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bionic mosquito: Why They Hate Natural Law

Posted by M. C. on July 19, 2021

“Natural law does stand in stark opposition to racism because God breathed into man – all men and all women.  Yes, this specific form and meaning of equality can be known and discovered by believer and non-believer alike.”

“That would be pretty much all of the children of our modern libertine society and those who gladly use them in order to further consolidate wealth, power and control.  Which pretty much describes the left in the West today, which includes the Democrat party and most of the Republican party.  All of these would be against natural law, because it would bring an end to their game.”

http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2021/07/why-they-hate-natural-law.html

A friend sent me an essay by John Daniel Davidson, entitled “Calling Natural Law ‘White Nationalism’ Is Racist, Period.”  For the background behind the purpose of Davidson’s essay:

An innocuous comment from Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney, suggesting we need to teach natural law in public schools, prompted Matthew J. Peterson to reply that it’s not enough to ban critical race theory, we need to replace it with natural law. This in turn inspired Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley to aver (in a since-deleted tweet) that natural law is “a dogwhistle to white Christian Nationalism.”

What followed, as described by Davidson, was…

…a string of outraged tweets about natural law, mostly from people who don’t seem to know what natural law is, confusing it for social Darwinism or some such.

It is clear that many people do not understand natural law.  I suspect this is by design, an intentional effort via public education, mass media, and government policy developed to supply a compliant and malleable population, one that is left with a superficial understanding of liberty – the same liberty held by the lion in the zoo.

But what about the idea that natural law is confused with Social Darwinism?

Social Darwinists held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer.

I will suggest…if man does not have as his telos, his purpose – in fact, his highest purpose – as love, Social Darwinism is quite natural.  Instead of natural law, we get the law of nature – similar words, very different meaning: survival of the fittest.  But natural law grounded in and refined through Christianity holds no such view.  Love is man’s purpose, his telos.  Survival of the fittest does not fit into a worldview that is guided by a natural law ethic.

Returning to Davidson, and writing about Professor Stanley:

He should also know that suggesting, as Peterson did, that an education grounded in natural law is infinitely superior to one grounded in critical race theory isn’t some kind of racist dogwhistle.

If we want to live as human beings, it is true.  Of course, who is any longer surprised about the quality and substance of the professors at the top universities in the country?  The long march through the institutions didn’t take very long after all.

Indeed, he should know that natural law stands in stark opposition to racism of any kind, because it posits that all human beings, regardless of their race or any other characteristic, have inherent rights, which can be discovered and applied through reason. Those rights arise from the fact of their humanity, not their race or religion.

Yes…and no.  Natural law does stand in stark opposition to racism because God breathed into man – all men and all women.  Yes, this specific form and meaning of equality can be known and discovered by believer and non-believer alike.

But, no: natural law should not be confused with natural rights.  Natural law is an ethic, describing how one should behave and act; natural rights are behaviors that one can demand from another.  Natural law demands that I act charitably, however no one has a natural right to force me to do so.

My natural rights are limited to my body and my property.  Don’t hit first, don’t take my stuff.  The non-aggression principle.  This isn’t just me saying it; Thomas Aquinas deals with this in question 96 in the Summa: The power of human law.  In Article 2, he asks “Whether it belongs to the human law to repress all vices?”  He answers:

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.

Human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.  In other words, don’t hit first, don’t take my stuff.  Thomas continues:

The natural law is a participation in us of the eternal law: while human law falls short of the eternal law.

Look, I know what I am about to write is doctrinally unsound, but give me a little leeway… God tried it the “law” way, dictating hundreds of laws and commands to try to shape a virtuous people.  It didn’t work for God, so why would it work for us?  Instead, He tried a different way, summing all the commandments into two: love God, love your neighbor.  Love being the ultimate telos for human beings.  The force of law doesn’t bring on virtue; aiming at virtue is the only way one might approach becoming a virtuous person. 

Continuing with Thomas:

Now Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5): “The law which is framed for the government of states, allows and leaves unpunished many things that are punished by Divine providence. Nor, if this law does not attempt to do everything, is this a reason why it should be blamed for what it does.” Wherefore, too, human law does not prohibit everything that is forbidden by the natural law.

Natural law: acting according to one’s nature, with love as man’s highest purpose; human law: don’t hit first, don’t take my stuff.

Returning, again, to Davidson:

As Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas once said, “Those who deny natural law cannot get me out of slavery.”

Of course, he is right.  Without natural law, we have Social Darwinism.  Superior and inferior, based on race, eugenics, might makes right, survival of the fittest.

[Professor Stanley] might even know that one of the foremost proponents of natural law today is Francis Arinze, a Nigerian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. If natural law has anything to do with white Christian nationalism, no one has apparently told Cardinal Arinze.

This reminds me…the loud and obnoxious Stephen A. Smith got into hot water twice this week: first, for criticizing Shohei Ohtani for not being able to speak English, and second, for making fun of the names of the Nigerian basketball players that just beat the team from the United States.  Had a white ESPN personality done either of these things…sayonara, bro’.  Instead, just another day at the racist, virtue-signaling mothership of sports broadcasting.

