Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

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Oh look! A squirrel!

Sometimes I wish that we didn’t have all of the modern technology that we enjoy. When I was a very young boy we didn’t have a television – at least not that I can remember for a long time. We had radio and LP recordings. We had books, and we had toys – real, physical toys. If we were bored, we read or we went outside to play.

I remember my parents’ stereo set. It was bigger than the table that I have my printer, monitor and keyboard on now. That’s it behind my brother in this photo (yes, this was a long time ago).

Give it enough time though and technology creeps into our lives until we think we can’t do without it. There’s the television front and center in the room one Christmas morning. We’d had it for a while – a small black and white set.

My dad had an interesting way of preserving historic events. In 1969 when men landed on the moon, my dad recorded it – with his camera. Yes, I know it says “Live Color TV Pictures of Moon”, but we only had a black and white TV. Still, technology was really on the move.

Yesterday, I played World of Warcraft on my computer in my room in Woods Cross, UT. My son was playing at the same time on his laptop in Covington, WA. We were both watching the Super Bowl, shooting “leper gnomes”, bears, and snow leapards in the imaginary land of Dun Morogh – just outside Gnomeragon and Brewnall Village. I’ve got a big screen projection TV at home that he plays other video games on at times. I’d guess it’s five times the size of that old stereo, and my stereo fits in my pocket.

At home we can pause live television and re-wind it if we miss something. I used to pause whatever I was watching when there was too much noise in the house. We’ve got DVDs, MP3 players, headphones, computers, and all sorts of gadgets. I receive about 150 e-mail messages a day on my personal accounts (only about 20 or so are spam) – not to mention the e-mail I get at work. I’m sitting behind a computer monitor for ten to twelve hours a day. It seems anymore that it takes a special event to get outside.

Unless the electricity is working and the internet is up – my kids are bored. Even with them both available sometimes they’re still bored – or at least they complain that there’s nothing to do. Pink Floyd was right. “Got thirteen channels of shit on the T.V. to choose from.”¹ Well, it’s more like 250 channels anymore and there’s seldom anything worth watching. Even as I write this I’m listening to the “Celt in a Twist” podcast, doing a search on the Internet to verify the lyrics I just quoted, updating my iPhone’s OS and downloading a few more podcasts – even though my internet connection is dog slow.

With all of the entertainment devices we have today is it any wonder we’re putting on weight? Forgetting our history? Losing touch with one another? Losing touch with the world?

- Oh look! A squirrel!

Interestingly enough, as I'm lamenting the sapping of our intelligence and imagination that comes from too much info-tainment The Hill's RSS feed is touting The need for broadband Internet adoption. I don't believe in coincidence. That's all we need, another NGO lobbying our government to pursue yet another program we don't really need government to get involved in.

And finally, some GOOD news. Thanks to the snow in Washington D.C. there will be no votes tomorrow in the House of Representatives. Climate Change finally does something good for the United States. While our Congress is out playing in the snow they aren’t doing anything to make our economy even worse – even if it’s only for a day. But wouldn't you know it... Steny Hoyer made the announcement via Twitter!

How to advance a statist agenda

The (modern) conservative believes that our nation was founded upon some very simple principles and that those principles happen to be the same principles that (modern) conservatism is based upon. (Modern) conservatives revere the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. A (modern) conservative believes that these documents promulgate and are based upon the concepts of individual liberty and limited government.

I can’t presume to tell you what the (modern) liberal believes. In doing so all I would really be doing is propping up a straw man to knock it down. Anything I as a (modern) conservative have to say about their motivations would be purely speculation. What I can tell you about (modern) liberals is the direction they have been taking our nation.

I use the word “modern” in parentheses when I am talking about liberals and conservatives in the above paragraphs because the meaning we give to those words today is somewhat different from what it was sometime in the past. It used to be that believe in individual liberty and the inalienable rights of man was a liberal viewpoint. Back in the 1930s today’s liberals would have been called “progressives”. Mark Levin calls them “statists”. I think these two terms are much more accurate ways to describe the (apparent) motives and actual actions of (modern) liberals.

One of the principal differences between liberals and conservatives these days is centered around the role of government in our lives. The liberal (apparently) sees government as the answer to the problems that beset our society and the conservative sees government as a necessary means to preserving ordered liberty. The conservative believes that individual ingenuity and industry can overcome the problems we face – provided that unnecessary roadblocks to innovation aren’t put in our way.

