The modern day Left uses, and misuses, language as a vehicle to impose their authoritarian policies on an unwitting populace. The primary form that this language manipulation takes is by turning the sows ear of oppression into the silk purse of "rights". It is the bread and butter of every authoritarian regime throughout history to convince those they oppress that the tyranny of their policies somehow expands the peoples rights.
The reason that the United States of America is an exceptional nation is because our founding documents marked the first and only time in history that a nation was founded on the principle that rights come from God not man. This is an important concept that is missed by the Left, either through ignorance or design, and is the reason they can convince so many to abandon their liberty in favor of the vacuous promise of security. But to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security, deserves and will posses neither. The Left has convinced a generation of Americans that rights are the province of government to dole out as they see fit, a concept that is completely antithetical to this great nations core principles enshrined in our founding documents. The founders knew that if rights were created by government, they could also be taken away by that very same government. Abraham Lincoln expressed this very concept by pointing out that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also powerful enough to take away everything you have.
The Lefts ability to cloak the wolf of oppression in the sheep's clothing of rights is made possible by the deliberate mis-education of a public that believes that material things and commodities are rights to be guaranteed by government. These "rights" include everything from housing and food to jobs and health care. Nothing could be further from the core principles of this nation. None of the rights outlined in the Constitution are material in nature. Everyone of our Constitutional rights are conceptual laws which are firmly rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition of the rights of free people existing, not in the realm of man, but of God. And as such, these rights can not be taken away by man, except by temporary governments that may rule against the will of God's laws and the will of liberty that exists in every human being.
The Left in this country has expanded their control by using the concept that the different branches of government exist to expand the rights of select groups of the population. They have convinced a sizable segment of the governed that government is their own personal legal council that is going to achieve for them an award of material goods and services from their fellow citizens . This, of course, is contrary to the founding principle that government exists to protect rights that pre-date the Constitution and come from God.
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I don't have a completed disagreement to the notion that the USA was the first nation founded on the notion of rights originating from God, but I do believe that the British empire from it's origin (not so much in the last 500 years) believed in authority of government coming from God, so I might argue that they were first.
ReplyDeleteThat said, excellent piece, I cherish especially your quote "the bread and butter of every authoritarian regime... [is] to convince those they oppress that the tyrrainy of their policies somehow expands the people's rights." Can you define the downfall of the boulshevicks any better?
Thank you for your comment and kind words on my post. I think the British belief that the authority of the monarch came from God is a little different from the people's rights coming from God. One could also argue that the Magna Carta was the precurser to the US Constitution. Although when King James acknowledged in the Magna Carta that the governed had rights, it was still government giving the people those rights and not God.
DeleteI think I'd have to agree. The constitution differs greatly on the point of authority, that it does not come from God but from the governed, and that instead rights come from God. I guess I was thinking that authority coming from God means that the limit of authority (which I think of as rights) comes from God, but to prove that was the thinking of the british would require that they somehow spelled it out, which they didn't.
DeleteI still wonder what all the implications of essentially flipping the notion of government upside down the way they did are. It would seem that the end meaning of government could be very similar whether it is defined from the bottom up (on rights) or the top down (on duties) but perhaps the errors that are prone to creep up are different. Either was however, unjust and overly demanding authority is the common point of failure.
I think what the British did was important in as much as it was the first time to that point in history that there was an official acknowledgement that the governed (or ruled) had rights, limited as they may have been.
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