Posted on 04/05/2005 5:21:29 PM PDT by CHARLITE
From where do your rights come? Not the right to bear arms, or freedom of the press. I’m talking about those unalienable rights our founding fathers spoke of: Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. At face value, it’s quite a simple question; who, or what, gives you these rights?
It seems to me there are two possible answers, God or government.
Though it seems like a simple question, the implications of either answer are quite severe. Either your rights come from an objective, unchangeable higher authority, or a manmade power with the potential for corruption.
The danger in assuming that rights come from government is that is that the government can take those away as they see fit. Why else would our Declaration of Independence insist that our unalienable rights come from a Creator.
Our founding fathers were forward thinking enough to realize that if they devised our government under the assumption that rights come from government and not a Creator, then those rights could eventually be taken away. Look at any communist regime in the last 100 years, where religion is considered an opiate of the masses. The government becomes god in that circumstance, and can get away with anything, including mass genocide.
The same can be true of theocracies, as in the Middle East and elsewhere. That is why America works; because it is based on religious principles, but is not run under the assumption that whatever the leaders are doing is God's will, necessarily.
If one accepts a government responsibility for doling out such rights, one will ultimately stumble into an intellectual trap. For example, if government defines rights, then why do American’s get upset about human rights abuses around the world? If it is that government’s job to determine their population’s rights, why do we care? It would be quite hypocritical to do so.
And if it is not a populace’s government which defines rights, who does? The United Nations? Would you really feel comfortable having your right to life coming from the same organization that stole billions of dollars out of the hands of Iraqi citizens? From an institution whose leaders are corrupt to the core?
Should you feel comfortable with such a situation, whose determination of rights within the UN should we live by? Perhaps Trygve Lie, the first Secretary General of the UN. Though he did oversea important events such as the creation of Israel, he was a Lenin supporter in his youth. Surely Kofi Annan should not be responsible for such decisions. Maybe the General Assembly should vote on what inherent human rights should be. Did not Lord Acton warn us, however, that “absolute power corrupts absolutely?”
If there is not a universal standard with which to live by, anything can be deemed acceptable. That is what makes America great: our founding document asserts God-given rights that no government to be established later will ever be able to take away.
It's the difference between the acknowledgement of a god, or higher moral authority, which America does, and the endorsement of a particular religion, which we do not do.
That is also the fundamental difference between a Constitutional republic, which we are, and a pure democracy, or mob rule, which we are not. Our nation was formed on laws based on the idea that a Creator gave us certain rights as humans that government cannot interfere with regardless of whether or not 51% of the population feels it should.
For that reason it is imperative that our nation acknowledge our God-given rights. For that reason, even atheists and agnostics should hope for such a government. Otherwise, God help us all.
The modern concept of "rights" came from the French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Government cannot create. It can only reduce, remove, restrict, steal, take, or destroy. It may provide, but only by taking from another.
AMEN!
I submit that the right to bear arms and the freedom of the press ARE God given rights, also.
You sre commended for toy using the word "only"
"the extended order arises out of a competitive process in which success decides, not the approval of a great mind, a committee, or a God, or conformity with some understood principle of individual merit."
"To understand our civilization, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously; it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread the means of an evolutionary selection -- the comparative increase of population and wealth -- of those groups that happened to follow them."
- F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
A government cannot, by definition, grant rights. Governments receive their authority by permission of the governed or by force of arms, and after that point they only administrate rights. I wouldn't even go so far as to call them "rights". I would classify them as "enacted social privileges".
No. It ain't the government.
The Founders even recognized that "rights" came from a Higher Power, The Creator, not from government. They knew that government had to recognize rights, not abridge them.
Nothing brought this danger up front and center more dramatically than the tragic misuse of power by secular euthanasia proponents, in forcing the death of Terri Schaivo.
It is my hope that she will not have died in vain, and that the Terri Schaivo story should become a "cause celèbre" for taking back our freedoms from a runaway, arrogant judiciary.
America desperately needs a true renaissance of faith in our greatness and uniqueness. "Freedom is not free." All of us who observe and realize what has been occurring must work to stem the tide of this godless trend à la George Soros and George Felos........or America will be in great peril.
Char
AMEN!
All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Ancients Rights unnoticed as the breath we draw-
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law-
Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing,
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King.
Till our fathers 'stablished, after bloody years,
How our King is one with us, first among his peers.
So they bought us freedom-not at little cost-
Wherefore must we watch the King: lest our gain be lost.
The poem goes on but you have the idea. The freedoms that we enjoy today were bought by our fathers and their sons long and long ago.
