The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
— Thomas Jefferson (Letter to William Hunter, 11 March 1790)
Where do our rights come from? Are they a gift to us from God or do they come to us from our government? I think that that's an important question. It also seems to be central to the divide between liberalism and conservatism in our modern American political discourse.
Here's another question — who actually possesses the rights we're talking about? Do rights belong to the individual or do they belong to society? Do they belong to the people or to the government?
Barack Obama sees the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights as sort of a“charter of negative liberties”, bemoaning the things it doesn't say about what government must do for you. They're documents that say what government can't do to you, but that omit what it must do for you. It's clear which side of these questions his political philosophy falls on. He sees rights as being provided by the government and belonging to the government.
It might be interesting to look at that a bit more. Lets compare two rights shall we? Lets pick two that seem (at least to me) to be examples of the divide between liberals and conservatives. How about the right to keep and bear arms and the right to health care? Conservatives believe that the second amendment to the Constitution ensures that the government shall not infringe upon our right to own and use firearms, while liberals appear to believe that firearms are a great evil that must be kept out of the hands of citizens. Liberals appear to believe that everyone has a right to health care and that the government must therefore provide it. Conservatives tend to believe that there is no universal right to health care.
Yes, I could have picked other rights, but these two seem to crop up from time to time in our politics, and they tend to illustrate a major difference between the attitudes of conservatives and liberals toward our rights. Conservatives believe that our rights are inherent in our nature. Liberals believe that our rights are manufactured things provided to us by our society.
The right to keep and bear arms is an example of the conservative viewpoint. Conservatives believe that the right to self defense is inherent in our nature. The instinct to self defense exists in all higher animals — when attacked they fight, or if unable to fight they flee. It's an extension of the right and natural desire to live. People, being intelligent creatures made the discovery that their “natural” weapons — tooth and fingernail (I'd say claw, but can you really call those flat things “claws?”) were inadequate protection against some of the better equipped predators in the world and so they learned to arm themselves, first with rocks and sticks and later with manufactured weapons, such as sharpened rocks and pointed sticks. Firearms are merely an extension of that concept.
To a conservative, the right to keep and bear arms is related to defense, and the type of arms is suited to the need. By defense, I don't mean merely “self defense”, but the defense of our families, our friends, our state (hence the need for a well organized militia) and our nation as well. This defense is not limited to defense against predators in the animal kingdom, but against predators among men and nations as well, and as the founders demonstrated against the tyranny of governments.
Liberals don't seem to see it that way though. It seems that, to the liberal, weapons don't exist for the purpose of defense, but rather to serve the aggressive instincts of our base nature. It's certainly true that they are often used for that purpose. Not accepting that weapons serve a defensive purpose, or that our rights are inherent in our nature, the argument that keeping and bearing arms as a means to defend against tyranny is often dismissed, as is the self defense argument. Instead, firearms, handguns and “assault weapons” (an emotionally loaded term used more often to describe weapons with a certain appearance rather than function) are an evil that must be kept out of the hands of the citizenry. The argument goes that if possession of weapons is prohibited, then they won't be used to commit violent crimes. This is used as justification for “gun control” laws that remove firearms from the citizenry.
Much more could be said about the topic of firearms, but I think I've made my point about the opposing viewpoints of liberals and conservatives regarding this right. Fundamentally the question resolves around whether it's a right inherent in our nature that must be preserved, or a manufactured right given to us by government, and mistakenly preserved in our Constitution by our founders. That some governments are even considering the step now of considering the possession of knives to be the next step in this battle underscores the point.
I said that I'd contrast two rights, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to health care, so now let's turn to health care. Do we have an inherent right to health care? It seems to be an important issue in today's politics, and again underscores the differences between conservatives and liberals, so I think the answer is fairly important.
Barack Obama has asserted that health care is a right. To read the newspapers or watch or listen to the news on television it would seem that reporters in the major news media seem to believe that this is the case as well. It's an essential campaign issue according to the pundits.
If health care is a right, where does it come from? As a conservative, I would say that it cannot be a “natural” right. I say this because health care is not a thing to be found in nature. Instead, early health care was the product of individual compassion, and not a “right” enjoyed by those that received it. As civilization advanced, health care professionals still demanded compensation for their services or were patronized by the wealthy. It was not seen as a “right” even then. What care was given to the common man was still the product of individual compassion or a service that was paid for by the individual. Health care does not exist except as a service provided by other people, and medication except as a product produced after considerable research and development. To put it bluntly, no one has a natural “right” to command the labors of others.
