America's Youth vs. Big Government

We all know that our public school system is failing and American’s math and science scores are dropping internationally, but there’s another area of academia which is being neglected at school: the Law of Natural Rights.

Kids these days are never presented with the important study into the foundation of Natural Law and therefore blossom into adults, clueless on what government’s involvement into our lives should be. Instead, they are taught in government classes basic facts about our federal houses (never mentioning their inability to solve any problems, of course), briefly mention the Founding Fathers (without contrasting Madison’s and Hamilton’s ideologies), and discuss some of the larger Supreme Court decisions (such as Roe vs. Wade).  Natural Rights are rarely, if ever, mentioned.  This is a huge concern for the future generations of Americans, as it is only through the understanding of our Natural Rights that we can begin to understand the Founders’ intent when drafting the documents that would create our system of governance.  As the size and obtrusiveness of our government continues to balloon, a lesson in Natural Law is necessary if we are to return sanity and freedom back to America.

What are our Natural Rights?  Where do they come from?  What do they have to do with government?  The answer to these questions should be understood by every American and should be required on the exam to gain citizenship.  Sadly, if Jay Leno’s ‘Jaywalking’ (the segment where he asks people off the street simple questions) is any sort of barometer for the basic knowledge of everyday Americans, I’m sure we’d be let down with their answers to the above questions. Let’s break the cycle of ignorance and solve these problems.

What are our Natural Rights?  The answer to that question lies with the father of Natural Rights, scholar, John Locke. Locke is to Natural Rights what mathematician Sir Isaac Newton is to physics (in fact, they were close companions).  During the time of enlightenment when Newton placed his finger on the meaning behind gravity, Locke was able to put into words what exactly our Natural Rights entailed.  Locke discovered that three rights (no more, no less) are granted to humans as sovereign individuals: the rights to life, liberty, and property.

This seemingly basic statement was viewed as quite extreme back in his day, as Locke’s British government was ruled by a monarch who believed he was the ultimate authority on another person’s life, liberty, and property. There was no country in existence which governed according to those freedoms, so Locke’s discovery was certainly quite a revelation to some and a nuisance to many others!

According to Locke, our Natural Rights must be protected;  I can not break into your house and kill you to satisfy some spontaneous whim.  You can not take away from me something that I own.   My neighbor can’t lock me in his basement because I looked at his wife funny.  Since one’s life, liberty, and property are solely owned by each individual, a law is formed, protecting someone else from violating these rights.  Natural Law, therefore, is the protection of these basic rights. “Reason, which is that Law,” Locke wrote, “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.”

Where do our Natural Rights come from?  Locke concluded that our Natural Rights come from God, or if you are an atheist, nature.  French philosopher, Frédéric Bastiat wrote in his book The Law, that God “has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties.  And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.”  In other words, “Life [individuality], faculties [liberty], production [property]- this is man.”

One does not, however, need to explicitly believe in God in order to understand our Natural Rights.  Our Natural Rights are natural because they are constant elements of nature.  Individual rights to life, liberty, and property are just as infinite as Time and it is accepted that these conditions are characteristics of the vast and mysterious universe. Similar to Time, our Natural Rights are a force that scientists can not define, change, or end and correspond to a spontaneous order in the absence of a state.  There is no force in the cosmos that can change these principles.  While wealth and possessions come and go throughout our lives, the only things we leave this world with are the same which we were given upon conception, our Natural Rights.  This is something that we all feel in our gut, that the items in my house are my property and no one has the right to take them from me.

What do Natural Rights have to do with government?  During these tumultuous social-economic times, Americans are beginning to discuss and study the role of government in our lives.  What should be the job of government?  Does government create rights?  We have already defined that our Natural Rights are sovereign to each individual, handed down to us from God or nature.  This being so, it means that Natural Rights preexist man; that our rights do not come from man himself.  Government, being a construct of man, therefore can not create rights.

Indeed Bastiat and Locke knew that man’s rights were above legislature. According to Bastiat, “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have created laws.  On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”  Consequently, government “can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent. For this would be in effect to leave them no Property at all,” declared Locke.

For these thinkers, government’s role was to protect another man from violating the Natural Rights of another, and persecuting those who have transgressed against Natural Law.  A man’s money, being his property, could not be taxed or taken from him without his consent.  This is also called legal plunder, or the garnishing of one’s property for the State.   Just because it is sanctioned by some legislature, legal plunder is still in violation of Natural Law.  Bastiat proposes a solution; to choose one of the following:

1. The few plunders the many.
2. Everybody plunders everybody.
3. Nobody plunders anybody.

Which option do you like?

The Founding Fathers certainly understood Natural Law and the fatal flaw with legal plunder.  Thomas Jefferson, during his exhaustive research of governments while drafting the Constitution, held Locke in the highest regard as a thinker of Liberty.  James Madison formulated his understanding of government directly from Locke’s work, while Benjamin Franklin utilized Locke’s documents in his self-education.  Historic revolutionaries from George Mason to Thomas Paine viewed Locke with reverence.

Tired of being ruled by a tyrannical British government which did not recognize Natural Law, these great men sought to create a government whose power would be bound by man’s Natural Rights.  In their view, government only existed to protect citizens’ Natural Rights, allowing individuals to flourish under their own creativity and freedom.  It is because of this, that on July 4th, 1776 the American colonies issued this warning to their oppressors:

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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Woah, heavy.

Today, us Americans find ourselves in a similar situation as our Founding Fathers did over two hundred years ago.  Our Natural Rights are being violated and legal plunder is at an all-time high with more of our property being taken away from us and given to someone else than ever before.  The income tax, forced upon around 50% of Americans, violates the law of personal property.  The PATRIOT Act allows government officials to enter your house and detain you without a warrant, an infringement upon the law of personal liberty.  Obama recently authorized the assassination of an American citizen without being put on trial, a gross neglect of the law of personal life.  Obviously, the list goes on and on.

Worse yet, most Americans have long forgotten their God-given Natural Rights and they now expect the government to create rights in order to take care of everyone.  The government does not have the power in the Constitution to mandate that each American buy health insurance.  That is in complete violation of Natural Law, and is specifically the type of intrusion into our lives that our Founding Fathers intended to prevent (well not Hamilton, of course).

Young Americans need to learn that government gets its rights from man, not the other way around.  When we can grasp this concept as a nation once again, Natural Law will be respected, and America will return to prosperity.