As I have said before, the conservative believes in the unalienable rights of the individual. The conservative believes that these rights come from his creator – and not merely from the mind of man. The Declaration of Independence declares that it is the purpose of government to secure these rights – Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and that governments are established among men for that purpose. Clearly the founders believed that those rights exist outside of government – and not as something that comes as a consequence of being governed.

Today’s liberal seems to view the rights of the individual as a problem rather than as a gift from our creator. The (liberal) environmentalist appears to believe that the “crushing” numbers of people are destroying our environment – and there is some evidence that in certain areas this is indeed the case. Go to a national park today and observe the structures you’ll find there. If there are old farmhouses preserved in the parks, take a walk through – and tell me what you find. I’m willing to bet that just about anywhere you go you’ll find evidence of some thoughtless individual “leaving his mark” – whether it be in graffiti drawn with a marker or spray can; or a name and date carved into picnic tables or the walls of ancient buildings; or simply fast food wrappers tossed into a corner. Obviously such defacing of public property is a criminal act deserving of punishment – and yet even in the face of stiff fines it continues to this day.

Faced with this the liberal seems to seek more government regulation – not just with regard to our national parks – but with regard to all of the environment – even parts that he cannot enjoy without trespassing on someone else’s property. Private property rights must be abridged in the name of preserving the environment (ask me about King County Washington’s “Critical Areas Ordinance” sometime if you don’t believe me).

Ah, but the founders considered property and liberty to be of one cloth. John Locke reasoned in his “Second Treatise of Government” that men left the “state of nature” to form civil societies in part to protect their property and liberty from the depredations of others. For the (liberal) environmentalist to have his way the rights of the individual must be suborned by the government. This certainly doesn’t sit well with conservatives. Recall again (I can’t stress it enough) the notion that our unalienable right to liberty (and according to Locke therefore our right to property or those things which we take from the “commons” and make our own by our labor) comes from our creator, and not from our government. To weaken that argument the statist must attack the very notion of a creator – and repudiate the words of our founders.

Let’s consider an example – the first amendment to our constitution. Let’s read it shall we?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This amendment is, on the face of it, a restriction upon the power of Congress. It says “Congress shall make no law… respecting an establishment… or prohibiting … or abridging”. In plain English, Congress cannot establish a government sponsored religion. Just as Congress cannot establish a religion, neither can it make a law that prohibits the free exercise of religion. This is a conservative viewpoint of the first part of this amendment.

A “liberal” viewpoint of this part of the first amendment is quite different though. Do you see anywhere in the text of the first amendment (quoted in it’s entirety and in it’s original language above) any mention of “a wall of separation” between “church and state”? And yet, this is what I am told by some liberals that the first amendment means. Today the first amendment is used to prohibit people from praying in a public venue – surely a prohibition on the “free exercise” of religion.

Much is made of the “wall of separation” that Thomas Jefferson described in his letter to the Danbury Baptists, and yet it is plain to see from their own words that the founders believed that for liberty to survive the people needed to attend to their relationship with their creator – who gave them their unalienable rights in the first place. They believed that without moral convictions and virtue the people would easily be led astray and that corruption would eventually overtake the government to the ruination of everyone’s liberty.

Faith in a creator and the belief that one is accountable to Him that made us puts constraints upon individual behavior. Whether those constraints come from fear of punishment or from a desire to please the creator they still exist. Such faith constrains us to take a moral course in our lives, to hate corruption and to deal honestly with one another. It inspires us to work hard to solve the problems we are faced with. It also re-affirms our faith in the gifts that He has given us – especially our unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Unbelief removes those moral constraints on our behavior. Whether the unbelief is because of open hostility toward the idea of moral accountability or from ignorance is immaterial. Without a belief in the creator how then is there a need for moral behavior – except where the fear of society’s censure and punishment impells it? Without a belief in the creator how then can our unalienable rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness be any such thing as gifts from Him? Why surely without a creator they must be inventions of mankind and therefore not unalienable.

Statists, or progressives, or socialists, or today’s (modern) liberals have always sought bigger government at the expense of the individual. In order to advance a statist agenda, the liberal must overcome resistance to it from many areas. Since the statist agenda typically involves restrictions on individual liberties the notion that those liberties are fundamental to our nature must be repudiated. This requires the erosion of faith – accomplished by pushing it out of the public square. This is also achieved by re-defining individual rights “in terms of a changing and growing social order” as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it in the 1930s.