No, the modern understanding of "rights" came from a philosopher.
It's been in our gene's since day one of our existance. We deserve the right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness.
To suggest that one man invented freedom is to also say that one man invented oppression. They have both been a part of us for enternity.
Besides, such a atheistic point of view about our Declaration of Independence and Constitution would suggest that
A: you don't have faith in who(what) the authors followed.
B: you feel that "rights" are subjective
AND
C: you feel that there is nothing that assures you have rights aside from that piece of paper that you have already expressed a lack of total trust in.
Rights are God given, and protected and held dear by those who acknowledge those rights.
"The freedoms that we enjoy today were bought by our fathers and their sons long and long ago."
Close:
The freedoms we enjoy now were TAKEN BACK by our fathers and their sons. We didn't "buy it," we took back what belonged to us in the first place.
Freud said that America was a mistake.
I don't buy your quote either.
Bearing arms would fall under Life.
Freedom of press would fall under Liberty.
And scotch would fall under Pursuit of Happiness.
It gets better. In America, citizens surrended exercise of only certain natural individual rights for an equivalent civil right. This was a compact, as every citizen surrendered the same. For example, it is a natural right to defend yourself. When you have mixed your body labor with an object, (by extension) It is your natural right to defend your property. The individual surrenders that natural right of being judge, jury and executioner in his own defense for an equivalent civil process for the protection of self and property. That for which he does not receive a civil equivalent, he does not surrender, but retains. Eminent Domain and the fifth Amendment to the Constitution maintains this promise of a social compact, ensuring that every individual receives an equivalent (is made whole in his estate) for his loss.
Because of the compact, the individual is protected from the will of the majority. Further, the English heritage of American common law has carried forward an understanding of the "rights of Englishmen" from which government is precluded from trampling upon.
The French believed that all natural rights were surrendered in exchange for civil rights - the "bargain" was not in the form of a compact, but more of a contract between government and the individual. This form of government has become the European socialist model where the paramount welfare of the majority always governed an individual's civil rights.
Excellent post Char.
No human invention could provide us with something so divine as freedom.
"He who the Son sets free is free indeed." Christ's death broke the last hold on mortality, He conquered death and the grave and death lost its "sting." All anyone can do to us ultimately, is to kill this body. In so doing, we are set free even from that restriction.
If you want to think the modern understanding of "rights" has always been the case then, sir, you have no concept of history. The early greeks invented democracy, but no-one would say it was a modern democracy.
It's been in our gene's since day one of our existance. We deserve the right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness.
That I'm afraid is nonsense. Again, you seem to think that your ideal of history is the actuality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the first person in History to talk of the modern concept of "rights" and (along with Thomas Paine) deeply influenced the American constitution and French Revolution. He was the first man in history, to dismiss the superiority of Monarchy over the individual man. There is no talk of "rights" in the Bible because the concept was not developed.
To suggest that one man invented freedom is to also say that one man invented oppression. They have both been a part of us for enternity.
I never said one man invented freedom. He was the first to espouse the concept that we would both understand of "rights" of the common man. If you can show me any earlier discussion, feel free, but you won't.
Besides, such a atheistic point of view about our Declaration of Independence and Constitution would suggest that A: you don't have faith in who(what) the authors followed. B: you feel that "rights" are subjective
I am not American so it is not my concern except in historical education, I don't have "faith" in normal men and as for "rights" being "subjective" I don't recall Jefferson giving any "rights" to his slaves or women, which I am sure you will disagree with, so his "subjective" view of rights would be different than ours.
C: you feel that there is nothing that assures you have rights aside from that piece of paper that you have already expressed a lack of total trust in. Rights are God given, and protected and held dear by those who acknowledge those rights.
I have said no such thing, so I don't understand why you made that up. As I said there is not ONE mention of "rights" in the Bible, so where are you getting your "faith" in rights. From men? In fact as far as the American Declaration of Independence is concerned, the main ideas came from Thomas Paine and not God or the Bible. If you don't believe me go on any American specialist website or speak to any American historian and they will agree.
"Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains." -- Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
You should go back and read your Bible. Start with the Decalogue. Rights are enumerated there and are granted by the Creator, Rousseau not withstanding.
If this is true, that the Bible espouses rights for every man, why did Jews/Christians persist in enslaving men and women for millenia? Not to mention not giving women equal rights until around 85 years ago. Why in a Christian democracy like the USA did black men have to sit at the back of buses or banned from places due to colour, when the Bible said each man had "rights"?
Give me the quote in the Bible that gives men modern equal rights?
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