Liberals on the other hand appear to see rights not as being inherent in our nature, but given to us by society. Under this view, rights don't belong to the individual but instead belong to the society. When they involve something with a monetary value they are doled out to the people as “entitlements.” As an example, Social Security and Medicare are “insurance programs” managed by the government and that provide benefits to citizens as “entitlements.” Health care as a right would fall under this classification. This is certainly a popular notion. Suddenly we are “owed” money and services simply by virtue of being members of the society.
To me at least this attitude is ludicrous. Still, the two attitudes toward rights go a long way to explaining the different attitudes that liberals and conservatives hold toward government.
Conservatives are wary of government amassing this kind of power over our economic lives and our individual liberties, because we view our rights as belonging to the individual and not to society as a whole. To conservatives the principle role of government is to preserve and defend our natural rights, to defend the people against criminal aggression, and to defend the society from external aggression. Because of this, we would see governments power over our individual lives reduced as much as possible, and see its interference in our daily affairs reduced as well.
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, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
This is the conservative's view of our rights. This is the conservative's view of the role of our government. This is the root of the conservative's distrust of excessive government power. This is why when the founders established their first post-declaration system of government they chose a loose confederation of independent States with a weak and limited central government. When that government proved inadequate to the needs of the States and their defense as well as unable to deal with its international debts they replaced it with a new, stronger government under our Constitution. Even then, that government was strictly limited in its powers and in its responsibilities, because the founders distrusted a powerful central government. The Bill of Rights was established to place further, explicit limitations on the power of the central government.
Liberals view our rights from a completely different perspective. While conservatives view them as inherent in our nature and unalienable, liberals view them as changeable.
The task of statesmanship has always been the re-definition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (Commonwealth Club Address, 1932)
In his Commonwealth Club Address, Roosevelt took the foundational rights declared in the Declaration of Independence and redefined them. He converted them from inherent rights that provide opportunity for individuals into rights that convey entitlements as I mentioned earlier. For example…
Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living.
Now that's an interesting interpretation don't you think? A conservative would say that he has a right to seek a comfortable living, but that that is not included in the right to life. Rather it is included in the right to the Pursuit of Happiness. The right to life does not imply a right to comfort, but Roosevelt's redefinition of it does. Roosevelt wasn't satisfied with merely asserting a right to comfort though…
Every man has a right to his own property; which means a right to be assured, to the fullest extent attainable, in the safety of his savings.
Here he introduces the notion of the socialization of risk. Rather than taking the responsibility to protect his own property, the individual now has the right to be secure against the loss of his savings. If times are bad why “in the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common load.” The savings of one become the responsibility of all.
Roosevelt was quite happy redefining our rights, as liberals are quite happy to continue to do today. In his 1944 Message to the Congress on the State of the Union he said that…
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
Here, he further re-defined our right to life, as well as our right to liberty, except that he does so by only enumerating a few of the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights (it's notable I think that he omitted the second amendment right to keep and bear arms from his enumeration). He then went on to say that “these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.”
Liberals see government as the provider of our rights, and as being responsible for providing us all with equality. This isn't an equality of opportunity, but rather the equality of results. To arrange for this to become a reality they have to twist or otherwise abandon the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, and to ignore the Constitution, or in tried and true fashion to pack the federal courts with judges that ignore the plain meaning of the words of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in favor of a “living” document as Roosevelt did.
This by the way is an early instance where the notion that we have a right to health care was asserted. Roosevelt's state of the union message called upon Congress to enact a new, second Bill of Rights, more a bill of entitlements than rights. The notion that the original Bill of Rights consisted of a series of amendments to the Constitution rather than laws enacted by Congress in defiance of the Constitution appears to have been lost on him. Not that this would have mattered much to a man that considered the Constitution to be a quaint relic of the horse and buggy era.
The United States Constitution defines the three branches of our federal government. It lists the duties and powers of each, explicitly enumerating those powers and responsibilities. It specifies the relationship between the federal government and the States. It very explicitly sets for the acceptable procedures for making changes to it. These procedures present rather high hurdles to those that would change the Constitution for a reason — the founders had established a limited government and they wanted it to stay that way. This too derives from the Declaration of Independence…
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Liberals, not satisfied with the restrictions upon our government began a systematic attack on the Constitution and on the principles presented in the Declaration of Independence over a hundred years ago. From time to time the established procedures for changing the Constitution have been followed, but liberals like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and others (in particular, should he get the chance Barack Obama) have always found it easier simply to redefine our rights. They willfully ignore the stable solid foundation of the plain meaning of the written word in favor of a living document that means whatever they want it to. In this way our rights have been changed from individual inherent rights that are unalienable into a series of entitlements provided by our government. In this way, our government has been transformed from one of limited powers to one of vast reach and scope far beyond the nightmares of our founders.
When government provides your rights for you though, government can take them away as well. Ask yourself, if government can take it away — is it really a right?
http://perrinelson.com/2008/10/29/1268.aspx
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