Returning to Davidson’s essay…what does this have to do with why they hate natural law?  Well, Davidson was focused on one point addressed by natural law – critical race theory.  I started thinking about other issues also addressed by natural law, and replied this way to the friend who sent me the link to the piece:

Natural law speaks not only against critical race theory, but also against gender fluidity, marital confusion, child mutilation, abortion, egalitarianism of all varieties, forced human lab experiments, compulsory public education (indoctrination), overseas war, central banking (the source of the only kind of usury worth condemning), taxation (at least to the extent taxes are used to fund any of the above, which is probably 90% of taxes), and monopoly governance institutions.

In other words, it is pretty much against the reigning culture, economics, and politics of modern Western society.

Natural law, when developed through the Christian lens (the only lens through which it ever gained full form) also offers the opportunity for meaning.

An ethical regime that comports with natural law and a law regime that comports with natural rights, giving each individual room and cover to find proper liberty and use it to fulfill his telos.  This is what gives man meaning.

So, I ask you: who could be against natural law?  To ask the question is to answer it.

That would be pretty much all of the children of our modern libertine society and those who gladly use them in order to further consolidate wealth, power and control.  Which pretty much describes the left in the West today, which includes the Democrat party and most of the Republican party.  All of these would be against natural law, because it would bring an end to their game.

And that’s why they hate it.

Posted by bionic mosquito

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Are There Any Limits to Natural Rights? | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

Natural rights of the sort that Rothbard favors are prepolitical. In other words, these rights aren’t dependent on the state for their existence. Each person is a self-owner and may acquire property in the “state of nature,” before there are states and state-created legal systems. Indeed, in Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, there aren’t any states: people hire private defense agencies to protect their rights.

https://mises.org/library/are-there-any-limits-natural-rights

David Gordon

I’d like to discuss today an argument that is popular among some contemporary political philosophers. If this argument is correct, it undermines the sort of natural rights found in Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. I hope that I am not spoiling the surprise by telling you immediately that I think the argument is wrong.

Natural rights of the sort that Rothbard favors are prepolitical. In other words, these rights aren’t dependent on the state for their existence. Each person is a self-owner and may acquire property in the “state of nature,” before there are states and state-created legal systems. Indeed, in Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, there aren’t any states: people hire private defense agencies to protect their rights.

According to the argument I wish to examine, prepolitical rights make no sense because there are no ways to define the boundaries of these rights. If each person is a self-owner, when does self-ownership begin? Are children self-owners? What about abortion—is a woman, as the owner of her body, entitled to abort a baby she doesn’t want? What are the permissible limits of self-defense? Is your right to life entirely negative, i.e., other people must not use force against you, or threaten you with force, unless you have aggressed against them, or do you in some cases have the right to the aid of other people to preserve your life? If you are accused of a crime, what (if any) rights do you have to be tried by fair procedures? The questions multiply when we reach property rights. What is the correct principle of initial acquisition? What about intellectual property?

Given the lack of clear boundaries to natural rights, it is argued, the notion is useless in practice. Instead, we must start with the notion of autonomous persons who in particular societies decide what legal rights people have, being guided in so doing by local practices. As an example, the notion of property is in this view entirely a social construct. The government in taxing you is not taking away what you rightfully have acquired, because it is the government (backed by democratic decision) that has decided what you own in the first place.

There’s an obvious objection to this argument, but the defenders of the argument have a reply to it. The objection is that proponents of natural rights don’t set clear boundaries for these rights. But if you read Ethics of Liberty, you will quickly discover that Rothbard does answer the questions about boundaries posed above. You may accept or reject what he says, but how can it be reasonably maintained that his natural rights are useless because they lack clear boundaries?

The reply that the opponents of natural rights would offer is that other supporters of natural rights often disagree with Rothbard’s answers. Rothbard, e.g., is critical of patents, but Objectivists regard intellectual property as an essential right. Given such disagreements, don’t even supporters of natural rights have to rely on social convention to decide what the proper natural rights are? If so isn’t it the agreement of people within a society that is doing the work rather than the natural rights?

This reply is very weak. People may disagree, but that doesn’t show that one opinion can’t be correct and the others wrong. That is something that needs to be settled by argument. If you think Rothbard is wrong about strict liability, for instance, it won’t do just to point out that some people accept the “reasonable man” standard at odds with it. You need to show that Rothbard’s arguments don’t settle the issue if you want to push the claim that social convention must play the primary role in settling disputed questions about rights. It’s an interesting point, I think, that showing Rothbard is mistaken doesn’t help the social conventionalist. If you did that, you would be merely eliminating one option, Rothbard’s, from consideration, not showing that the remaining options require a convention-based resolution. For the conventionalist position to remain intact, you would need to show that Rothbard’s arguments for his position aren’t dispositive and also that other arguments don’t show that he is wrong. Then, strict liability would still be in the running but not a clear winner.

But suppose that it can’t be shown that there is a correct theory of natural rights that settles all important issues and that people in a particular society must rely in part on convention to fix the boundaries of these rights. It hardly follows from this that natural rights are useless and everything important rests on the social practices of a particular society. Suppose that we don’t know the exact boundaries of the correct principle of initial acquisition. We do know, though, that people have a natural right to acquire property, so that social conventions that altogether deny people the right to own property are ruled out.

