Natural Rights

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

In these days of the repeated and essentially unopposed rape of our Constitution by the Left, we need to remember why our Constitution is special to begin with. Perhaps the single greatest reason why the United States Constitution is the most powerful secular document ever written is because in writing it makes it the supreme, and really the only, task of government to defend natural rights. But, what are natural rights? We hear today that natural rights are illusions and that nobody really has them. Yet, we hear this in the midst of our great society crumbling in pieces to the ground. So where did the Founding Fathers get natural rights from?

The concept of natural rights is rooted in that of natural law. Natural law is ancient; it is rooted in the Greek Stoic philosophers. It states that there are certain fundamental laws that are unique to human beings and, as with animals' instincts, they do not need to be legislated into existence, while trying to legislate against them causes massive harm. Natural law is thought to be transcendent of human made laws, known as "positive law". Natural law is timeless and beyond the limits of geographical location or demographics, while positive law is always changing because it is extremely imperfect and incomplete.

During the Middle Ages, legal theorists concluded that natural law cannot be defined in a way similar to positive law because the former so transcends the limitations of the latter. Instead, natural law can be "defined" by showing examples of it. From a philosophical point of view, this means that any human being has the right to defend himself against anyone who would try to violate his natural rights that stem from natural law even if the state is either non-existent or absent from the scene. A modern example would be that if you catch an armed robber breaking into your home at 2AM, you have the right to shoot him to defend yourself and your property; if he dies, you cannot be charged with murder, and if he is wounded and needs medical attention he has no right to sue you.

Historically, natural law arises by spontaneous order; this corresponds perfectly with the modern science concept of "emergent property", which says that when sufficient numbers of necessary conditions are put together they create an entirely new state which is greater than the sum of its parts. In degenerate times, such as after the fall of Rome, huge amounts of unorganized violence result as individuals take it upon themselves to defend their natural rights.

From a scientific perspective, natural law defines those things which an individual may instinctively use unorganized violence to defend against attack without it following that such an individual poses a threat to reasonable people who do not try to attack his natural rights. So, we are able to glean at least a lot of what is contained in natural law from studying what normally calm, peaceful people across all cultures and nations are routinely willing to resort to unorganized violence to defend themselves against.

What Are Natural Rights?

The greatest expression of natural rights was found in the Founding Fathers, especially among Jefferson, Paine, and Samuel Adams. But they were all informed in their views by the great English philosopher John Locke. In his published treatises on Law in 1689 and 1690, Locke spelled out the justification for and the essence of natural rights.

“Reason, which is [Natural Law], teaches all Mankind, who would but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions. [A society of justice must] have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man," wrote Locke.

Locke also defined government as a "necessary evil" the purpose of which is to organize to defend mankind's natural rights. The organized violence of government is superior to the unorganized violence of individuals, and it spares many individuals from having to risk their lives. Thomas Paine would echo this idea of the government as "at best, a necessary evil" in his political tract Rights of Man. Samuel Adams wrote, “The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”

However, in the 19th century in Europe, the prevailing idea of natural rights came under attack from hostile ideas that are thriving today in the U.S. These hostile ideas were born of distorted concepts taken and removed from the physical sciences (where they are justified and valuable).

Materialism--the view that the be-all and end-all of philosophy is simply to realize that all things are matter; beyond matter, nothing is important. This leads to views so extreme that even secular humanism is not taken seriously because it relies too much on abstract, non-material ideas for the materialist. Translating materialism into a philosophy of human behavior leads to the conclusion that all of human life is merely about "getting and spending".

Empiricism--a philosophy which bases itself on the empirical method of science. It concludes that we have nothing to base our thoughts and feelings on except past experiences. Therefore, there cannot be any natural rights for all, and there cannot be good or evil, for all truth is relative.

Positivism--this philosophy says that all metaphysical inquiry of any nature is pure nonsense. Only that information which we can get from our five physical senses--that which we are "positive" about--matters. (Notice its cognitive counterpart in "positive" law.)

The Constitution is not some "old document". It is as relevant and powerful now as ever because it was based on natural rights--not on the" inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of" government. We cannot let our Constitution be violated any longer!

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