Thank you so much for the link. I will definitely read it.

Admin = R.J. The Wordpress interface I use just logs me on as Admin. But it’s still me, your intrepid blogger.

I wholeheartedly agree with your point about the difference between NEEDS and RIGHTS. I would strongly encourage you (and everyone else reading this) to look in to Fredric Bastiat’s “The Law” for a much more brilliant and pithy defense for the very things you are wisely bringing up.

Here’s the link to an online version: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G700

My favorite part is the Intro: “We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. ”

I couldnt agree with basically everything you said more. Thanks for the post.

How should we address you when responding? Admin seems a bit sterile.

In your page on health care and rights, Augo, in quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stated that everyone has a right to “…a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

I contend that these are all NEEDS and not RIGHTS. The left has taken needs and recast them as rights by playing on our emotions. No one wants to say that people do not have a right to food, because that sounds mean and heartless. People tend to have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of a right to food or shelter, but when arguing about the famous words of our Declaration of Independence, we overlook two things that DEFINE our rights, and that is, we are “ENDOWED by our Creator” with those unalienable Rights, AND those rights are “self evident”.

The unalienable rights of mankind are endowed or “gifted” to man by God. Since it is God who gifted those rights, then no man has the authority to take them away. Anything that God has not gifted to all men is therefore not a right. The framers of the Declaration also said that these rights were “self evident”. The rights gifted to man from God are so obvious as to be without question. If we are now casting as rights those things which previous generations NEVER saw as rights, then that standard of being “self evident” has not been met.

When America first learned of the horror practiced in third world countries known as “female circumcision” we instinctively knew this was wrong. The injustice of this practice is self evident because it robs the female of something that was gifted (endowed) to her from God; namely, the ability to enjoy sexual pleasure. Taking that gift away, even if done by the parent of a minor child, is a violation of the girl’s rights because that gift is not her parent’s to take. It is the girl’s alone, given to her by her Creator.

We start out in this world equal, but we do not end up equal. What we become depends upon our own decisions and initiative. That some people end up with more than others is not something government should try to rectify under the guise of rights.

Human beings have endless needs, and government has an endless appetite for confiscation and control. Turning all needs into rights gives government Carte Blanche to take everything that others produce to provide for those needs.

Here are my thoughts on rights and health care, specifically: http://rjmoeller.com/2009/08/is-health-care-a-right/

One place it seems where everyone gets into trouble is defining exactly what is a right. I think as conservatives we must always reiterate that rights are not needs. How often we have heard “Everyone has a right to decent healthcare”. Obviously, since we are NOT endowed by our Creator with decent healthcare, then decent healthcare cannot be a right.

I know you love The Steyn, and his blog at NRO today touches upon the type of society that comes about when people stop being treated as free citizens and become wards of the all-powerful State.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGNkMjVlOGE4NTk5YzAwMDM3YmQ3NzNhYWQ2NGIwNTQ=

Great column today.

Excellent comment/question. First I would say that there are exceptions to every rule. It is absolutely possible for someone who chooses to not recognize a Creator to be not only a great person, but a wonderful citizen and staunch defender of rights (in the American sense and meaning of the word). It’s possible…but I would contend that

A) It inevitably rests on that atheist or agnostic to explain where rights come from
B) Such a person need to explain, historically, what/who the Founders meant by “Creator”
C) Such a person needs to defend why it would be better for us to do away with (or ignore) 233 years of rights being based on the belief that our Creator gave them to us, and what is the alternative option that is stronger/better?

I do not mean these questions in a combative way. But they are challenging, intellectually honest inquires none the less. We’re dealing with many layers of theology, history, philosophy, etc. here, and I love the analogy of the guy at the circus who spins plates and continues to add stacks of plates while keeping the lower levels of plates spinning. I appreciate the fact that this topic is complicated and that people have very strong feelings about any discussion that involves the words theology or Creator.

What I am attempting to do, and what I think the Framers intended, is explain how a nation founded by predominantly God-fearing Christians were able to put together a union of different denominations and belief types (including atheists and deists). Atheists have the burden of proof on them in the discussion of what the United States of America has believed is the source of their rights. But that “burden of proof” is only required of them if they come looking to erase the idea of our Creator being that source. I believe that the unique thing about America is that no one is forced to believe in God, yet we have a system of freedoms and liberties based on the idea that He gives them to us. All are welcome. All are free. The problem arises when people seek to undermine or whole-sale remove this reality from our history and from our national consciousness. We CAN remove it, we have the freedoms to remove it, but then, if we’re intellectually honest, must admit that we are removing the capstone upon which those freedoms to remove it were built.

I know it makes those who don’t believe in a Creator upset to, as some feel, have their “faces rubbed in it”, but I don’t think anyone has to see it that way or feel that way. If you come to the same limited-government, fiscal responsibility, etc. views that I believe typify conservatism (and much of libertarianism), then we can live at peace and do not have to spend time debating how many times Jefferson went to church.

Just some thoughts that came to mind from your question, Kevin. I’d love to hear your feedback, and hope others will join in the conversation. Thanks.