Supporters of the conventionalist view usually don’t like private property rights very much, but they support the right to free speech. The same sort of problems they raise for property rights arise also for free speech. Does free speech cover libel and slander? False advertising? Disclosure of trade secrets? The fact, if it is one, that the concept of “free speech” leaves these questions unsettled does not throw everything open to social decision. A law that prohibited political speech would violate people’s free speech rights, even granting the conventionalist point. Why are property rights subject to different treatment? Further, as Rothbard has pointed out, once property rights are settled, that resolves controversies about free speech rights. People do not have a vague and unlimited right to free speech but rather the right to set regulations for speech on their own property. If you are on someone else’s property, you must follow his rules about speech.

There is another problem with the social conventionalist view, and it is a glaring one. Even if people in a society need in part to rely on social practices to settle disputed issues, how does the state, democratic or otherwise, enter the picture? Why couldn’t those in a stateless society settle such problems through negotiation? People in the grip of the view I’m criticizing tend to assume without argument that we must accept the framework of the modern national state. Murray Rothbard shows us a different way to proceed, and that is a principal element in his greatness as a political philosopher.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Author:

Contact David Gordon

David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review.

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Here We Go Again – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

By doing so, they have reignited the age-old debate of individual liberty versus public safety. In this case, the safety they claim to be enhancing is safety from disease. Yet, by their executive orders, they have purported to use state law to interfere with freedoms without due process that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By doing that, they have set themselves up for criminal prosecutions when normalcy returns.

Let us hope so.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/andrew-p-napolitano/here-we-go-again-2/

By Andrew P. Napolitano

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because the law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

As if nanny state governors had been sleepwalking through the tyrannical shutdowns and their disastrous consequences last spring and summer, as if they were ignorant of the economic destruction of those they barred from going to work or operating their businesses, as if they thought it is lawful to assault natural rights and constitutional guarantees, these same governors are now beginning another wave of interferences with personal liberty.

Slowly, over the past 10 days, while the eyes of the public and the media have been on the counting of votes in the presidential election and the ensuing allegations and litigations, governors in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and New York have threatened to impose or have begun to impose their unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and illogical efforts to shut down society in order — they claim — to rid the land of the COVID-19 virus.

By doing so, they have reignited the age-old debate of individual liberty versus public safety. In this case, the safety they claim to be enhancing is safety from disease. Yet, by their executive orders, they have purported to use state law to interfere with freedoms without due process that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By doing that, they have set themselves up for criminal prosecutions when normalcy returns.

Here is the backstory.

For the past four years, I have been working on a 650-page treatise that explores the origins of human freedom from a natural law perspective. The book traces the recognition by scholars, jurists, theologians and, in the case of America at its founding, radical revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who truly believed and passionately argued that human freedom — our individual power to make unobstructed choices — comes from within us, and not from the government. Most of the historical defenders of this truism also believed in God and argued that He made us free by giving us free will.

This understanding of natural rights was wedded to the United States at its birth in 1776 when Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and again in 1791 when Madison wrote in the Ninth Amendment that because human liberty is so expansive the government must protect even unstated, unenumerated rights.

To protect our rights from whom?

The framers could easily answer that question, yet the folks who run the government today do not want it asked because the answer implicates them. In the revolutionary era, colonists could protect themselves from evildoers attempting to steal their property or take their lives. But the foe they most feared was the government. They fought a bloody war against the government of King George III because it assaulted their economic rights and their right to self-government.

History is repeating itself, without the courageous revolutionaries. It is not my neighbor, or even a thief in the night, who impairs my personal liberty — it is the government. It does so, just as King George did, under the guise of safety. Yet, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written precisely to prevent governments in America — state or federal — from interfering with our liberty, absent a jury trial at which they must prove fault.

This jury trial requirement is called due process. It is guaranteed by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, which mandate that the government comply with due process whenever it seeks to impair the life, liberty or property of any person. Of course, a constitutional guarantee is only as reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping.

Now, back to these nanny state governors. They have assumed to themselves the powers to write laws and enforce them. That assumption violates the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of the states in which they were elected, because the power to write laws and the power to enforce laws is required to be separated in America. We call that the separation of powers. It is, according to my late friend Justice Antonin Scalia, the most unique and freedom-protecting aspect of the Constitution, and it applies to states as well as the federal government.

Add to this the so-called lockdowns — a demeaning word originating in the shutdown of prisons during riots — that directly impair personal liberties that are not only natural to us but are expressly guaranteed by the Constitution as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. These lockdowns interfere with the freedom to speak, travel, worship, assemble, engage in commercial intercourse and use property to its highest and best use.

Under federal law, when a government employee employs government tools to impair these enumerated rights — and does so without due process — that person commits a felony.

Thus, when governors use police powers to interfere with personal liberty — liberty that is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution — and do so without a trial at which the government proves fault, they have violated both state and federal law, no matter their reasoning. Thus, all these executive orders regulating private personal behavior are profoundly unconstitutional and even criminal.

There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution. It is liberty that flows in our veins, not false promises of government safety.

The Best of Andrew P. Napolitano Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

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A Simple Way to Tell if Something Is Truly a Right – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on October 4, 2020

Answer: In the case of the first list, nothing is required of other people except that they leave you alone. For you to have a right to something in the second list, however, requires that other people be compelled to provide that something to you. That’s a monumental difference!

https://fee.org/articles/rights-and-non-rights-a-simple-way-to-distinguish-the-two/

Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

George Mason, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

“Rights” are in the news these days perhaps as much as they were in George Mason’s time. As a score of politicians prepares to announce their 2020 campaigns for President of the United States, we can expect “rights” to be in the news every day, as they are promised to us one after another. “You have a right” to this or that and “If elected, I’ll make sure you get it” will soon be monotonous refrains.

