Category Archives: Individual Rights

Updated: America's Founding Philosophy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Individual Rights, Media, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, The Courts

Glenn Beck is invaluable in highlighting the constitutional underpinnings of the republic violated by almost every law enacted by both parties. However Beck’s discussion is generally incomplete (along the lines highlighted in the article “Life, Liberty, and PROPERTY,” where I also readily conceded that “The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom”).

Again and again Glenn has alerted his viewers to Obama’s disdain for the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” Said the president: (Transcript here)

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

To the president’s telling complaint vis-a-vis the Constitution being deficient in its articulation of negative liberties only, Glenn has retorted as follows: “That’s the way the founders designed it, because they saw what governments do when they are allowed to do stuff for you.”

I’m afraid that’s not quite it. Articulated by the Founders, in the philosophy of classical liberalism and natural law, negative liberties are the only authentic rights. Glenn must articulate more than a utilitarian perspective, which doesn’t do justice to the profundity of America’s Founding Fathers. Glenn is welcome to use the following explanation from “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION,” in my book (buy it), with attribution, of course:

“The only rights of man are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These rights exist irrespective of governments. Rights always give rise to binding obligations. In the case of natural rights, the duty is merely a duty to refrain from doing. My right to life means you must refrain from killing me. My right to liberty means you cannot enslave me. My right to property means you should not take what is mine, or stop me from taking the necessary action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, heed the same strictures.”

“If to exercise a right a person must violate someone’s life, liberty and property, then the exercised right is not a right, but a violation thereof. Because my right to acquire property doesn’t diminish your right to the same liberty, this right is known as a negative right. Negative rights are real or natural rights because they don’t conscript me in the fulfillment of your needs and desires, and vise versa. They merely impel both of us to keep our mitts to ourselves.” [“CRADLE OF CORRUPTION”]

[SNIP]

You see, positive liberties are rejected outright in natural law, unless undertaken voluntarily. So, dear Mr. Beck, the reason the Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president put it, is because positive, state-minted rights violate the individual’s negative (real) rights.

The Great Glenn in action:

Update (Dec. 18): Sitting in for Glenn, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivers a superb explication of the natural-rights doctrine, joined by Joe Salerno, whose lectures at the Mises Institute I greatly enjoyed, and John Tamny of RealClearMarkets.com. What a shame the Wall Street Journal’s statist extraordinaire, Stuart Varney, now tenured at Fox Business, gets to TALK over the Three Wise Men. I’ve had enough of the Stephen Moores and Stuart Varneys of the world, wrong for decades, yet able to keep lucrative careers going, as they pepper their verbiage with the occasional, non-committal, crudely stated truths (“government needs to be throttled”).

Allow freedom and reality to be heard for a change. Expunge the snake-oil merchants from forums friendly to freedom.

Readers, please send me the YouTube clip of this round table, which should be up very shortly (after all, YouTube is not yet run by the state).

Updated: America’s Founding Philosophy

Barack Obama, Constitution, Economy, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, Individual Rights, Media, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Rights, The Courts

Glenn Beck is invaluable in highlighting the constitutional underpinnings of the republic violated by almost every law enacted by both parties. However Beck’s discussion is generally incomplete (along the lines highlighted in the article “Life, Liberty, and PROPERTY,” where I also readily conceded that “The man exudes goodness and has a visceral feel for freedom”).

Again and again Glenn has alerted his viewers to Obama’s disdain for the Constitution as a “charter of negative liberties.” Said the president: (Transcript here)

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

To the president’s telling complaint vis-a-vis the Constitution being deficient in its articulation of negative liberties only, Glenn has retorted as follows: “That’s the way the founders designed it, because they saw what governments do when they are allowed to do stuff for you.”

I’m afraid that’s not quite it. Articulated by the Founders, in the philosophy of classical liberalism and natural law, negative liberties are the only authentic rights. Glenn must articulate more than a utilitarian perspective, which doesn’t do justice to the profundity of America’s Founding Fathers. Glenn is welcome to use the following explanation from “CRADLE OF CORRUPTION,” in my book (buy it), with attribution, of course:

“The only rights of man are the rights to life, liberty, and property. These rights exist irrespective of governments. Rights always give rise to binding obligations. In the case of natural rights, the duty is merely a duty to refrain from doing. My right to life means you must refrain from killing me. My right to liberty means you cannot enslave me. My right to property means you should not take what is mine, or stop me from taking the necessary action for my survival, so long as I, in turn, heed the same strictures.”

