Lastly, concerning rights, lets take a look at “human rights” in accordance with progressive thought. Usually, when people talk of human rights in this light, they are referring to more than just natural rights or even civil rights. They expand rights into the realm of entitlements to actual goods and services. The belief is that everyone has the right to such things as housing, food, a job, a “living wage”, health care, health insurance and more. For example, if you read the United Nation’s “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, you’ll find that the fist 20 Articles list rights that are fairly commensurate with the idea of natural rights. After that, it begins to list “rights” such as: Continue reading →

Before closing the discussion on rights, I’d like to cover a couple of specific types of “rights” that I believe most people need to consider on a deeper level to have a better understanding of the opposing viewpoints and how that can relate to other issues. First, I will talk about the right to property, and then some thoughts on the progressive view on human rights. Continue reading →

Earlier, I made the statement that “most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, including the 2^nd Amendment, did not (and do not) require these amendments in order to be protected rights.” Remember that? I had you re-read it. There was great debate about the Bill of Rights and whether or not they should be in the Constitution at all. It was basically an argument between the Federalists (such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay), who were big proponents of the new Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists (such as Patrick Henry, George Clinton, & George Mason), who were very leery of the new Constitution. They believed it was giving too much power to a central government and would eventually erase States’ power and erode the people’s liberties. The Anti-Federalists refused to support the Constitution without a Bill of Rights to specifically protect various natural rights (and some civil rights) of the people. On the other hand, the Federalists insisted that the Bill of Rights was not needed because, by design, all of these rights were already protected, as none of the enumerated powers given to the federal government allowed for infringing on them in any way. The Federalists further argued that if we include a Bill of Rights that only listed certain rights, then it would be erroneously interpreted that these were the ONLY rights that are protected. Continue reading →

The purpose of the Constitution for the United States of America and the government system that it created is to protect our natural rights, first and foremost. The civil rights that it does provide for are also there in order to protect our natural rights. It’s a very important concept to understand that the Constitution was not, and is not, the source of our natural rights, contrary to the common referral to “Constitutional rights”. It’s not the Constitution that provides our rights to speak freely, worship as we like, bear arms, own property that we acquire through our own efforts, and generally live our own lives and seek our own happiness. Again, those are our rights by nature and they existed before our Constitution and government existed. We, as a people with common concerns, agreed to create a government to protect our liberty to enjoy those rights to the fullest extent possible. Continue reading →

Concerning rights…

We sure hear a lot about rights, don’t we? People often toss around their ideas of what is a right, what should be a right, what shouldn’t be a right, constitutional rights, human rights, civil rights, the Bill of Rights, privacy rights, marriage rights, and so forth. It all kind of gets thrown into a blender together and gets all muddled up, which creates a vast amount of confusion and misunderstandings on what exactly your rights are as a citizen of the United States of America. This essay will attempt to unravel the tangled web of the subject of rights. Continue reading →

Because the people are self-governed in our Republic, the Constitution is not a document created by the government to describe what the government will allow the people to do. Rather, it is the exact opposite…it is a document created by the people (We the people) that describes what we will allow the government to do. This is an extremely important concept to understand. Through the concept of “consent of the governed”, we tell our government what it is allowed to do, NOT the other way around. Continue reading →

Many people today have a basic misunderstanding of what is meant by “American Exceptionalism”. They think that those of us who believe in the concept of American Exceptionalism simply think our country is the best, sort of like how we brag about our favorite sports team. As President Obama is known to have described it, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

But if everyone is exceptional, than nobody is, right? Continue reading →

We have a very large and growing percentage of our people that do not know or understand anything about our Constitution, the form and function of the government that it creates, and the fundamental principles that it was built upon. More and more are buying in to the erroneous notion that the Constitution is simply an outdated document concocted by rich, white, racist, slave-owning men, and, as such, because of those reasons and that we have progressed so much in our technology and basic ways of life, it should be considered obsolete to our current, modern circumstances and summarily dismissed. While true that many (not all) of the founders who created the Constitution were slave owners and probably burdened with many other flaws, if we disregard the brilliance of the Constitution because of that, it will result in our collective peril. Let’s face it, if we were to dismiss everything that flawed men created, we would need to dismiss everything ever created by men, as all men are flawed. Alternatively, just because a flawed man created a thing, it does not mean that thing created is as flawed as that man. I believe that if you indulge me and follow along my reasoned arguments in these essays with a rational and open mind, you will have no choice but to agree with my conclusions. If not, I would welcome any reasoned arguments for debate. Continue reading →

Our great Republic is divided. Divided in many ways. Religion, race, gender, economic class, politics, immigration, age, and the list goes on. However, we don’t really divide ourselves personally as much as were are being divided by those who are supposed to be our leaders. The system is broken, and it’s precisely because of this that they are able to effectively divide us. They have to keep us divided in order to keep their power. It really is that simple. If we the people were not divided, there is NO WAY that we would allow this corrupt, out-of-control federal government to continue its ways. They know it, and it’s time that we learn it, and do something about it. Continue reading →