America is a nation founded on the notion of rights. Our independence was declared in 1776 on a foundation of “unalienable” rights granted to us not by mortal authorities but by the Creator himself. Our ancestors rebelled against the British because they believed that such rights as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were being thwarted by oppressors in London. Our founding documents were put forth specifically for the purposes of securing and protecting rights. Battles both intellectual and physical were fought in the ensuing decades to ensure that rights remained a priority of government or were extended to people not originally included.

So this business of rights is indistinguishable from the American experience; indeed, it is at the very core of that experience. Remove rights from the equation, and America is just one of countless countries—past and present—in which individuals possess nothing more than what those in power decide to give them or allow them to have.

Despite the centrality of rights in American history, it’s readily apparent today that Americans are of widely different views on what a right is, how many we have, where rights come from, or why we have any in the first place.

Does a document create rights, or do such paper instruments simply acknowledge rights that people inherently possess?

Is a right the same thing as a wish? Why or why not? Or if you need something, does that mean you have a right to it? If I require a kidney, do I have a right to one of yours? Is a right something that can or should be granted or denied by majority vote? Does a document such as the Constitution or an executive order or a law of Congress create rights, or do such paper instruments simply acknowledge rights (by either defending or eroding them) that people inherently possess?

If you walked down Main Street America today and asked random citizens these very questions, I’ll bet you’d hear a plethora of different and conflicting answers. Read over those questions again and think about how you would respond.

This essay doesn’t provide all the answers, nor does it raise all the relevant questions. Its purpose is more limited than that. If it prompts the reader to think of rights in a deeper, more thoughtful way than heretofore and then contribute to the public discourse on the subject in a meaningful way, then it’ll achieve my purposes. I’ll even include a recommended reading list at the end.

I’ve given this subject some thought over the years and feel confident in providing the reader with a couple of lists to consider. The first one itemizes what I personally think you have a right to; the second is a partial roster of things I personally think you don’t have a right to (and I readily grant that you have every right to disagree with me).

  1. Your life (unless compromised by taking or attempting to take that of another person without a self-defense justification);
  2. Your thoughts;
  3. Your speech (which is really a verbal or written expression of #2) so long as you don’t steal it from another without permission or credit;
  4. Material property you were freely given, that you created yourself, or that you freely traded for;
  5. Raise and educate your children as you see fit;
  6. Live in peace and freedom so long as you do not threaten the peace and freedom of others.
  1. High-speed broadband Internet access;
  2. Cheeseburgers, cheap wine (or even expensive wine, for that matter), or an iPhone;
  3. Somebody else’s house, car, boat, income, business, or bank account;
  4. The labor of another person you’ve not freely contracted with (you can’t enslave somebody, in other words);
  5. Medical care from a witch doctor or a skilled surgeon or anybody in between;
  6. Taxpayer-funded (i.e., coercively-appropriated) child daycare, college education, contraceptives, colonoscopies, or sports stadiums;
  7. Anything that’s not yours, even though you really want it and think you’re entitled to it;
  8. Conscript other people’s children into schools you think they should attend;
  9. Free stuff in general, unless the rightful owner chooses to offer it;
  10. Anything a politician flattered you with by claiming you have a right to it.

Of course, gray areas and reasonable qualifications exist. For example, while I believe you do have a right to raise and educate your own children as you see fit, abuse and neglect are not defensible. But let’s keep our eyes on the big picture, the broad principles here.

Now, look at those two lists again, carefully. How does the nature of the first list contrast with the nature of the second?

Answer: In the case of the first list, nothing is required of other people except that they leave you alone. For you to have a right to something in the second list, however, requires that other people be compelled to provide that something to you. That’s a monumental difference!

The first list comprises what are often called both “natural rights” and “negative rights”—natural because they derive from our essential nature as unique, sensate individuals and negative because they don’t impose obligations on others beyond a commitment to not violate them. The items in the second are called “positive rights” because others must give them to you or be coerced into doing so if they decline.

The late Tibor Machan, who wrote many articles for FEE in the 1970s and 1980s, elaborated on this distinction in “The Perils of Positive Rights”:

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bionic mosquito: What of Natural Rights?

Posted by M. C. on June 25, 2020

At the same time, society today is taking a bastardized version of natural law and turning this into natural rights through human law. By law, others have a right to claim from me food if hungry, a home if without shelter, and clothes if cold.

Critics such as these are attacking a strawman, while the state is enacting exactly that which they fear – a theocracy, but based on a deformed concept of what it means to be a human being.

https://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2020/06/what-of-natural-rights.html

What of Natural Rights?

I have written extensively on the necessity of natural law as the foundation for a society grounded in liberty. What of natural rights? How are the two related?

Murray Rothbard addresses this question in chapter four of his book, The Ethics of Liberty, pointing to John Locke:

From the Lockean emphasis on the individual as the unit of action, as the entity who thinks, feels, chooses, and acts, stemmed his conception of natural law in politics as establishing the natural rights of each individual.

It is in a grounding of natural rights that the American experiment began, and it is the examination of natural rights that is the purpose of the remainder of Rothbard’s book:

It is this tradition of natural-rights libertarianism upon which the present volume attempts to build.

