Read the part of the Declaration of Independence politicians don't want you to read. by Brian Irving
(libertarian)
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Independence Day, July 4, 2008. In between the parades, fireworks, BBQs, baseball games and other patriotic festivities, you may have occasion to actually read the Declaration of Independence. After all, that document is what this holiday is supposed to be about. You might even have time to read some editorials and news articles, watch some TV program or hear politicians pontificate about the significance of that document. And you'll probably here these words:
"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."
But read on, to the part the political class and power elites don't want you to hear:
"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. 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. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."
While the punctuation and capitalization style in the original is strange to modern readers, you can't deny Thomas Jefferson had a way with words. (I emphasized my favorite lines.) In today's American English, he said:
The only legitimate purpose of government is to ensure that no one violates anyone else's rights.
Therefore, a just government can only serve those people who voluntarily support it. Whenever any form of government exceeds its legitimate authority and begins destroying the very values it was instituted to protect, it is the right of the people to either change it or abolish it, and to set up a new government designed in such a way that its power is strictly limited to its proper functions.
"Of course, common sense says such drastic steps should not be taken except in extreme circumstances. And, historically, people will tolerate a great deal of oppression rather than change a system with which they have grown familiar and comfortable.
"However, when a long series of abuses, invariably pursuing the same goal, demonstrates a plan to reduce us to virtual slavery, it is our right (indeed, it is our duty!) to reject such government and institute a new system to provide for our future security.From A New Declaration of Independence by Timothy J. O'Brien)
Does this sound radical? Does it sound revolutionary? It should, because it is. Jefferson did not. He said, "The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Clearly, the Founders were not afraid of revolution, violent or otherwise; they expected it.
That the United States of America has managed to survives intact for more than 200 years, with only one "unpleasantness*" is a testimony to the devotion of Americans to the ideal of liberty, but it is not a given.
John Adams noted that the "American Revolution" actually began well before July 4, 1776. "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligationsThis radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution" (Letter to H. Niles, February 13, 1818).
We need another Revolution a revolution in our thinking of the origin of our rights and scope and purpose of government; a revolution in the sense of completing the circle and going back to our roots.
Our rights were granted to us by our creator, if you believe in one, but nevertheless ours by the very fact of our existence, and not given to us by government or anyone else.
Our rights are individual rights, not collective or group rights. Our rights are numberless. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are just examples.
Our right to pursue happiness does not mean we are guaranteed to attain it. It means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Government cannot erect obstacles in our way, nor give special privileges to some at the expense of others.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written to prevent government from evincing any design for despotism. If government gets our of hand, we have a duty the get rid of it.
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Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-10 14:36:46
Three points:
First, your assumption, "Our rights are individual rights, not collective or group rights," is incorrect.
Elsewhere on this Nolan Chart website, I addressed this issue through citations of Willam Blackstone's Commenteries...e.g.
"But with respect to rights, the case is different. Human laws define and enforce as well those rights which belong to a man considered as an individual, as those which belong to him considered as related to others."
There exist, in otherwords, group rights--societal rights.
Second, the very Declaration of Independence which you here cite (and which by the way was actually an extension of Patrick Henry's and Colonel Richard Bland's work) itself belies the constant drone found here among Libertarians against "statism". The State is crucial...e.g. "to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men"
Third, if your logic ["The only legitimate purpose of government is to ensure that no one violates anyone else's rights."] is extended, you in fact argue for a quasi-judicial led system modeled after the Jewish theocracy (i.e. Judges of the Old Testament).
That judges-led system, of course, devolved ultimately into a short lived monarchy because it didn't work out all that well...nor did the resultant monarchy.
Anyhow, the Declaration's point on "consent of the governed" is well taken.
In fact, it is better said later by Melancton Smith of New York in arguments AGAINST ratification of the Constitution:
“Government must rest, for its execution, on the good opinion of the people.”
For even, Melancton Smith said, “if it was made heaven, and had not the confidence of the people, it could not be executed... this was proved by the example given by the gentleman of the Jewish theocracy.”
Floyd, you are confusing Libertarianism with anarchy. Libertarians are for minimal government and anarchists are against the very existence of a state.
Libertarians realize that a government needs to exist to protect our rights, but should be stopped short from taking them away from us.
Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-10 15:30:19
Oh, I'm not so sure I have confused anything in this regard.
Many here, under the banner of Libertarianism, have expressed strident polemic against "statism"--or have you not read widely here at Nolan Chart?
On a legal note, many of the Libertarian propostions distincly smack of anarchy.
It is apparent that many "judical revisions" under the Libertarian banner are completely new laws, laws that have never been customary to the people nor to the nation.
Libertarian judicial "reform" proposals often ignore completely stare decisis. And as such, you cannot possibly have a judical system, much less hope to have a "rule of law" for which, again, most every Libertarian poster hereupon cries out for.
It is most curious indeed that Libertarians would resort, so frequently, to Supreme Court case law as precedence in matters such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, taxation, capital punishment...and yet still condemn American "statism", condemn in order that the consciousness of the people may thereby be led to "evolve", bringing enlightenment with it, doubtless.
But here I was laboring under the impression that the Supreme Court itself was the linchpin of Federalist consolidation, and was part and parcel of the problem against which Libertarians so earnestly protest.
If I am wrong in that impression, then by all means please illuminate where I so fail.
Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2008-07-10 19:49:15
Brian - Welcome to the Chart! Please keep writing! I was fortunate enough to read the declaration to my family on the 4th, and the parts you italicized were exactly the parts that stood out in my mind as well. Take care.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2008-07-11 05:40:04
Floyd: you claim that there are "group rights - societal rights," but you have not provided any specifics. What are these so-called "group rights - societal rights"? Would you please list them?
Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-11 13:06:08
To the contrary, Walt, I have provided numerous examples of "so-called" (as you style them) group rights-societal rights here on Nolan Chart.
The primary and foremost group right is the Anglo-Saxon common law, which is our inheritance, and which, as you know, came down to us from time immemorial, through its first codification as the Liber Judicialis under Alfred the Great, and as reconfirmed subsequently by Edward the Elder.
I absolutely and positively REFUSE to give this group right away cavalierly, though several Liberatarian advocates apparently are willing to do so by calling this legal heritage "antiquated", and ignoring those parts which may restrict their own personal behaviors. It is not, however, "antiquated".
And even though many of these same Libertarian posters, wholly contrary to the precedential common law, would create new findings to legitimize tradtionally proscribed behaviors (all under the claim that somehow we exist under an "evolving standard"), I will not bastardize the group right to uphold the common law as immutable, excepting the specific restraints placed upon it by the Constitution, regardless of the din of demands for personal license.
In fact, if the Libertarian posters here were half as studied in their retained rights as they profess to be, they would understand that their demands for them, under the 10th Amendment, stem from this "antiquated" common law.
It is our heritage. And that heritage is not an individual one. It is a societal one. In fact, excepting Loiusiana, all states assume, and some do so in their State Constitution or in expressed specific legislation, the common law as preeminant.
As you know, the Liber Judicialis and the common law is the foundational source of the Magna Carta. And this charter's delination of the right to legislature was itself the foundational source of the English Bill of Rights, which accompanied the Restoration of the monarchy, 1683.
The rights, again as you know, from the English Bill of Rights were those excerpted as "inalienable rights" which are found in the Jeffeson draft of the Declaration of Independence, whose arguments themselves were based upon the "genealogy" of American liberty as first put forth in legal arguments by Patrick Henry in 1763 in the Parson's Cause litigation, and in Colonel Richard Bland's summaries the following year.
A group right, Walt, is the common law.
But Libertariains seem bent to destroy the very appicability of that group right by insisting on personal license, and attempting to justify that license as being found somewhere, somehow, in "unrestricted" individual rights to do as they please. That is not now, nor has it ever been, legitimate.
Individual "rights" do not automatically supersede societal rights, and William Blackstone made this transparently clear in his Commentaries...the actual edition of law from which most of our American code was derived, and the actual code source of which our Founding Fathers recognized to be THE law.
What Libertarianism is accomplishing, unfortuantely, is the destruction of the right of the group to claim its inheritance under the common law, and all for the trinkets of personal license. That is sad indeed becasue it is profligate in its abuse, and most unwise in its trade.
But the societal right to the common law shall not be superseded nor imposed upon, not by the government in the collective, nor by the individual in the singular--not even whether that individual be President, king, patrician or pauper, and not even whether it be by Liberatarian "purists" who all too frequently sanctimoniously sniff at the etheral air of self assumed superiority, and cry for individual "responsibility", and then abdicate all responsiblity when their demands for their caustic personal license further destroy the fabric of the group right of comon decency...as if they found some stench that was incompatible with their delicate sensitivities.
Much of the blame in this nation falls sqaurely at the feet of selfish personal license, which has torn this nation apart. Any objective review of case litigation would reveal that much.
But if you are a Libertarian, of course, you can always point the finger of blame at "government", at "them" and the "state"...so long as you have the stones and stomach to hypocritically ignore the fact that three of your fingers are pointing right back at you.
Floyd, that the heck are you talking about? How is my cry for my right as an individual taking away your right to anything? That train of thought is the same as the anti-gun position in the Heller decision: The rights of the group (militia) take priority over individual rights.
This is sheer nonsense. Magna Carta isn't law of the land. It was an important stepping stone in western civilization, but it wasn't as advanced as our own dear Constitution. This is fantasy. Yes, the founders derived their ideas from 2500 years of western progress, but claiming that some document from 1215 is THE end-all, be-all interpretive key to the Constitution misses the forest for the trees.
Your claims are beyond irresponsible:
What Libertarianism is accomplishing, unfortuantely, is the destruction of the right of the group to claim its inheritance under the common law, and all for the trinkets of personal license. That is sad indeed becasue it is profligate in its abuse, and most unwise in its trade.
Where, exactly, is this taking place? The group stopped fighting for its rights over the years. If individuals choose to regain their rights, good for them. No one is holding you back. What is the group doing for you?
Posted By: Floyd W. Whitley
Date: 2008-07-12 16:35:54
I set out to answer the above response by Josh immediately. And then thought the better of it.
Praepropera consilia, raro sunt prospera [Hasty counsels are seldom prosperous]; and Veritas nimium altercando amittitur [By too much altercation truth is lost].
Before answering the response (and I shall most definitley indeed answer it to the fullest), I would like to ask you Josh, where in my post exactly did I purportedly "claim" (as you syled it) that "some document from 1215 is THE end-all, be-all interpretive key to the Constitution"?
Before answering that question, perhaps, Josh, you should be aware of this maxim, also from the common law, Si judicas, cognasce [If you judge, understand].
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