“Government is law – law which allows society to grow and flourish. Its terms and specific properties derive from an anterior social reality, not the other way around. It is a set of “ground rules” or agreed upon procedures, found in the course of their history to be reasonable and conducive to the general happiness or those whom it binds. Even the meaning of the word “liberty” is restricted by these rules.” – Mel E. Bradford
When Kant defined “rights” he was basically saying, “There are no divine rights”. I challenge you to find one in The Bible (or any other religious book). All rights are political in nature and not abstract, divine, or inalienable. Jefferson was one of our country’s greatest thinkers, but his words in the Declaration of Independence were dangerously wrong. If we have the divine right to “life” why do we die? If we have a divine right to liberty, why did God allow his “chosen people” to be dragged off into slavery? Remember, the word “inalienable” means “can not be taken away for any reason”. I think that it’s “self-evident” that Jefferson was wrong.
Rights come from political institutions and are only valid for as long as the political institution survives. An example of the real right is the “right to drive an automobile”. The government says that if you obey the traffic laws, pass a test to show your ability to drive correctly, and pay your car taxes it will extend to you the “right to drive a car”. If you fail to do any of those three things that “right” is taken away from you. It even can be extended to economics. If I agree to give the guy at the counter $7.00 at Burger King, he extends to me the “right” to eat his double meat whopper with cheese, fires, and a coke.
The problem today is that “abortion, homosexuality, and other debaucheries” actually are rights in this country today. They are legally agreed upon contracts between the citizens and the government through legal elections and appointments. If you look carefully at what Bradford is saying he’s saying that those rights are not founded in history or in long held social mores. They are in fact “innovations” that contradict the long standing position of this culture (which was founded on Protestant values that have been held by Northern Europeans for over 500 years). That is why the country is collapsing. With the election of Obama and the liberal democrats, we have thrown gasoline on the fire.
There are three possible consequences to this. First, Obama and the liberals continue to rule for an extended period of time. That will result in the complete fall of this country. The liberal way just doesn’t work. You can’t murder the tax base and work force at a rate of 1.5 million a year and survive very long. You can’t spend future generation’s prosperity into the fifth or sixth future generation without wrecking the economy to the extent that it will take 100s of years to recover. These people are a complete fraud. They parade around with the “peace and love and diversity” motto tattooed on their chest, but in reality they are more prolific mass murderers than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined.
The second alternative is the way of the fundamentalist Christians. These people are not really Christians, they’re Pharisees. They worship the rules. Unfortunately, their way does work. It’s only cost is freedom. Frankly, I would much rather have Obama making the laws than Eric Farel.
The last alternative is the way of the founders. Have a set of laws that represent the collective history of our culture. That will never happen. How many people do you know who really understand what freedom really is? Looking at the polls from the latest election, I’d say about three percent of the population. Sadly, that means that the third option has no chance. My best guess is that Obama is the final heartbeat of the left, and the hard right will take over for good. This won’t happen with an election. The left owns the media, the entertainment industry, the courts, the public schools, and the universities. None of those institutions answer to the voters. The change will occur violently, and freedom and liberty will be the final victim.
Now reread the original statement by Bradford. It is in keeping with the views of Burke, Kirk, Weaver, and Adams.
I think right now I’ll only address the first paragraph, we can tackle the rest later.
Even rights that are granted by law do not guarantee that the rights of citizens won’t be violated. Even in a nation that protects freedom of speech 100%, terrorists will continue to gag their hostages. I really don’t see how the fact that we die implies that we do not have a God given right to life. What I do see is that without God, Adam would not have been free enough to eat the fruit.
“Inalienable” as it is used in the declaration, only means that the right is inherent to the individual, and cannot be removed. Kind of like my soul. I might not like my soul, I might even say that I don’t have one, but as long as I am alive, that soul is part of me. The right to free speech is an observation, not some ‘innovation’ set down by a would-be social architect. God gave each and every individual a brain with the faculties of communication necessary to convey their personal evaluation of reality, which implies the freedom to use them.
This argument makes no sense. You also need to read the entire Declaration of Independence. The reason the document was written was because King George added violated the rights of Englishmen and therefore had made the contract between him and the citizens of the 13 colonies null and void. When someone violates the
contract they lose the right. If a terrorist, like Timothy McVey violates the law he loses his right to life, liberty, etc.