Since the statist agenda inevitably involves increased government oversight over our lives Constitutional restrictions on what the government may do must be overcome. When Roosevelt was unable to advance his agenda he overcame his opposition by threatening to pack the courts with Judges who would interpret the Constitution as a “living” document holding whatever meaning he wished it to have.

It is no wonder that liberals portray conservatives as mere obstructionists. In terms of the statist agenda we have to be. We must because that agenda attacks all that we believe in at it’s most fundamental level. Unless and until we wake up to this fact and can demonstrate it to the public liberals will succeed in demonizing conservatives and conservatism. The liberal talks of “getting things done” in government. Often the conservative must “get things undone” if we are to retain our freedoms.

They’ve taken the language from us – changing the meaning of so many things – including the terms conservative and liberal. It’s time we took it back. It’s time we “got a few things done” like protecting our liberties.

If you want to really know a conservative point of view – simply ask when any topic comes up - “how will this affect individual liberties, especially in terms of our unalienable rights”. If it will affect them adversely then it’s not a part of a conservative agenda.

Originally published on another web site that I am no longer affiliated with.

Rights, Entitlements, Privileges, and Duties

The last time I wrote on the topic of our individual rights as guaranteed (sorry, the original article no longer exists) – but not granted – by the United States Constitution, I made a distinction between our individual, unalienable rights and what so many people these days perceive to be our “rights”. To begin with our true rights are given to us, as individuals, by God. They are not granted to us by governments. They are not granted to us based upon our membership in a given social class, and they are given to us ALL equally. It is this self evident truth upon which our entire government in these united States is based.

I say it is a self evident truth. Our founders also declared it to be self evident, using that fact as supporting evidence when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, which was the UNANIMOUS declaration of our founders. John Locke demonstrated that our indefeasible, unalienable rights derive from the law of Nature and that all men in the state of nature hold these rights. Rene Descartes demonstrated from first principles that God must exist and that He is the One who made us. These are all simple but profound truths, and they are under attack all the time by the enemies of Liberty and even by her defenders who don’t take the time to consider them carefully.

Let’s begin with the premise that our rights are given to us by God. To use a phrase that one of my high school teachers used oh so many years ago, it should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that this notion is under attack. We see it in the mishandling and misinterpretation of the first amendment to the Constitution. We see it in the constant attempts by organizations like the misleadingly named American Civil Liberties Union (an organization that was originally founded by a Communist seeking to subvert the United States from within) and the Freedom From Religion foundation to drive every mention of God from the public square.

Why the attacks on God and on religion? As a Christian I believe that there is a continual battle going on between God and those angels that fell away from him in antiquity, and part of that battle is over the souls of men. The devil would enjoy nothing more than a purely secular society that refuses to acknowledge God’s existence. So it is that I believe that he works against any mention of God in the public square or acknowledgement of God anywhere.

However there is a more mundane reason why there are so many attacks on God and religion, particularly Christianity, than the battle between powers and principalities in the heavens. If the people can be persuaded that God does not exist or that he takes no interest in our civil society then it is much easier to persuade them that our individual rights do not come to us from God and are not inherent in our nature but rather are nothing more than privileges granted to us by our government. And what government gives us, government may also take away with impunity. And so it is that one of the pillars upon which our nation was founded is toppled (or at least the attempt to topple it is made) by the statists.

And why would the statists want that? Well, the notion of individual, unalienable rights is antithetical to the statist’s notion of class-based “rights”. A free people living in liberty and pursuing their own aims have no real need of a powerful centralized state that controls their lives in exchange for entitlements. They are quite capable of making up their own minds what actions will best suit their own interests. A self-reliant people asserting and exercising their individual rights will naturally distrust a powerful centralized government that seeks to regulate their exercise of those rights “for the good of the society” rather than securing them against depredation.

That’s why we have a whole new class of “rights” these days, “class rights” or the rights of society as opposed to the rights of the individual. It’s also why we see so many entitlement programs. And I have to tell you it’s bad for our society in so many ways there’s not enough room for me to really elaborate in this short article. Remember, I said last time that the important distinction between our individual, unalienable rights and these entitlements has to do with their character. Our individual rights declare what we MAY do as INDIVIDUALS. The “rights” that our politicians and the statists would have us believe in work instead to tell us what we may REQUIRE OTHERS to do FOR US. They are the rights of classes of people rather than the rights of individuals. They sap at our character and enslave us rather than liberate us.

THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUR GOD GIVEN RIGHTS AND OUR GOVERNMENT PROVIDED ENTITLEMENTS IS A SIMPLE ONE. Our God given rights ensure our freedom to live our lives as He would have us do so – Our government provided entitlements enslave us and make us dependent on government rather than God and ourselves. This is why the statist seeks to limit our enjoyment of the former and enlarge the latter – until we are all the slaves of the state at which point the state must begin rationing those entitlements in order to survive.

Health care is a perfect example. From the point of view of the conservative we have a right to seek quality health care in order to preserve our lives and in the pursuit of happiness. From the point of view of the statist we have a “right” or more accurately an “entitlement” to health care – making the health care provider a slave to our needs and ensuring that as time passes the quality of our health care and the amount of it we may receive will eventually be rationed by the state.

But what of privileges and duties? The title of this article mentions Rights, Entitlements, PRIVILEGES, and DUTIES. it is with these last two that I would like to close. Privileges are not individual, unalienable, God given rights. Neither are they government provided entitlements. They hold instead elements of each.

The so-called “right” to vote is one example. It is not an individual unalienable right granted by God. In the state of nature there is no need to vote. Voting only has meaning within a society. When men leave the state of nature to form a civil society they surrender their absolute individual sovereignty in exchange for a voice in the society and a say in how the society will be run – without that privilege there is no reason to quit the state of nature. And this too explains the difference between the views of conservatives and the views of statists with regard to the “right” to vote.

The conservative seeks always to see that the government he has quit the state of nature to enter into does only that which is necessary to preserve his individual, unalienable rights. He thus works to ensure that his voice in the civil society is not diluted by the voices of those that are opposed to the goal of preserving those rights. People that remain in the state of nature and war with the civil society logically should not be given the privilege of ordering it. And, since voting is a privilege of participants in the civil society rather than a right it is also logical to exclude those who are members of other societies from ordering the civil society of which they are not a part. IN OTHER WORDS, felons (who are opposed to the civil society) and non-citizens should be excluded from the voter rolls – precisely because they are not a part of the civil society which by voting they would be ordering.

The statist on the other hand always seeks a larger constituency in order to promote his aims. The statist offers to the people the enticements of entitlements precisely because it increases the power of the state and gives the state a means by which to ensure the “proper behavior” of the populace. By fostering a dependent class the statist can gain control over people by enticement and through fear. Enticement because by nature humans are greedy and will seek entitlement at the expense of others. Fear because once a person believes himself entitled to something the thread of having it taken away leads him to defend that entitlement – again at the expense of others. By offering the carrot and the stick the statist leads his constituents into slavery. By treating the vote as a “right” that the conservative is “denying” to any given class of people the statist both marginalizes the conservative and entices those outside the civil society to enter into it – a devil’s bargain that eventually saps the morals and character of the people. It does this not through the entry of corrupted people into the society, but by enslaving new entrants into it from the outset.

And so at last we come to DUTY. Recall that I said earlier that our rights tell us what we may do for ourselves, and not what we may require from others. It is then our DUTY to exercise those rights without infringing upon the rights of others. We may enjoy our life, our liberty, our property, and our pursuit of happiness – provided that we do not take from others their lives, their liberty, their property, or prevent them from pursuing their own happiness. It is our DUTY to fight against any act by government that serves to enslave rather than liberate the members of the civil society. That means we must fight against ALL entitlement programs – even if we ourselves might benefit from them – because government entitlement programs do not liberate us. They enslave us and that is anathema to our duty to exercise our rights without infringing upon the rights of others.

And lastly, we have the DUTY to enjoy our privileges in a responsible manner. The privilege of voting should not be wasted. By entering into the civil society we have exchanged our absolute right to judge and enforce the law of nature for the privilege of helping to order a society which will both judge and enforce that law for us with the goal of preserving our rights. Failing to do what we can to see to it that the civil society lives up to its obligations to us as individuals is a failure of our DUTY to ourselves and to that society.

NEVER can we give up. We must always do what we can to see to it that those we choose to represent us in the society we have joined truly represent us as individuals. Where they do not, we must fight to see that they are replaced with people that will. We have a duty to do this, both for ourselves and for one another. And we need to do it as effectively as we can. Speaking out helps but it is not enough. Utilizing the great PRIVILEGE of our vote is the most effective way we have to order our society.

About a year or so ago I changed the name of my blog from the eponymous “Perri Nelson’s Website” to “Individual Liberty – Individual Responsibility”. I spend a lot of time talking about our liberties, but they are meaningless without the paired individual responsibility to exercise them. It’s a duty we all share. I exhort you, my fellow conservatives, to do your duty.

