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.
"For example, God does not command us to have children..."
Wrong!
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it:...
Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. And consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker's will.This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.
This law of nature, being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the holy scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original law of nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man's felicity.
Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these. - Blackstone - Of the Nature of Laws in General.
Even by your own tennets, it is your God that gave you free will. For another mere human to take that free will away from you is a violation of Gods will.
Christian culture? Like the Christian Kings of England and their treatment of the peasant class? Or the Emporers of Rome after conversion to Christianity and the abuses done in their names?
History, it seems, is against you on that one.
The very idea of "common law", which should be called "english common law" (as it was adopted), predated christianity in england. It would be just as accurate to say "Paganism has always been recognised as part of America's common law". Our government and our legal system was based on reason.
You are hopeless. Have fun pushing your priesthood driven brand of socialism. Just have the balls to call it what it is.
youve gotta see this
Brehon law had the same basic principles in it as the Founders espoused. Are you sure it wasn't based off of that? Makes more sense really. Instead of having an Inquisition deciding what the law was and how it applied, or a sovreign King deciding law, the old Celts had a seperate and educated adjudication class. Sounds a lot more like our modern legal system than some priest saying "God told me to tell you this".
I believe in the rule of law, not your godless anarchy. Black anarchy is the wrecking ball for red communism. You and the Socialists are allies against traditional religion and civil society. The only difference is that you really believe in the commietopian "withering away of the state" whereas the reds know it's all a con job.
Nonsense.
I didn't ask you to make unfounded assertions. I asked you to prove it using logic and reason.
Hmmm... What's this?
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 1:28
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
Genesis 9:1
Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.
Psalm 128:3
And, not coincidentally, in violation of the tenets of Christianity.....
Maybe you are right, from a moral point of view. Maybe God has a higher "ownership" right in my person than I do.
However, I have a higher "ownership" right in my person than does any other human being. So, no other human being has the right to tell me what to do with my person unless my actions impact the liberty of another person.
Just look around, and you'll see that it's not nonsense.
Are you saying that "Love your neighbor" should be a law? Do I really need to be forced by government to love my neighbor, or just not do anything that interferes with his rights, without his consent? Are you going to confiscate ten percent of my earnings and give it to the church? When are the mass baptisms at the point of a gun scheduled?
You may say that Christianity is the part of America's common law, and you may find quotes of founding fathers to support that. Why, then, were some Christian rules made laws, while others weren't? Could it be that some rules, some morality, should not be forced, but are a personal decision?
While the literal definition of a theocracy may be a government beholden to the priests, if the rules of Christianity are the law, administered by whatever legal means, is their really a difference?
I like the Libertarians' view on some things. Too bad they lean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far left for me.
What is it with you libertarians? You all think we should be ruled by "philosopher kings" who just "reason" up the law as they go along. Why do you want us to be ruled by elites?
Libertarians are like Marxists in that they think that only their philosophical school has the capacity to reason and they have all the answers. If only the people would see the wisdom of voting Libertarian, then America would be a utopia with no need of government at all. The only difference between this childish fantasy and Marxism are that they're different roads to achieve the same impossible goal.
A sinner or immoral person does not impact my liberty unless they engage in sins or immoral actions that impact my rights. Want to engage in orgies? Fine, do it on your own property and out of sight of non-participants. Want to worship a golden calf? Fine, but don't expect me to pay for it.
What the state should do is much more limited than what religious morality requires you to do. The only proper role of the state is to punish or ban behavior that harms the person or property of a nonconsenting party.
Only radical libertarians and anarchists call for an end to the state. The vast majority of people with libertarian leanings only want to severely limit what the state is allowed to do.
You, on the other hand, love Big Government as much as Hillary Clinton. You just want to use Big Government for your own ends.
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