by John Russell Turner
For Erich Ferger
THERE ARE ONLY THREE RIGHTS which every man, woman, and child possess, regardless of their gender, skin color, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, or political orientation:
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
-United States Declaration of Independence
Let's recap: the three rights are: 1. the right to life, to live; 2. the right to liberty; and 3. the right, i.e., the liberty or the freedom, to pursue that which makes one happy, as long as in so doing, you do not kill, do physical harm, nor steal from anyone. These rights can not, must not, be taken away from any person without legal due process (they are inalienable), and for violation of clearly defined, morally objective laws.
Furthermore, these rights are not granted by man, by the state, nor by any human group or society, nor by any individual. They are granted by the Creator, by God. And if you don't believe in God, these rights are intrinsic in our nature as human beings. We are literally born with these rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Period.
All the other so-called "rights" we hear about, the alleged right to a job, housing, medical care, et al, are not given to us by God, nor by our nature as human beings. These are not rights, they are entitlements, usually given to people by a government agency. Such entitlements require the transfer of economic goods (jobs, services, money, and stuff) from the producer of those goods to the taker of those goods. If citizen A is told he has a right to a job, and so decides to collect on this right, citizen B must give it to him. If citizen B refuses, then by any number of methods (threat of imprisonment, fines, and ultimately, death if he refuses hard enough), the government will force him to do so. This is clearly immoral, because it violates citizen B's rights to hold property, his right to pursue his happiness without being literally robbed in order to supply someone else's "right" to his property. The right to own, and to freely dispose of property is a necessary corollary to the right to live, and to pursue happiness. This is because of man's nature, of his means of survival. He or she builds a house, buys a car and clothes, and plants, raises, or buys food. These things are his, for him to dispose of as she, or he sees fit, so that he might live a reasonably happy life.
Socialism, in essence, is parasitism, but of a weird, bizarre kind because it is human parasitism upon other humans. Cannibalism. Furthermore, it offers the hideous spectacle of evil masquerading as good, since it all depends not on the moral and just, but on violence and death. Such is the moral sewer underneath the concept of socialistic, man- granted rights.
On a personal note, this is why I believe in God, why I believe that all of my rights come from Him, and not from the state. When rights come from the state, hell ensues, and we get rivers of blood and corpses stacked on top of each other in ditches.
