote: "The height of goodness is that you should neither oppress your enemy nor abandon him to oppression. To treat him as a friend is the work of a fool whose end is near."
- Prof. Paul Eidelberg, the Co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East

How does Moral Relativism affect the way in which Israel relates to its Arab minority?

"...We are dealing with politicians who daily perceive Arab hostility but who cannot cope with such hostility because of their compulsive, egalitarian mentality. A mindless self-defense mechanism induces them to defame as "racist" anyone who, out of concern for the cultural self-preservation of the Jewish people, recommends some limitation on the voting power of Israel's burgeoning Arab population. (The simple desire for cultural self-preservation prompted Japan to limit citizenship to ethnic Japanese. Which indicates that democracies which do not make equality a fetish or totalitarian principle [need not succumb from egalitarinism].)
Is it rational, is it just, that Arabs opposed to Israel's existence should be accorded the equal political rights of Jews who work or fight and even die for Israel's existence? How shall we describe those who insist on such indiscriminate, such monstrous, equality even though this democratic principle will logically lead to democratic Israel's demise?
"...the egalitarian and culturally neutral principle of one adult/one vote will enable Israel's prolific Arabs to transform the country into an Arab-Islamic dictatorship. ...compulsive egalitarianism prevents them from addressing this dilemma. This compulsion, permeated by fear, inhibits politicians across the political and religious spectrum from confronting the problem of Israel's shrinking Jewish majority. They surely know from current estimates that Arabs, now 20% of Israel's population, may number 8.5 million by the year 2010, a demographic time-bomb. Even before then, and thanks to the policy of "territory for peace," Israel will have the highest population density in the world!
- Prof. Paul Eidelberg is the Co-founder and President of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East

http://www.yahoodi.com/peace/mrelativism.html

"I am not arguing with your position on absolutists vs. relativists, the rule of law is clearly the basis of liberty, even for libertarians."

First off, I reject your word, "absolutists" since moral relativists like to use it as being synonymous with arrogance, close-mindedness, intolerance, self-righteousness, bigotry, etc. Jesus was the embodiment of absolute truth, but never an "absolutist".

Now, let me point out the "absolutism" in the illogical thinking of moral relativists, themselves:

Relativists consistently stand guilty of the philosophical sin of making exceptions to their own absolute rules.

They claim that Christianity is a religion of intolerance, that Christians have committed abuses in the name of their faith, that Christians shouldn’t impose their values on others, but leave them free to choose their own value systems.

But where did THEY get their ideas of tolerance and justice --- of right and wrong in general --- if they genuinely don’t believe in moral absolutes?

Indeed -- without such ideas, how can a rational person formulate a meaningful system of values?

C. S. Lewis wrote of his days as an atheist: “How had I got this idea of just and unjust? . . . A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”

* Moral truth is the opposite of moral error.

This statement would be MEANINGLESS unless there were a way to establish __objectively__ what moral truth is. (True for all people in all places at all times down through history)

If there were no such possibility, truth and error would, for all practical purposes, be the same, because we would have no objective way to tell one from the other.

But moral relativists don't care, since their moral decisions are subjective. Their willy-nilly judgements of what is right and what is wrong are subject to "the situation" (situation ethics)

Dangerous moral relativists like the Clintons see our Constitution as a "living document".

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