This distinction of natural law and natural rights has caused confusion for many – certainly me. For example, how can Rothbard open the first three chapters of this book describing the necessity of natural law to liberty and then spend the bulk of the book focusing only on the libertarian analysis of property rights? What of the “moral” stuff inherent in natural law? That’s what I want to get at here.

To begin, while it is true (as Rothbard suggests) that many of the earlier scholars of natural law placed emphasis on the king or state as opposed to the individual, Locke was not the first to demonstrate a distinction between natural law and natural rights. One could find this distinction in Aquinas (emphasis added):

Now human law is framed for a number of human beings, the majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Wherefore human laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of others, without the prohibition of which human society could not be maintained: thus human law prohibits murder, theft and such like.

So, while natural law described how humans ought to act toward others (and, in my opinion, describes the type of behavior necessary if one is to expect any form of sustainable liberty on this earth), natural rights describe how others (society) ought to act toward the individual rights-holder.

It is this area of natural rights where Rothbard spends the bulk of his time in this book, all-the-while not discounting his strong statements in the opening chapters regarding the necessity of natural law toward liberty. The individual has a natural right to life and property. While natural law demands certain moral behaviors beyond this, I as an individual have no natural right to force others to behave toward me in such respects.

For a simple example, natural law is grounded in other-regarding action – call it the Golden Rule for simplicity. Yet I have no natural right to demand that others treat me in a loving manner – to feed me if hungry, to shelter me if homeless, or to clothe me if cold.

Natural law describes proper moral behavior – and, in my opinion, the behavior necessary if society is to sustain the natural rights in human law of life and property.

Conclusion

I do have a natural right to demand that others respect my property and my physical body: don’t hit first; don’t take my stuff. And it is here where human law plays a role – as touched on by Aquinas, further developed in Locke, and expanded upon significantly by Rothbard.

But none of these had the gumption to turn all of natural law into natural rights (and, therefore, human law). I have a right to my property and my physical body. Beyond this – whatever natural law demands – I have no right to claim, in human law, other actions. I have no right to demand that others treat me in a loving manner.

Epilogue

I find it quite interesting that one of the strong pushbacks against natural law is the idea that proponents of natural law wish to arrive at a theocracy. Yet it is clear, as early as Aquinas, that this was never the purpose.

At the same time, society today is taking a bastardized version of natural law and turning this into natural rights through human law. By law, others have a right to claim from me food if hungry, a home if without shelter, and clothes if cold.

Critics such as these are attacking a strawman, while the state is enacting exactly that which they fear – a theocracy, but based on a deformed concept of what it means to be a human being.

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The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2020

And yet, in Western countries, the state keeps on relentlessly expanding, colonizing one area of social life after the other. In America, the Republic is fast becoming a fading memory, as federal bureaucrats and global planners divert more and more power to the center. So the struggle continues, as it must. Two centuries ago, when liberalism was young, Jefferson had already informed us of the price of liberty.

https://mises.org/library/rise-fall-and-renaissance-classical-liberalism

Ralph Raico

[This article appeared in the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily, August 1992]

Classical liberalism—or simply liberalism, as it was called until around the turn of the century—is the signature political philosophy of Western civilization. Hints and suggestions of the liberal idea can be found in other great cultures. But it was the distinctive society produced in Europe—and in the outposts of Europe, and above all America—that served as the seedbed of liberalism. In turn, that society was decisively shaped by the liberal movement.

Decentralization and the division of power have been the hallmarks of the history of Europe. After the fall of Rome, no empire was ever able to dominate the continent. Instead, Europe became a complex mosaic of competing nations, principalities, and city-states. The various rulers found themselves in competition with each other. If one of them indulged in predatory taxation or arbitrary confiscations of property, he might well lose his most productive citizens, who could “exit,” together with their capital. The kings also found powerful rivals in ambitious barons and in religious authorities that were backed by an international Church. Parliaments emerged that limited the taxing power of kings, and free cities arose with special charters that put the merchant elite in charge.

By the Middle Ages, many parts of Europe, especially in the west, had developed a culture friendly to property rights and trade. On the philosophical level, the doctrine of natural law—deriving from the Stoic philosophers of Greece and Rome—taught that the natural order was independent of human design and that rulers were subordinate to the eternal laws of justice. Natural-law doctrine was upheld by the Church and promulgated in the great universities, from Oxford and Salamanca to Prague and Krakow.

As the modern age began, rulers started to shake free of age-old customary constraints on their power. Royal absolutism became the main tendency of the time. The kings of Europe raised a novel claim: they declared that they were appointed by God to be the fountainhead of all life and activity in society. Accordingly, they sought to direct religion, culture, politics, and, especially, the economic life of the people. To support their burgeoning bureaucracies and constant wars, the rulers required ever-increasing quantities of taxes, which they tried to squeeze out of their subjects in ways that were contrary to precedent and custom.

The first people to revolt against this system were the Dutch. After a struggle that lasted for decades, they won their independence from Spain and proceeded to set up a unique polity. The United Provinces, as the radically decentralized state was called, had no king and little power at the federal level. Making money was the passion of these busy manufacturers and traders; they had no time for hunting heretics or suppressing new ideas. Thus de facto religious toleration and a wide-ranging freedom of the press came to prevail. Devoted to industry and trade, the Dutch established a legal system based solidly on the rule of law and the sanctity of property and contract. Taxes were low, and everyone worked. The Dutch “economic miracle” was the wonder of the age. Thoughtful observers throughout Europe noted the Dutch success with great interest.