“If to exercise a right a person must violate someone’s life, liberty and property, then the exercised right is not a right, but a violation thereof. Because my right to acquire property doesn’t diminish your right to the same liberty, this right is known as a negative right. Negative rights are real or natural rights because they don’t conscript me in the fulfillment of your needs and desires, and vise versa. They merely impel both of us to keep our mitts to ourselves.” [“CRADLE OF CORRUPTION”]

[SNIP]

You see, positive liberties are rejected outright in natural law, unless undertaken voluntarily. So, dear Mr. Beck, the reason the Constitution is by-and-large a charter of negative liberties, as the president put it, is because positive, state-minted rights violate the individual’s negative (real) rights.

The Great Glenn in action:

Update (Dec. 18): Sitting in for Glenn, Judge Andrew Napolitano delivers a superb explication of the natural-rights doctrine, joined by Joe Salerno, whose lectures at the Mises Institute I greatly enjoyed, and John Tamny of RealClearMarkets.com. What a shame the Wall Street Journal’s statist extraordinaire, Stuart Varney, now tenured at Fox Business, gets to TALK over the Three Wise Men. I’ve had enough of the Stephen Moores and Stuart Varneys of the world, wrong for decades, yet able to keep lucrative careers going, as they pepper their verbiage with the occasional, non-committal, crudely stated truths (“government needs to be throttled”).

Allow freedom and reality to be heard for a change. Expunge the snake-oil merchants from forums friendly to freedom.

Readers, please send me the YouTube clip of this round table, which should be up very shortly (after all, YouTube is not yet run by the state).

Update II: Heather Ellis Against The Police State (Plea-Bargain Shakedown)

Criminal Injustice, Fascism, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Race, Racism, Rights

“Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or a policeman], unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, and even killed. Evidence of tyranny in America is mounting” (“Tasers ‘R’ Us”)

You might call Heather Ellis’s behavior rude. That’s how the authorities described her cutting the queue at Walmart and refusing to be “removed” from the store by police. But for “belligerence,” The Machine brought the full force of the state down on Ellis. She was charged with “disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest and assaulting police officers,” and could have faced a jail term of 15 years.

In case you think I’m minimizing her crimes, let me not omit that Ellis also “stiffened her body” when the brutes tried to place her in the police car.

My oh my: doesn’t Heather know that as a subject she ought to have complied with her sovereigns?

“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.'” (“PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”)

Dr. Boyce Watkins, who spoke eloquently on her behalf on CNN, asked: “If ‘no one was seriously injured,’ why was she facing up to 15-years in prison?”

Heather Ellis took a plea deal. Writes Watkins: “According to the terms of the deal, Ellis will plead guilty to disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. She will also serve a year of unsupervised probation, attend an anger management course and serve four days in jail before the end of the year. Also, if she stays out of trouble for the year, the charges will be sealed and the arrest will not be on her permanent record.”

Imagine being forced into this predicament, when you are innocent in the natural law.

Statism, not racism, is at work here. But being black and alleging racism might have saved this woman from a fate far worse.

A good dose of anti-authoritarianism didn’t hurt Ellis and her supporters. Given their distrust of the state, blacks are often more defiant of the American police state. It serves them in good stead.

Update I (Nov. 23): I watched a segment of the reality show COPS. Two female police officers responded to a domestic altercation and ended up arresting the crying woman for the offense of not replying right away to the law’s queries. The bully babe in uniform explained to the poor woman that she was being arrested becasue she needed to be taught a lesson: “If a cop asked you something, you respond right away, you hear?”

Let’s see if I got this right: a woman in trouble calls the cops, who just about break down her door, yell at her for being out of it and cuff her, leaving children and an elderly mother unattended.

To serve and protect.

This kind of outlaw conduct from cops is clearly more common than we think. Having observed it, I’d have to conclude that it is best not to invite the bastards into one’s home.

Update II: A reader hereunder brings up the travesty that is the plea bargain, an abomination that is presented in every episode of “Law And Order” as a matter-of-fact route to “justice.” The truth is that such “wheeling and dealing” is anything but. This from “TRUTH OBSCURED IN JOHNNY JIHAD’S PLEA BARGAIN“:

There’s a reason the American Constitution emphasizes “the right of trial by jury.” The justice system’s mandate is to unveil the truth. This can only be done in a court of law, and in accordance with due process. The plea bargain is nothing more than a negotiated deal which subverts the very goal of the justice system: In the process of hammering out an agreement that pacifies both prosecution and defense, truth usually falls by the way. As the predominant method of adjudication in the United States, the plea bargain taints the system.

