(Analyst Note: This Opinion piece aims at progressive propaganda trying to redefine the popular understanding of the origin of American "rights". We can not allow the evil re-definition of our rights to stand unchallenged.)
Well, it happened again last night: that annoying TV ad telling me I have the “right” to have my credit card bill adjusted. Next it was the one about my right to compensation if I get mesothelioma from working in a shipyard. Courts have decided I have the right to have a business tell me a drink is hot and dangerous to spill on myself. These new “rights” come from everywhere: news, commercials, and campaign promises!Doesn’t anyone today know the difference between a right and a gift? America is awash in those telling us about all the rights we have. A true “right” implies a just, deserved, even divinely authorized permission, benefit, or claim. It is not appropriate to refer to all bestowals upon people as “rights.” Some receipts are merely gifts (voluntary or lovingly bestowed) – or perhaps even compensations (payment for previous services, goods, or other obligations). Merely receiving or anticipating receiving something does not constitute a divinely approved, or even just, action. ….. No, “rights” …..are definitely something special.
Now, apparently Americans have a “right” to a home loan, a “right” to health care, a “right” to a job or public dole money if you lack a job. If you illegally sneak across the US border you then have a “right” to U. S. social services programs, education, and health care for your family and yourself. Oh, the rights are magnificent and many!
Do you notice a pattern in these lists of new “rights”? They are all granted by the Federal government by law or by neglect of laws (as is the case with illegal immigration). The Feds are so generous. However, wise Americans could justly attribute a motive to those who would define “rights” are government gifts. They are trying to teach Americans that government is the grantor of rights.
Such teachers want us to succumb to the idea that government giving people wealth and rights is a basic characteristic – even a power – of government. This turns the U.S. Constitution on its head. Our Constitution asserts all peoples’ rights are God-given and those given by the people to government are limited and defined by the Constitution. It specifically states that ONLY certain named rights are given by the people to the Federal government and that all other rights are reserved to the States and the people. ….The truth then is that “We the People” are the possessors and grantors of rights to government, NOT the other way around!
We must ask, what is the effect of spreading the new backward view of rights? Could it be that our Federal servant-representatives want to become the national royalty? They want Americans to believe they are beholden to the Feds for any right, for any freedom, any ownership, and to depend on them to make all decisions? They want the power to define our rights. Such power as this would indeed re-establish the feudal system with a royal class granting gifts of the rights, incomes, and lives of the lesser classes. Americans must wake up. This new rights baloney is all quite un-American; it is anti-Constitutional thinking. We must never accept their logic.
Further, the Federal apparatus produces no product, it adds nothing to the gross national product; it exists by consuming what Americans produce. It taxes, controls, and regulates the work of others. Feds can give no wealth they do not first take from Americans. Whether called taxes or fees, or fines, or eminent domain, or tariffs, or surcharges, or confiscation -- or whatever that “taking: is called --- it is still the Federal apparatus taking property from Americans to be used at some date as gifts, they might say “rights”, or consumed as operational expenses of their apparatus. It is a zero sum game. The Feds cannot continually give more than it takes away from Americans. If our society cannot afford to do something, our government surely cannot afford to do it either.
In fact, there is inefficiency in the use of the Federal apparatus in collecting and re-using our wealth. It must pay tax collectors, law enforcement agencies, accountants, and others to keep track of that collection and to assure all comply. These costs must be paid from the collections made. So, it will never be that government is even completely efficiently converting our wealth into redistribution. When you add the corruption and lack of self-accountability of the Feds to this real operating cost --- the loss of American treasure in any re-distribution is huge, massive, and shameful. Surely there must be good justification, worth the expense of redistribution, for the Feds doing anything that American society would not do on its own somehow.
There was a time, long ago when people had few rights but had great wants for them. Some of the most important we sought were: to have a voice in our own governance, some control over our taxes, freedoms in our commerce, assurance of our legal protections, and freedom to express our thoughts. The Declaration of Independence lists a number of violations of these wanted rights as justification for revolution from our native England. That statement of withheld rights lead to years of war and human bloodshed. Our rights were dearly bought. They have been dearly kept. Any American ought not take them lightly at any day and age.Rights are misunderstood in their definition or in their origin at the peril of their very loss. Understand rights, protect them --- or lose them.
Is it again time for asserting that these rights are already ours – not gifts from government? America’s current government “by the people” has become unaccountable to the people, serving its own interests for control, corrupted by special groups and money, sodden with in its own pride despite failed foreign politics, and desirous of giving away the Americans’ right to posses the wealth they earn and give it to others. Rather than the rule of law, our current government has its own definition of justice based on its foreign, un-American view of history, on junk science, and on prison writings of other thieves. Federals enrich and empower themselves by lies and mishandling of the public trust. Debts and the national treasury are wasted on these lies in the name of fruitless aims of fixing problems it actually prefers to see advanced. Corrupt unions and other organizations are given public funds in repayment for their coercion of American election processes and perversion of justice to citizens. The crises Feds urgently shout about are left ineffectually addressed as those appropriated, but unspent, funds sit awaiting other unannounced purposes and further sharing with cronies. With hundreds of billions in these slush funds now --- the administration does not need Congress to approve its funding of whatever un-American activities it chooses. We face an uncontrolled, unchecked, unbalanced Federal apparatus. May God bless and preserve America.We must recognize the Feds’ entitlements not as rights but as gifts. Charity’s gifts ought not arise from Federal government but from individual concern and moral obligation. Americans never abdicated nurturing our brothers to the government. We must reaffirm the right of Americans to property and to managing the fruits of their labors. Give the work of charity back to individuals. We must reduce regulation and re-establish a free market economy. Federal control must be limited to only enough regulation to assure transparency, honesty, and equality along with mechanisms for enforcement and reasonable redress for wrongs. We must reduce taxes and balance annual budgets based on revenues. People will prosper and charity can be extended from individuals, churches and philanthropic organizations. It will no longer buy votes, influence politics, and be corrupted to enrich evil men.
Only sufficient tax income should be allowed to support for limited, Constitutionally-defined Federal purposes such as armed defenses, sufficient laws and law enforcement to maintain the peace. We must teach Americans again to work for their gain, to help the orphan and widow-- out of love of others not out of confiscation by authority.
We must teach American to avoid the slavery of any public dole. We must allow our children and ourselves to learn the lessons of failure -- thereby to enjoy the rewards of success. In struggle as we learn the lessons of work we learn sensitivity to others needs. May God bless and preserve America the idea, the people, the nation, and the hope of earth!