A society in many ways similar to Holland had developed across the North Sea. In the seventeenth century, England, too, was threatened by royal absolutism, in the form of the House of Stuart. The response was revolution, civil war, the beheading of one king and the booting out of another. In the course of this tumultuous century, the first movements and thinkers appeared that can be unequivocally identified as liberal.

With the king gone, a group of middle-class radicals emerged called the Levellers. They protested that not even Parliament had the authority to usurp the natural, God-given rights of the people. Religion, they declared, was a matter of individual conscience; it should have no connection with the state. State-granted monopolies were likewise an infringement of natural liberty.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Looking for Moral Foundations (in All the Wrong Places) | Chronicles

Posted by M. C. on June 22, 2020

Merriam has argued that various forms of originalism have been devised in order to recover a sense of republican government. This originalism was meant to avoid a straying of the Constitution after our political culture had begun to change. But this may be a case of closing the barn after the horse has already bolted.

In any case, like Pulliam, I have no idea of what the Claremonters’ claim to an identifiably conservative higher morality is based on. But something may be necessary to fill this void on the right, since the left has a foundational norm: social-cultural destruction. And the only hope I see for buying time against its march through the courts is the frail reed of originalism.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2020/June/44/6/magazine/article/10886192/

By Paul Gottfried

A debate unfolded in March last year in American Greatness between Chronicles contributor Mark Pulliam and the Claremont Institute’s Edward Erler, a devotee of Harry Jaffa. According to Erler, Robert Bork and others who adhered to strict constitutional originalism were essentially moral nihilists because they would not apply natural law standards to our governing document.

From Erler’s Jaffaite perspective, the Constitution’s authors supposedly viewed the Declaration of Independence as America’s true founding text. The Founders supposedly felt the Constitution had to be interpreted through the passage in the Declaration about all men being created equal. That “natural right” principle enabled the Founders, and later Abraham Lincoln and Civil War-era Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, to grasp properly the Constitution’s true meaning. In contrast, Erler alleged, Bork and Pulliam’s morally adrift originalist views would uphold abortion laws and other outrages, provided they were enacted under constitutional rules.

Erler’s brief reveals questionable assumptions. For example, even assuming the authors of the Constitution thought the Declaration was important, we have no reason to think the Founders were infatuated with the phrase “all men are created equal.” There were certainly other thoughts found in the Declaration; perhaps the most relevant fact about it for the Constitution’s writers was that it recognized the independence of the American colonies. Praise for that document when I was growing up in the 1950s centered on the achievement of American independence, and far less on the equality that Erler wants us to celebrate.

Although Lincoln stressed a founding based on the notion that “all men are created equal,” he did so during the Civil War to justify a bloody invasion of the seceded Southern states, as driven by a crusade against slavery. Why should we make Lincoln’s wartime strategy the cornerstone of the American national experience going back to the gaining of national independence in 1776? And why would I think, like Erler, that Radical Republican efforts to create a permanent black electorate in the South, partly by stripping former Confederate soldiers of their citizenship, was driven by Harry Jaffa’s favorite passage in the Declaration? Why wouldn’t I rather think that Stevens and other ruthless business tycoons were just taking advantage of their onetime fellow-Americans who lost disastrously in a bid for independence? Read the rest of this entry »

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bionic mosquito: A World Without Christianity…

Posted by M. C. on April 30, 2020

https://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-world-without-christianity.html

bionic mosquito

A World Without Christianity…

…is a world without the possibility of liberty.

Tom Holland has written a book: Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. At some point, I will read this book and write something about it; I have heard enough from him in interviews that the book seems very worthwhile.

This post is based on one of these interviews, conducted by Glen Scrivener. Glen Scrivener is an ordained minister and evangelist. My following notes pick up at the 29-minute mark; however, the entire interview is worth listening to.

GS: There are many humanists who say Christianity played a part in Western liberal values, but even without Jesus Christ we would have got to where we are.

TH: (chuckling) No. and it’s so odd because it tends to be people who valorize science and Darwin and the theory of evolution… [prior to Christianity] there is nothing at all about the emergence of the qualities or the values or the teaching of Christianity at all.

I don’t recall if it was earlier in this interview, or in another interview with Holland, but Holland describes the Roman world into which Christianity was born. Anyone not a male Roman citizen demanding any sort of rights would be sent to death. Any male Roman citizen had the right to have sex with anyone of any age in any orifice of his choosing. Things like this.

All of this was considered right, and good. It was only in Christianity where the slaves were given equal dignity in God’s eyes, where women had the same rights in marriage and sex as men.

GS: You cannot get these from other sources?

TH: If you want a sense of what the world might have looked like without Christianity you can look at India, where you have very rich philosophical tradition, a very rich tradition of worshipping gods, you don’t have something that emerges and wipes that out.

Certainly Christian-like values did not emerge from India.

TH: I can absolutely imagine a world where Christianity doesn’t emerge, where what the Jewish Scriptures offers to Gentiles remains highly appealing, so there’s a kind of churn of conversion. But because the difficulty of becoming a Jew is such, it could never become universalist on the scale that Christianity does.

