Posted on 12/16/2011 9:06:03 AM PST by Brookhaven
“This article also points out a major flaw in Ron Paul’s understanding of the Constitution: Ron Paul does not understand the idea of God given unalienable rights.”
If your “Creator” is not a “Person” then your “Creator” has no from in which can be vested the authority that preserves your rights beyond the purview of human government, and you therefore have rational no basis for the claim that your rights are beyond government control.
This is the Achilles heel of the agnostic/atheist conservatism of Ayn Rand and her disciples. One simply cannot claim that any right exists beyond the control of human government if human government is not superseded by a higher-order entity in which can be vested the authority required to preserve those rights unalienable. There simply must exist an entity in which said authority can be vested, and that requires that this entity be some sort of person, because preservation of unalienable rights requires active assertion of vested authority, which demands the entity be of a type capable of such; to wit: a person. “Nature,” “the cosmic all” or another formless, ethereal concepts are incapable of asserting authority; they can only be whatever they are, and passively exhibit what properties they have.
The preservation of rights above the purview of human government requires the presence of a person vested with authority above all human government. In Ayn Rand’s universe, no such person exists.
The states also had their own laws on slavery. Was that OK?
I guess what it comes down to is whether you believe there should be a 14th Amendment at all, or whether the states should just be trusted to make up their own laws about what constitutes a crime and who gets protection and due process.
And whether the 14th Amendment should grant Constitutional protection to all biological persons, or only to some - with the states choosing which human lives get protected and which not.
If babies don't get equal protection and due process, even in defense of their very lives, why not?
“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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...” — the Declaration of Independence
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” — the United States Constitution
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” — the United States Constitution
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” — the United States Constitution
“The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a ‘person’ within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment...If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.” — Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Roe vs. Wade, 1973
“You shall not murder.” — God
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
— Thomas Jefferson
As I've said before, there is no Federal law against murdering people after they're born. Or raping them, or mutilating them. We trust in the good sense of Americans, acting through their state legislatures, not to legalize those behaviors.
And I likewise trust in the good sense of Americans not to legalize murdering people before they are born.
You obviously do not so trust them, and on that point we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Actually, that's the Ron Paul position.
Since the Constitution is silent on death camps, the federal government has no role in regulating them.
Since the states have rights reserved to them under the 10th amendment, it's up to the states to decide the legality of death camps.
That's Ron Paul's logic on abortion applied to death camps.
What you’re missing is the concept of God given, unalienable rights.
The right to freedom - this is a God given, unalienable right. Every person on the PLANET has this right, and always has.
The fact that state governments didn’t reconize this existing, individual right doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. States actually never had the authority to legalize slavery, because they never had the authority to seperate a black person from their unalienable right to freedom. They may have done it, but they never had the RIGHT to do it.
The right to life - another God given, unalienable right. Every person on the planet has this right NOW, because it is granted by God, not by governments. States may legalize abortion now, but they don’t have the RIGHT to legalize it, because they don’t have the right to separate a person from a God given, unalienable right—the right to life.
God given, unalienable rights apply to governments at every level. No government below the level of God has the authority to enact a law that violates an individual’s unalienable rights.
And actually, Roe v Wade left things wide open to allow precisely that. They never said that every biological human being is a “legal person” after birth. They left the “legal person” definition open to be defined by whoever will define it. The only thing they said definitely about who is a “legal person” is that it can’t be somebody before birth.
So presumably a state COULD allow death camps, slavery, rape-rooms, or anything else as long as that state first defined “legal personhood” to exclude those particular human beings intended as victims.
Which is exactly what Adolf Hitler did.
"He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us." -- the Declaration of Independence
Well, that's exactly what certain states did, which opened the door to the butchering of more than fifty million innocent, defenseless little boys and girls, because a whole generation of politicians and lawyers decided to follow the unconstitutional, immoral opinion of a couple of judges, rather than to follow the Constitution, in keeping with their own oaths.
As Ronald Reagan liked to say, in speaking of another band of tyrants:
"Trust, but verify."
In any case, the absolute requirements of the Constitution of the United States, which every officer of government, in every branch in this country must swear to God to support, are not optional. They are imperative.