Does your statement in the first paragraph mean also that even though we don’t have wings, we have the God given right to fly. Man was immortal until he sinned (broke the law) in the Garden of Eden. Only after his sin did he lose his immortality. In other words, man had the right to life, but only under law. When he broke the law he lost the right, and even a hallowed fellow like Thomas Jefferson can’t put that Humpty Dumpty back together
again (he apparently lost his right to life on July 4, 1826). How ironic.
When McVey was executed, didn’t he lose his life? How can it therefore be something that is inalienable (was it not removed when he was executed?)
I fail to see anywhere in my email to you where I said that freedom of speech was an “innovation”. Would you point that out to me? An “innovation” is a right that is established by law that has no bases in history. The
right to an abortion is a perfect example of that. Can you name one western government that established that right before the late 20th century? Was it something demanded in the Declaration of Independence? Where is its history?
There are two kinds of rights, prescriptive rights that are grounded in history and culture over hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. An example is the Sabbath. That right (established by law) has been around for almost 4,000 years, and practiced widely by all Christian and Jewish cultures.
The other type of right in an “innovation”, which is one that has no history. Almost all of the so-called rights established in the last 40 years have no history in Western Civilization.
You are referring to this one?
“The only freedom which can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in history, located in space, sanctioned by a genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment. The only equality which abstract rights, insisted upon outside the context of politics, are likely to provide is the equality of universal slavery” – Dr. M. E. “Mel” Bradford, from A Better Guide Than Reason
That provides no definition of the word ‘freedom’ which I’ll consider synonymous with ‘right’ until instructed otherwise.
Kant’s comment does define the word ‘right’, but I see a problem here.
“Government is law – law which allows society to grow and flourish. Its terms and specific properties derive from an anterior social reality, not the other way around. It is a set of “ground rules” or agreed upon procedures, found in the course of their history to be reasonable and conducive to the general happiness or those whom it binds. Even the meaning of the word “liberty” is restricted by these rules.” – Mel E. Bradford
IF
We define liberty as a set of rights described by a government.
AND
A right must be extensible to all people.
AND
No government governs ‘all people.’
How can liberty exist?
You’re confusing political rights and divine rights. That’s the problem. A divine right is one that extends to all people everywhere. A political right is one that is only extended to citizens within a political body that obey the laws of that political group.
Freedom is the power to choose. When a right that is extended to a person, it gives them the power to choose within the context of the right. A citizen who has the right to vote also has the power to choose the political figures that run his country.
Abortion is a political right in that it is legally extended to a group of people within a society. It obviously cannot be extended beyond the society where the law (or right exists). Therefore it is not and can never be a divine right. It cannot be a divine right because it cannot be extended by law (in our case) outside the USA. It cannot also be a divine right because it cannot be extended to men.
Bradford’s point is that there are no divine rights, only political rights (or freedoms) are real. Abstract or divine rights are nonsense (and dangerous to the long term welfare of a country).
Here’s an example of a political right from The Bible. John 3:16 gives the right of eternal life in heaven. But it is a political right not a divine right (even though it comes from God). The key word is “whosoever”.
I’m not confusing them, I have them clearly defined in my mind as different. Political rights are either recognitions of divine rights, or they are ‘innovations’. Bradford recognized Divine rights by the historical background that they have merited from other regimes. But he then goes on to declare that these rights are special BECAUSE of their history, not because of their relationship with creation.
I maintain that divine rights have merited recognition throughout history because of their inherent nature, not the other way around.
I am not confusing divine rights with political rights. I am stating that Bradford is wrong, and providing my reasons for thinking so.
I feel like your next point will be that ideas have consequences and that the idea of divine rights is ‘dangerous to the long term welfare of a country’. I agree that confusion of political rights with divine rights is dangerous, but it seems to me that a recognition of divine rights is the only idea that can possibly separate a republic from a democracy. A republic is accountable to a law outside itself, a democracy is not.
http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Pennsylvania-Inhabitants-British-Colonies/dp/0548976899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243868131&sr=1-1
This is Bradford’s main source of information. The author is John Dickinson, a representative to the Second Continental Congress from Pennsylvania. He refused to sign the Declaration of Independence because of the “life, liberty, etc.” clause. He would have been happy to sign the declaration if it had been worded this way.
