Originally posted July 4,2006
What is the foundation of our liberties?
Where do our rights come from?There are only two classes of answers. one is that rights evolved from nature through various social and political evolution. Put it another way:Do rights come from God or from society or the state?
There are several problems with basing liberty on nature,society, or the state.These problems are rooted in the fact that nature is both fallible and corrupt. By this I mean that moral and natural evil pervade nature and thus contaminate everything of the natural. it is this moral evil that causes people to use power to their advantage. It doesn’t matter whether one is a businessperson, monarch, or socialist: there exists the temptation to misuse power to gain personal advantage.
This temptation to misuse power for personal advantage or for personal expression is not merely theory but reality. The media is full of stories of misuses of government power. There is more criminal activity within the government than without it. Vox Day has calculated that in the 20th century a person was 17.3
times more likely to be murderedby someone murdering in behalf of a government than by those reckoned as criminals.
If we get our rights from society, then society or those corrupt elements can take them away. Nature and society are both evolving constantly changing. The atrocities of Communism, Nazism, and now Islamism are committed with resounding social and legal approval. Million of lives are destroyed in abortion with legal approval by the government. Big Corporation can legally grab land thanks to a so-called decision by the United States Supreme Court (Kelo vs Connecticut) Nether Nature nor society are adequate reference frames for law and rights.
The only adequate basis of rights lies in One who is infallible and incorruptible. God is the only one who can give liberty. Because God is infallible He is most qualified to administer justice everything He does is right. Because god is incorruptible He cannot be tempted to do evil. Because He is self-sufficient He has no need to use power for personal advantage.He has supreme authority because this is His universe-He created it.Therefore right given by God trump the designs of corrupt politicians.
The Founders of America understood this. On July 4,1776 They signed the Declaration of Independence.Therein they stated a revolutionary Principle:
We hold these truths to be self-evident:that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
How do we know that God will give us rights. As a Christian I can confidently say that God proved His love by sending Jesus Christ down to die to save us from our sins.if God was willing to come down in the flesh to save us, He is willing to give us rights to protect us against criminally acting government by giving us rights.
How did the founders create a free society. They set out to create a secular state embedded in a Christian society and people entered into a social
contract with America and one of several states that were joined to America.