"No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The problem with the states or courts defining “legal personhood” is that it ignores reality.
There is an actual person, and that has unalienable rights which are already defined by God. The fact that a court or state passes a law that eliminates personhood or rights for an individual doesn’t mean the actual person or rights are eliminated.
Right. That’s why the right is said to be unalienable. It is endowed by the Creator, and the only thing somebody besides the Creator can do is either obey or violate those rights.
The Roe v Wade decision gave government permission to pick and choose who their “clientele” will be, and provide protection, due process, and justice to only those, while allowing every kind of crime against anybody outside their “preferred people” list.
That’s what every oppressive people has always done. But the blood of the innocent cries out. No matter what rules we choose to play by, the ones that count are the ones the Creator plays by, and any nation or culture that ignores it does so at its own peril.
I remember when we lived in Minnesota there was a particularly deadly week of crime, and the Minneapolis Mayor (Sharon Sayles-Belton?) was on the radio saying how she just couldn’t understand how there was such a callous disregard for human life. I just about choked to death. Isn’t that what we’ve been telling you all along, you pro-death people?
When each individual gets to decide the worth of another based on expedience for their own purposes, this is what naturally follows. Every child killed in an abortion is just as precious as that 20-year-old who was just killed by a robber; it’s just that you didn’t recognize it, Mayor, because YOU have a “callous disregard for human life”. Human life is sacred regardless of what we think; all we can do is recognize and obey that sanctity, or ignore and violate it. When we violate it, something inside us dies too.
“Ron Paul wants to be pro-life but is officially pro-choice state by state, and so contradicts himself and wrongly assumes that states’ rights supersede human rights, concluding that a state like California has the right to permit abortion. But the right to life is God-given so there can be no ‘right’ to decriminalize child killing. “
All rights are God given period. There is not one honest right that does not originate from God.
If that was not clear enough there is not one right that originates from Goverment.
The right to life like all other rights can and indeed is ceded and/or not protected by the State on the basis of the terms of a contract. In the United States it is indeed the State not Federal Goverment that protects the right to life. That means a State could consevetably legalize murder for any reason.
I will not dispute whether or not the unborn has the right to life, only whether or not the State recognizes that right and that of their life.
On that question I am inclined to agree that many if not most states should, but that is not my call to make for other people’s state, anymore then it is my call to make in other people’s countries.
PS: There is no such thing as “States rights” no state has rights onto itself only the people in States have any rights to speak of. Included among them rights is their right to tell their State what it can and can’t do.
This is what it meant by the broad & historic euphemism “States rights”. Don’t you ever let the phrase get to your head. The rights of Texas are the rights of the people of Texas to tell Texas what it can & can’t do.
It is not a matter of states' rights or human rights, it is a matter of who ENFORCES protection of those rights. Mr. Paul is technically and legally correct in stating that this is a matter best left to the several States insofar as the regulation of of the conduct of medical procedures is concerned, for which there is no Constitutionally enumerated power in the Federal government. Yes, the Fifth Amendment has been incorporated against the States, so the decision of whether to invoke said procedure could be referred to a Federal court should fetuses be declared legal persons, yet look at what an expensive procedural mess that would be in operation. Moreover, the 14th Amendment specifically mentions "persons born" and not "all natural persons" (for which there is more than one beef), so the operation of the Constitution would be limited thereby were a strict reading to be followed. That's one steep legal hill to climb. In addition, few recognize the several Biblical teachings that the life of the mother is paramount. Thus, there always will have to be the medical option to abort a fetus to save the life of the mother.
The pro-life movement has allowed itself to be shaped by their opposition to all abortion, literally a political tar-baby, and has thus failed to deal with the many other issues concerning life, its beginnings, potential modification, or its end. It has also failed to produce a functional set of proposals capable of dealing with the myriad of vital decisions medical science has presented concerning the ultimate decision.
