“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…”When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, the document which the previous paragraph came from, he and every American patriot knew what the term “unalienable Rights” meant. Today however there are few Americans who could give an accurate definition. Unalienable Rights are rights, which are incapable of being denied by or transferred to another person. As used in the Declaration of Independence, they go a step further and say that they are also God given rights.
Modern day “rights” consist of access to food, housing, medical care, and privacy. Rights at the time of the Declaration of Independence consisted of freedom of speech, freedom of religion (not from religion), the right to keep and bear arms and other necessary rights of a free people.
Today the line between Rights and Liberties has been blurred. The recent argument against wiretaps invade our Constitutions Rights to privacy is bogus. Read the Constitution from “We the People…” all the way to the last word of the 27th amendment and nowhere will you find the word privacy. The “right” to privacy is a fabricated right, stemming from the misinterpretation of the 4th amendment. This is the reason why some claim that Americans have the “right” to an abortion, or the “right” to privacy.
Other fabricated “rights” have no Constitutional basis whatsoever. They are merely “feel-good rights” that help politicians gain votes. The “right” to gain access to food through food stamps, or the right to “fair housing” through low-income housing aren’t rights at all.
Rights are things that exist among everybody at the same time and impose no commitment on anyone else. For example, the right to bear arms is a right that you have, I have and every other American has. The fact that I have exercised my right to bear arms doesn’t obligate you or anyone else to do anything. There is no government subsidy funding my gun collection, and the fact that I own a gun doesn’t mean that you can’t.
If you follow my definition of a right, and apply it to the “right to fair housing” for example, you will see that it really isn’t a right. You will notice that someone who is well off making a decent living isn’t entitled to live in subsidized housing. Therefore this “right” doesn’t exist among everybody. On the opposite side of the coin, when a poorer person lives in subsidized housing they force the government to collect additional taxes from Americans to fund their housing. This creates an obligation on taxpayers to foot the bill for someone else’s housing.
My right to speech requires from someone else only that they allow me to speak. It doesn’t require them to pay for the computer that I’m writing on or pay for a microphone and the stage for me to stand on.
The definition of a right needs restoration before the line between rights and liberties becomes so blurred that we no longer have access to our rights.
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