Just over a month ago, I took a journey of 5000 miles and untold years to northern Maine to help my mother take care of some pressing things for her mother, who just moved into a nursing home. I won't get into that tonight, as a great deal of it is still processing in my head. But the processing itself had done some work jamming up my blogging gears, resulting in a month long hiatus. I apologize.
I recently made a connection that I had not consciously been aware of, but had believed to be true with out even thinking on it. I was trying to understand how anyone could make an argument that you could take away someones right, or grant them. I felt that it was impossible to do either, we simply had the responsibility to recognize them. If we grant or deny something, it is then a privilege, not a right. Some will argue that is semantics, but I assure you it is not. In fact, in my mindful wanderings I have come to the conclusion that anyone or anything that supposes to grant or deny rights is, in fact, a false god. A weighty claim, but please hear me out.
How can government grant the right to healthcare? How can it deny my right to choose my own path in caring for myself? What grants government the (ahem... ) Right to do such a thing?
The Answer is: No-One.
No one grants the government any rights what so ever. I dare to say that the rights any government has is a distillation of the personal rights we corporately have.
I have a right to defend my self, the right to bear arms and use force of arms in my defense. So does my neighbor, and I would not deny him that right. As a group, the members of the complex where I live may, by right, band together in the common defense. The members of my city may form a guard or hire such guard as needed for the public defense, and they are bound to protect and serve. Our state may form such militia as they see fit, along with policing bodies and investigative bodies to defend the public safety and the state. Our national government has the right, and even the duty, to levy an army and navy to defend the public land from foreign enemies, raise federal investigative service to prevent federal crimes and apprehend the offenders. All of this is stemmed from my right to bear arms and defend myself.
I have a right to choose my way with my body. I may eat myself into oblivion, become a muscle builder, or starve myself. It's my choice and my right to hurt myself. I have the right to deny myself medical care. So long as my exercise of my right does not infringe on someone else's, the government can take a hike. The only state in which I am forced to accept medical care is when I can no longer choose for myself due to medical or mental impediment. At that point I am either a risk to others, or consent is implied. (Typically speaking, the guy bleeding to death wants to be helped, even if he can't express it. If he gets upset about it, then it's up to him to find a way to die without someone stumbling upon him as he goes about doing it.)
All corporate rights are based on personal rights, they must be so because if they are not than they by definition will infringe on our personal rights.
I know our personal rights must not be infringed upon. And I know this not because I value them that much, although I do, but because we do not have the authority to revoke the rights granted to us. Our rights were assigned to us by an authority that is of a higher pay grade than ours, and no government or man may challenge it.
"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. 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."
When making the argument to break from Great Britain our founders placed their case on the fact that the government had trampled on their rights as Englishmen and, worse, their rights as Men created by God, endowed by their Creator with certain Rights. No man, no Government, may dare do so. Any who do will suffer judgement at the end of days, and in the temporal realm man himself has been granted by his Creator the right and the Duty rise up against such a usurpation of man's rights and remove Tyranny from its seat.
Our government has infringed on our rights, and plans openly to continue doing so. We as a nation must once again band together and decide if we will allow usurpers to the throne of God, admitting by our silence that the government may give and take rights from man, or stand in opposition to the false god of big brother and nanny states. Any one who chooses to try and grant or deny a right to a free man has placed himself firmly in opposition to God our Creator an while God will in due time reprimand the offender we must as free men protest the injustice. Our Right and our Duty is throw off such men and governments and to align ourselves with the One True God, the Creator who has made us each free men and women.
It was this truth that I had found to be so self evident I didn't give a second thought until I found I was at risk of falling prey to Tyranny.
What will it take for you to discover the same?