Unfortunately, we have many such decisions to make over life that no one should want to make. Co-equal with the rights of the unborn are those of the aged. Hence, produce a broad "right to life" amendment and we'll become a nation of living cadavers, robbing our children to maintain a brain wave on a video screen. My wife works in a NICU and believe me, that is all some of these kids are, with bills exceeding a million bucks being born by taxpayers, often in total futility. People die because of lack of money, worldwide, and including innocents and G_d does not distinguish "the least of these" by citizenship. Thus, such decisions must be made, whether fetus or aged. It sucks, but it is how things are. Government should not be making them, nor should people be making them on monies taken by force from somebody else. I sure as hell don't want my children's inheritance being blown on another three days of life, but that's just me. In between those extremes lie multivariate gradients of variation from the obvious, to a just but difficult decision, to a moral horror. In other words, such decisions are necessarily individual, for which education in moral consequences are, in my judgment, the primary means of making the best of a sub-optimal set of options given advancing technology.
It is my opinion that courts should be available within hospitals, as there are plenty of life and death decisions to be made that the Founders never anticipated, for which the options on appeal should be strictly limited because of the time-sensitive nature of the decisions. Yet this is where Federalism offers opportunities for experimentation that neither an "amendment-driven" body of law nor a Federal bureaucratic system affords. Therefore, please don't take Mr. Paul's position lightly (he is, after all, a physician and no, I'm not a supporter of his), there may be more to it than you think. I certainly think the projections as to what he does or does not grasp are a going a bit far. Better that you ask specific questions and then comment on what you get in reply.
Wow, I hadn’t heard that. He really must have tied himself in knots trying to reason his way to that conclusion, but he still ends up contradicting himself. The Union couldn’t just “buy all the slaves”, since not all those slaves would be for sale. They’d have to end up invoking some “eminent domain” over the slaves, which would not be a “free market” solution after all.
Not to mention if the government bought the slaves, it would reinforce that humans can be chattel that is legally owned. That action would have set precedence that the government can own an individual.
Your right Carry_Okie, this is a point too often lost on most of us.
As our medical technology gets better & better, it will be possible, be it at extraordinary expense to keep people alive indefinitely. Anyone who demands we must do so at all costs will, if successful, find themselves unable to do anything but labor to keep them alive.
God has his time for every life form on this earth. Sometimes that time is not long after they are conseved, sometimes it is after an unusually long life. It is only murder when we ACT to end someones time on Earth, not when we fail to act to extend it.
Like it or not we cannot possibly sustain the effort required to extend every life indefinitely. Indeed our very effort to do so has already produced many undesirable and detrimental consequences not only for our lives but the lives of those we have acted to keep here on this earth long after God would have otherwise had them return home(to heaven).
On this matter I whole wholeheartedly agree with Ron Paul. The bountries of the State in defining what is murder is(and always has been) indeed that of the State Goverment & Constitution. Not the business of the Federation.
To suggest otherwise is to take us down a very dark path of centralized power over the individual, where there be no map at all to guide us or limit our power hungry leader.
“Not to mention if the government bought the slaves, it would reinforce that humans can be chattel that is legally owned. That action would have set precedence that the government can own an individual.
What does it matter if you call them property or not when goverment weld(without the consent of the governed) all the aspects of the power of property rights over its “citizen”(subjects)?
Yes if a person can be property he can be “owned” like that of an object. But he is just as much a slave even if he is not called property and instead called a citizen or “subject” subject to the limitless & inescapable jurisdiction of a Central goverment.
Your argument is utterly ridicules, and ironic in that the ones who made it to justify their invasion & subjugation of the independence southern confederacy did indeed make every man in every practical respect “property of the State” by the simple act of robing them of their self-determination. And forcefully subjecting them to the whim of the State.
“If that was not clear enough there is not one right that originates from Goverment.”
Yes, this is true and it bears repeating because so few people seem to understand it nowadays. Government doesn’t give people their rights, but rather people cede some of their rights to the government. Authority flows FROM the people TO the government, not the other way around. Furthermore, it can only flow from the people because they were given rights and authority by God in the first place.
It would allow states to ban abortion and would forbid courts from overturning such bans.
Correspondingly, the lives of millions of pre-born babies would be saved.
And pro-lifers could still pursue a Constitutional Amendment banning all abortions.
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