Are rights God-given, or gifts from government? In his 2013 inaugural address, President Obama expressed his view:
"What makes us exceptional ... (American) -- is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: '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.' Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time... Being true to our founding documents does not ... mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress ... require us to act in our time."
The president concedes that all men have inalienable God-given rights. But he believes that progress requires redefinition of those terms.
For President Obama, what Jefferson and the men who approved the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution meant by life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not good enough in 2013. He gives examples of what they should mean "in our time."
-- For President Obama, liberty means income redistribution: "(W)e ... understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it."
-- For Mr. Obama, pursuit of happiness means "that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity" -- including health insurance, unemployment insurance, disaster assistance, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
-- For President Obama, liberty and the pursuit of happiness requires income equality of men and women: "For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts."
-- Rights in Mr. Obama's America include gay marriage: "Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — ... the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."
-- And, of course, the progressive pursuit of happiness must be available to "hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity."
I don't quarrel with the idea that government has the power to provide for national health care, Medicare, Social Security or to order immigration, etc. But I do quarrel with Mr. Obama's attempt to redefine life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want these terms and the words of the Constitution interpreted at least as generously as the men who wrote them intended.
I see grave danger in President Obama or Congress redefining those terms in a more progressive way. If our fundamental documents are defined and construed consistently with the experience and intent of the men who wrote them, I feel secure. The Declaration and the Constitution were not based in logic, or in 21st century notions of what is politically popular or correct.
They were written to protect Americans from the abuses perpetrated by the British crown. They wrote a Bill of Rights to guarantee the liberties they deemed essential, and to deny to the government -- the temporary majority -- the power to abbreviate or redefine those rights whenever it deemed change necessary or reasonable.
The problem is simply this: If modern governments (the temporary majority) can redefine rights to expand rights, it can just as easily redefine rights to contract rights -- or even redefine them out of existence. And that is exactly what it is trying to do.
The American people have right to have their laws enacted by Congress, and approved by the executive. President Obama, smarting from which he perceives to be bad faith on the part of congressional Republicans, chooses instead to make his own laws -- by Executive Order.
The president makes appointments without Senate consent, claiming it is "in recess," (redefining "recess") in the face of an explicit Senate order that it is not "in recess."
When immigration laws enacted by Congress would require the president to deport persons who have sneaked into our country, rather than faithfully executing duly enacted laws pursuant to his oath, the president uses his pardon power to ignore the laws.
This same administration that now holds itself out as definer of the new rights, is also redefining religious activity ("the free exercise of religion") to exclude religious charities, colleges and other non-core religious activities. It requires them to provide abortion-inducing drugs, redefining it is a matter of public health and not religious freedom.
Not content with contracting First Amendment rights, the administration seeks to redefine the Second Amendment Right to bear arms to limit that right.
Thomas Jefferson believed rights came from God and wrote precisely that in Declaration of Independence. Our founders were not comfortable with the notion that our "unalienable rights" were endowed by the king, president, Congress or any other government.
Experience had taught them that the same king or government that could give rights, could just as quickly take rights away.
To make sure that didn't happen in America, the founders and the people of America appended the Bill of Rights to our Constitution.
The advantage, of course, in being given our rights by God, as opposed to government, is obvious.
If God gave them, it is beyond the power of human government to nullify God's grant.
Posted Online: Feb. 06, 2013, 2:44 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea
Copyright 2012
John Donald O'Shea
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