“We hold these truths to be self evident that Englishmen are endowed by their government with certain political rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness under law”.
The key terms are “we” (meaning English citizens only) and “government” (meaning part of a contract between the English citizens and the ruling party), “under law” (meaning that if you don’t follow the laws of the land they are automatically removed).
This is the Old Whig position that was dominate in the colonies at the time of the Revolution and promoted by people like Edmond Burke in England. It was also the position of Cato the Younger during the last days of the Roman Republic. The French were the ones promoting “divine rights”, not the English. John Locke, who Jefferson borrowed the phrase “life, liberty, pursuit of happiness” from disavowed that view late in life because he believed it to be un-Christian. There are no divine rights in The Bible, only laws, covenants, contracts, etc. The oddity of all of this is that most of the people who advance “divine” rights are also atheist.
These statements by Bradford and others is the core of the debate against what is called today “Modern Liberalism”. They are at best contradictory and at worse dangerously anti-freedom. The sad fact is the Christians are today, for the most part, embracing the “divine right” concept too. Freedom is a live and let live proposition. The “crusaders” on both the left and right want to force everyone to follow their peculiar form of perfection. On the left, the advocates of freedom from that perspective say that everyone had the “right to life” but that abortion is also a right. On the right, it takes the form of firing me for smoking because “the body is the temple of God”, but that doesn’t seem to apply to the fat people working there. The church (SVCA) in this case believes and teaches that we all have the “right to the pursuit of happiness” but only if your hair to short and your dress comes down below your ankles.
Liberty is the power to choose. A libertarian would defend the right of citizens to privately choose homosexuality because it is a private matter. They would (or should) oppose it being actively promoted in places like the schools or the entertainment industry because it is not based on any historical or cultural prescription. To promote homosexuality there is an “innovation”.
Do the terms make more since now?
Here’s what, in my opinion, is happening today (and why this is going to come to violence and revolution soon). You have three views of the Enlightenment. They are English, French and German. Their principle advocates are Edmund Burke and the founding fathers of the US (English), the leaders of the French Revolution, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. (French), and Marx (communism) and Nietzsche (fascism) (German).
The English Enlightenment was destroyed by the American Civil War, the French by the fall of Napoleon, the German by the defeat of Hitler and the fall of the Soviet Union. Although all of them have fallen, nothing has been created to replace them, and power hates a vacuum. The Modern Left is kind of a cross between French and German (Communist) Enlightenment thought. The Right is basically Fascist. Don’t think for a minute that racism won’t be a part of this. Look at the Supreme Court appointment. The only reason she’s been nominated is because she’s Hispanic (and a woman too). That’s a perfect example of picking our leaders based on race. Obama is another obvious example. The Supreme Court lady has already been quoted as saying that she can judge better than white men because of her race. That’s openly racist, and the media is letting it go. And that too is racist.
The poor English view has now been relegated to a distant third. The reason for that is that it was based and for farming communities, and the modern world has long since left that behind.
Bradford advanced that The Bible punished the human race in three ways. Men were required to be farmers, women were required to subordinate themselves to men, and together they were to be fruitful and multiply. As should be perfectly obvious, the human race (and particularly the west) is in open rebellion against all three. What this means to me is that the left will eventually fall. The right will win, but it will not be Christian (or Jewish for that matter) in nature because it too will be in rebellion against at least one of those punishments (be a farmer).
The great apostasy is the modern world. It doesn’t matter whether is comes of the right or left. One will never work, and the other will only work for a while.
Just reorganizing this so I get it better.
Divide the enlightenment philosophical schools in 3 general nationalities.
English (Burke)
Rights can only exist under direct or social contract.
French (Voltaire, Rousseau)
That rights are inherent to the person by nature or God, not disposable by law or contract.
German (Marx, Kant)
That rights exist only where applicable to all people past present and future.
With this respect, I do not see that the German school necessarily conflicts with either the English or French. The English and French schools clearly conflict, and I can see room for a great debate there.