Originally posted on another web site that I no longer affiliate myself with.

Ignorance masquerading as erudition

I’m a ditto-head, I’ll admit it. I listen to Rush Limbaugh on a fairly regular basis. He’s never on the radio when I’m not working though, so I never get to listen to him live. Instead I take advantage of my Rush 24/7 membership that my dad gave me as a birthday present a few years back. That way I can download the podcasts and listen whenever I have the time. Of course that means that I don’t have his “latest” opinion until the next day, or in some cases a couple of days later, but then I’ve never really needed Rush to tell me what my opinions were.

My opinions are based in a strong belief in individual liberty. I love the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I’ve also taken to reading some other documents by the founders, and some of the literature and philosophy that obviously informed their opinions too.

It has been a long time, but I graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida quite some time ago with a degree in mathematics and science. I’ve forgotten most of the mathematics I learned – having almost never had the reason to actually use it, but my appetite for science has never gone away. Of the sciences, I preferred chemistry and physics to the rest, but I also studied geology and biology too. In junior high school I was fascinated by the possibility that someday scientists might possibly reproduce the conditions that created life – especially after reading about Henry Miller’s work synthesizing complex organic compounds from methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and water.

I know that they still teach biology and basic chemistry in high school these days. My son had to take biology classes not too long ago, and last month I was helping one of my younger cousins with her chemistry homework. That’s why I was completely and utterly shocked to hear the inane babblings of someone that called in to the Rush Limbaugh show earlier this week. This person was a liberal and he’d swallowed the anthropogenic global warming story hook, line, and sinker.

Anyway, he came onto the show with a pleasant voice, and spoke with the air of someone that had a half-way decent education. He authoritatively told Rush that the atmosphere was a complex mixture of many constituents, nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and other pollutants. Rush listened attentively. The caller then told Rush how when humans breath in they absorb some of these constituents in their lungs, particularly some of the oxygen, and capturing the particulate matter and pollutants in their lungs. Everything to this point was true and said in such a way that it sounded like the man knew what he was talking about.

But he couldn’t stop there. He made the bold assertion that the carbon dioxide that we exhale is the very same carbon dioxide that we inhaled, and that the act of breathing did nothing whatsoever to increase the carbon dioxide content of the air around us. Rush listened through it all attentively, told the caller that he “didn’t know that” and thanked him for his call. All in all, Rush was very gracious to the man and treated him far better than his idiocy deserved. Fortunately for “those of you in Rio Linda”, a physicist called the show a little while later to set the record straight.

The processes by which animals obtain energy from their food are fairly complex, but they are all based on a simple concept. The oxidation of organic chemicals eventually produces water, carbon dioxide, and energy. Along the way there are other byproducts as complex organic compounds are broken into less complex ones but that’s essentially what goes on. Take simple sugar for example – you know that compound that parents all believe leaves their children hopelessly wired a few hours before bedtime. Sugar is a simple carbohydrate. The only elements present in the glucose molecule are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. They are bound together chemically, and breaking those chemical bonds releases energy. When our bodies process it they add additional oxygen from the air that we breath into the mix. Some of the oxygen combines with the hydrogen to form water. The rest of the oxygen combines with the carbon to form – you guessed it carbon dioxide.

Our bodies don’t store carbon dioxide. Instead it diffuses out of our cells and into our bloodstream – eventually making its way to the lungs where it is released into the air that we exhale. The air that we inhale has a different composition than the air that we exhale. It contains more oxygen and less carbon dioxide. Ultimately the breathing of every animal on the planet – even single celled animals like amoeba and the like – increases the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I learned this in sixth grade oh so many years ago. My son learned it not so long ago himself. My cousin had already learned it.

Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I still find it almost unimaginable that an adult in this country doesn’t know this simple basic fact. That someone this ignorant could call a radio talk show and make assertions of this kind as though he actually understood the science almost amazed me. The thing is, with his well spoken manner and his bravado it’s a sure bet that his friends think him to be quite intelligent and well educated – and they probably fall for his opinions on matters of science.

It’s no wonder with all of the evidence of scientific, political, and legal fraud going on in the anthropogenic global warming “research” community that people still believe that these “scientists” know what they’re talking about and that they’re being honest about the topic. After all, if this caller is any indication their scientific education is sorely lacking – and they don’t even know it.