It didn’t before Christ; there is no reason at all that it would have been different after Christ.

GS: Could we, though, have generated some sort of human rights [absent Christianity]?

TH: I don’t see why you would. Why would you? The idea that human rights kind of hangs in the ether waiting to be discovered is as theological as believing that the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and sits at the hand of God the Father. It requires a leap of faith.

It is interesting: we consider that natural rights “hang in the ether waiting to be discovered,” and this is true enough. But I think it is only true enough if one first accepts that man is made in God’s image and that God, in Jesus, gave us the means by which to understand proper virtues.

TH: The difference is that Christians recognize the divinity of Christ requires belief, whereas lots of people just assume that human rights exist, but they do not. They are a result of various legal developments in medieval Christendom. It doesn’t just spontaneously emerge.

Prior to and outside of Christianity, societies didn’t thrive by practicing what we today consider proper (i.e. Christian) ethics. Societies thrived via violence and brute force.

TH: The idea that humanists propagate, that science “proves” [the value of liberal values] is grotesque. Science is a mirror in which you see reflected what you want to see. The Nazis used science to justify racial genocide, liberals use it to justify “let’s hug the world.” But both of them reflect the cultural prejudices of people who are looking in that mirror of science.

Holland then describes his view of the fall from Christianity, which he says happened as a result of the two World Wars and people realizing the evils of the Holocaust. I will only say, that the fall happened long before, and Nietzsche’s madman saw this. Holland even references Nietzsche’s “Death of God,” so I do not follow his thinking here at all. He continues:

TH: We no longer needed the devil, because we had Hitler. We no longer needed hell because we had Auschwitz. So, whenever people want to do what is right, what is good, they look at the Nazis and do the opposite of what the Nazis did. The worst insult you can give anyone is that they are a racist or a Nazi.

This kind of [modern liberal] thinking sucked everyone in – universities, politicians, and churches. Therefore, the church no longer determines what people think. Whereas humanism is a kind of a Christian heresy, humanism has become so hegemonic that it has made the church kind of humanist.

This is why church attendance in the west is shrinking – who needs the church when all they do is regurgitate what is offered everywhere else?

GS: So, what would you like to see Christians preach?

TH: I see no point in bishops, preachers or evangelists just recycling the kind of stuff that you can get (chuckling) from any kind of soft left-liberal, because everyone is doing that. If I want that, I will get it from a liberal-democratic counselor.

Holland then describes the incomprehensible truth of Christianity:

TH: If you are a Christian, you think that the entire fabric of the cosmos was ruptured by this strange singularity where someone who is God and man sets everything on its head. To say its supernatural is to downplay it. If you believe that, then it should be possible to dwell on all the other “weird” stuff that becomes part of the Christian package.

Really, no one else is offering this. It sounds like a pretty good product differentiation strategy.

TH: I don’t want to hear what bishops think about Brexit; I know what they think about Brexit and it’s not very interesting. If they’ve got views on original sin, I would be very interested to hear that.

Original sin is a perfect example: if you are a woke liberal, you think “how awful, how terrible; Augustine was a terrible guy.” But watching the kind of shrillness of people convinced of their own virtue, howling down “sinners,” you realize that the concept of original sin keeps us all honest – we are all sinners.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn would write that the line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart. Every single one. Original sin; we are all depraved.

TH: Without original sin, you get a horrible hierarchy of virtue. You get exactly what atheists tend to criticize Christianity for. Christians always have a sense of their own sin; it keeps them honest.

And this is what we see around us today. The hierarchy of virtue is upside down. The greater the evil and the more depraved, the higher up the ladder it goes.

Conclusion

Removing Christianity from community life, as was accomplished in the Enlightenment, has led us to this place. I am reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche, from Twilight of the Idols:

When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet… Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands.

Do you remember what Holland said about the ethics in pre-Christian Rome? There is nothing that keeps us from this.

Is liberty possible in such a world?

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There Are no Such Things as Constitutional Rights – garydbarnett.com

Posted by M. C. on April 21, 2020

We are born with rights and we die with rights, whether any piece of
paper exists or not. If rights are claimed to exist because of a
constitution , no rights exist at all. The tyranny we face today is
because of the Constitution, not in spite of it.

https://www.garydbarnett.com/there-are-no-such-things-as-constitutional-rights/

By: Gary D. Barnett

A man’s natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.”

Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”, p.7

In the midst of this fraudulent pandemic, there has been a renewed call to look to the Constitution for answers. This is a smoke and mirrors solution that does not address the real problem. Constitutional rights do not exist, and if they did, those so-called rights would be worthless. Rights cannot be written into law or claimed due to a political document because they would have no merit.

The rights of man are natural, and all rights stem from the single factor of life itself, for if man has a right to life, all other natural rights are inherent as well. A right to life means that one has a right to defend his life. It means that one has a right to support and sustain his life. This means he has a right to property, the highest form of property being self. It means he has a right to move about freely, to work, to protect others, to speak and congregate in order to protect and defend life. All individual and natural rights are inherent due to humanity, not to any other men or documents drafted by men.

This seems simple enough, but Americans seem to clamor for direction and approval by those that wish to rule over them. Instead of accepting that a right to life is natural, and cannot be bestowed by men, people seek approval by some authoritarian class for clarity concerning the legitimacy of something so obvious. This in and of itself destroys the very core of common rights, because having to put into contract or law the guidelines for what is natural is the acceptance that rights do not exist unless sanctioned by a higher body. This is asinine, and the notion of a constitution to spell out what is inherent weakens any position of strength of the individual.