Update II: What Conservative Chicks ‘Care’ About (Not Individualism)

Conservatism, Feminism, Gender, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Republicans, Sarah Palin

The salient thing about “conservative” chicks is how unconservative they are. Sexism, racism, homophobia—these concepts are engraved in their inherently liberal minds. The concepts are, of course, poisonous arrows in the quiver of left-liberal identity politics.

So it was that The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck was a prime mover behind the persecution of Imus, for politically unpalatable speech, alongside race hustlers Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, neocon sister Amy Holmes, and other sundry sorts of the left (Whoopi Goldberg, Maya Angelou, Naomi Wolf).

Palin is always shouting sexism, and has intensified her hissing ever since Newsweek published an appealing cover of her in running gear. Hasselbeck has been complaining about the sexism to which Palin is allegedly subjected. She did so recently on The View. Clearly, a liberal worldview is not the only malady to inflict conservative women. They are never original (other than Coulter, who is sui generis, and I have a soft spot for the Michelles Bachmann and Malkin).

Update I (Nov. 18): Another of these harpies’ trade marks is to conflate a love of war—any war waged by the US—with the conservative position. Does this pertain equally to neoconservative and so-called conservative men? You tell me.

Wait a sec, I already “told me”:

“… never once have the war harpies and their hombres in the ideological trenches indicated they comprehend how and who is paying for all this. I know they believe we’re not being taxed in lieu of the debt, a faith they base on Bush’s promise not to raise taxes. [A “promise kept by Barack, Bush’s loyal successor.]

Pro-war pundits, women especially, think that government can spend what it doesn’t have without any economic repercussions. They’re a lot like babies prior to acquiring object permanence: what isn’t visible doesn’t exist. However, government spending more than it collects in revenues is the cause of the deficit.

And ultimately of inflation.

However, there is no question in the small minds we’re discussing that a blind support for the experiment in “Eyeraq” is as American as apple pie. Ditto Democratizing our toothless, poppy-smoking Pashtun with smart bombs. The women of the neoconnerie have been instrumental in keeping their fans “tuned-out, turned-on, and hot for war.”

Don’t expect an understanding of economics with your “conservative” harpie/hottie of choice. Palin was given a pass by the equally compromised Bawbawa Walter when she said that the bailout bill she supported in her capacity as a VP candidate didn’t work out well. Who would have known!!

Bachmann and Malkin have firm positions for fiscal conservatism; the rest go with the financial flow.

Update II (Nov. 20): Some comments posters have alluded to my mention of first principles in the new WND column, “Weapons For The GOP Punditocracy.” I note that first principles and GOPiness do not mix.

Even less so do first principles and foxettes go together. Individual rights are subsumed in FP. You would be hard pressed to find a woman who thinks less of the paramountcy of the individual over the collective than a foxette.

She got uncontrollably (and repulsively) hot for “Murder with majority approval”—i.e., the war in Iraq—and oversaw the decimation of the population there (including an ancient Christian community).

She promoted through the argument from cleavage the specious, wicked, individual-averse idea of collateral damage. That collectivist calculus was a feature of the war cheerleading done by the freedom-loving Fox New foxes.

All the networks were complicit, but no where was the morally repugnant zeal more pronounced than on Fox New where words like “Breaking Baghdad,” “Decapitation,” and “Shock and Awe” were the order of the day.

So far war.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Martha MacCallum, one of the more rightist ladies, mull over the need for national healthcare and a national data base where bureaucrats can access private healthcare information. I’m sure readers who understand liberty (which is inseparable from philosophical first principles) will provide more examples (accompanied by hyperlinks) for Foxette fascism.

With few exceptions, Fox News generally favors the rights of the police—backed by the power of the state—in altercation with helpless individuals. When “Andrew Meyer, a journalism student, was pounced upon by campus police, tasered, detained overnight, and charged with violently resisting arrest (a felony), and disturbing the peace (a misdemeanor),” Fox beaus and bimbos had a good laugh at his expense. O’Reilly was in stitches.

The Drug War: It is the very crucible of the fight for individual liberties. Show me a Foxy Lady who sympathetically covered any prominent case (such as the one of the granny gunned down in her home by DEA agents because of alleged “drugs”). And don’t start me on the medical marijuana fear mongering at Fox.