I wonder if the caller was from the E.P.A.?

A promise of slavery from the Democratic party

“Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.”
— John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

I used to laugh at the stereotypical zealots with the sandwich boards declaring “the end is near”. Lately I’m beginning to think they were right, just not quite in the way they meant. The Democratic party leadership understands John Witherspoon quite well I think.

They have voiced their contempt for our constitution. It is after all to them nothing more than a “charter of negative liberties” and any questions of adhering to its restrictions upon Congress are dismissed with “that’s not a serious question”. It no longer restrains our Congress from spending money for purposes outside those which it authorizes.

The majority of our people have come to expect government to provide for them. On the radio we are occasionally treated to anecdotal evidence of this. A few days ago a woman called a major talk radio show to tell about a friend of hers. Her friend makes roughly $15,000 per year – an income well below what we consider the poverty level. Out of that income the government took a couple of hundred dollars for taxes through income withholding. At the end of the year they received a tax refund with rebates of several thousand dollars. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but it was well over twenty times what they paid out thanks to “earned income credits”, “child credits” and the like. Through state and federal welfare programs of one form or another they made a total income of over $32,000. It’s still not much, but the government provided more than half of their income!

People in this situation have little incentive to do anything about it. Even a modest increase in their income can cost them their government provided benefits. It’s as if the government were punishing them for trying to improve their situation. And watch out if anyone should threaten to reduce these benefits as an incentive to make them become self-reliant.

I’ve seen this sort of thing myself. I know a young lady whose situation is very similar, as well as another young lady who lived in a similar situation in the past but whose situation has improved – primarily because she found real work that paid a good wage. But think about it. She had to find work that provided more than double what she had been actually earning beforehand in order to break even.

Let’s set the way-back machine to the 1930s shall we? The nation’s economy was in terrible shape. Unemployment rates were high and there was a tremendous disparity between the wealthy and the poor. The man who eventually became the president that our current president hopes to surpass had this to say...

“Every man has a right to life; and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt

This was a complete redefinition of the right to life. Beforehand we might have said that the right to the pursuit of happiness meant that he had a right to seek a comfortable living, but Roosevelt declared it to be a right to make a comfortable living. And this alleged right was implicit in the right to life.

Imagine that – apparently it is government’s duty to secure not just our life and our liberty, but also our comfort! Now admittedly, Roosevelt didn’t quite take this idea that far – it would never have gotten past the people in 1932. But he did imply if you were willing to work that you were entitled to a comfortable living. The type of work, and the amount of work had nothing to do with it. Your employer was apparently obligated to pay you enough to live comfortably without regard for the economic value of your work. After all in that same address, he also said that private wealth was a public trust.

Today of course the Democratic party and their constituents want to take things even further. We’ve watched as they abrogate the law of contracts (demanding that executives pay back what are considered to be “outrageous” executive pay and bonuses – even where those bonuses are contractual obligations of the companies paying them) in violation of the constitution. But we’re also told – loudly and often that we have a “right” to quality affordable health care. Where this right comes from I don’t know, but I’m sure it must be an extension of Roosevelt’s perversion of the right to life. After all, if he had been able to pull it off he’d have nationalized health care in the 1930s. He stopped short of that goal though because he knew he wouldn’t be able to get popular support for it.

Think for a moment though what this alleged right to health care implies. As I see it the “right” to health care implies that we have a right to the inventions and labor of others to suit our own needs. In other words, this right supercedes the right to property (and hence liberty) of the doctors and hospitals that provide us with health care, as well as the right of doctors to seek their own comfortable living through their chosen career. This “right” allows us to make slaves of medical professionals and to take from them their property through the enforced usage of their diagnostic equipment and the taking of their supplies.

It should be obvious – there’s a major difference between the rights of the individual as enumerated by our founders – rights that they saw as self evident gifts of our creator and the rights that Roosevelt and his successors believed in and that today’s citizen seems to not be able to do without. That difference is fairly straightforward too.

The primary distinction between the individual unalienable rights of men and the “rights” of today is that the former are the things that we may do for ourselves, while the latter are things that we require others to do for us. In other words, they are the difference between liberty and slavery, liberty and tyranny. The rights of liberty are sustainable – they are indefeasable. The rights of tyranny are not sustainable – when they eventually become impossible for our government to provide government will withhold them – and thereby take away the last of our liberties as we become slaves to the government in exchange for something that was never ours to forcibly take from others in the first place.

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