Some have forgotten, and most have no understanding of the history of the Constitutional Convention. This was a coup completed by Hamilton and his followers to create a strong central governing system, where most all power was given to a federal or national government instead of to the individual and the states. Those attending the convention had claimed their task as only to alter and improve the Articles of Confederation, not to scrap the current Constitution of the United States. But there was never any intention of improving upon the current “law of the land,” but only to set up a new federal state with unlimited power. Keep in mind that the Articles of Confederation did not allow for a president, did not allow the federal government any power whatsoever to tax, so it was extremely restrictive of any executive or federal power whatsoever.

So if freedom were desired, why then would a new constitution that gave immense powers to the federal government over states and individuals be so revered by those calling themselves Constitutionalists? Why do any that have read Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the power’s clauses, claim that this document was ever meant to protect the rights of man? How is an unlimited power to tax, to control all commerce, foreign and domestic, to coin and control all money, to provide for the general welfare, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, to declare and prosecute war, to raise and support militaries, and to make all laws necessary to enforce all these powers and more?

The Constitution is a contradiction at every level, as granting these unlimited powers to the federal nationstate, and then at the same time claiming to protect the freedom of the the individual, is not possible. Every single power “granted” in this horrendous document negates any protection of liberty.

So why is this document that was long plotted through conspiracy, that was secretly written and accepted behind locked and closed doors in the dark of night, that erased all protections of liberty then in place in the Articles of Confederation, and that was signed by politicians, many of whom gained much more power in government after its implementation, so revered? Selling the Constitution in the late 18th century was in effect not much different than selling total tyranny over a fake pandemic today.

If the Constitution was meant to protect individual rights and the freedom of Americans, why are the masses of this population being forced into poverty, loneliness, isolation, quarantine and self-imprisonment? Why are medical martial law and martial law being carried out? Why have the businesses of Americans been forcibly closed down? Why have Americans been forced to avoid contact with all others? Why is mass surveillance of everyone the new normal, and constant threats by government of forced vaccination and mandated behavior in place? Why does anyone think this is a free country due the the totalitarian powers authorized in the United States Constitution?

Lysander Spooner explained this perfectly when he said:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it, In either case, it is unfit to exsist.”

Lysander Spooner (1971). “The collected works of Lysander Spooner”

The Constitution is used, administered, and defined by government, it is interpreted by the Supreme Court, which is made up of nine judges appointed for life also by government. In other words, it is simply a political tool of government used and interpreted to give power to the state, not to its people. It was only intended to fool the people into believing that they had freedom and power only due to a piece of paper drafted by politicians. It is worthless and has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the natural rights of man, but in fact is detrimental to liberty because of the assumption that only government can define individual rights through parchment secretly drafted in the dark of night 233 years ago.

We are born with rights and we die with rights, whether any piece of paper exists or not. If rights are claimed to exist because of a constitution , no rights exist at all. The tyranny we face today is because of the Constitution, not in spite of it.

As to the Constitution:

“It was a bloodless coup d’état against an unresisting Confederation Congress….The drive was managed by a corps of brilliant members and representatives of the financial and landed oligarchy. These wealthy merchants and large landowners were joined by the urban artisans of the large cities in their drive to create a strong overriding central government – a supreme government with its own absolute power to tax, regulate commerce, and raise armies.”

~ Murray N. Rothbard–Conceived in Liberty, Vol. 5, [306]

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The Second Amendment Works – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on January 21, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/01/james-ostrowski/the-second-amendment-works/

By

Note: This is an excerpt from The Second Amendment Works:  A Primer on How to Defend Our Most Important Right.

When I was a teenager, I supported gun control.  I had no real understanding of the issue, having never been taught about the history, purpose or efficacy of the right to bear arms in school.  I read Robert Sherrill’s book, The Saturday Night Special, and supported candidates who were anti-gun such as Ramsey Clark and Morris Udall.  I was on all other issues strongly in favor of civil liberties, but I did not make the connection at a young age.

In 1979, I joined the libertarian movement which is based on the natural rights of the individual to life, liberty and property, so the right to bear arms was an obvious part of the package.  Occasionally over the years, I would discuss the Second Amendment in my writings. In 1994, I wrote a column for the Mises Institute called “Guns and Drugs,”[1] in which I predicted, correctly, that the violence caused by the war on drugs would lead to an intensification of the war on guns, ironically since most gun owners favored the war on drugs.  I have urged, to no avail so far, advocates of the right to bear arms to join forces with advocates of the right to bear drugs, both being private property.  In the same article, published fourteen years before Heller v. District of Columbia, I argued that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms to deter government tyranny.

In 2001, the Journal of Libertarian Studies published my article on “The Rise and Fall of Jury Nullification,” in which I drew an analogy between the right to trial by jury and the right to bear arms, as instances of the Founders preserving liberty by allowing the people to retain certain fundamental rights lest the government get out of control.  That article, heavily reproduced herein, reiterates that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, not merely the right of states to maintain militias.

Although a long-time Second Amendment advocate, I only got involved with gun litigation in recent years.  In 2015, I filed a lawsuit to overturn the New York Pistol Permit Law.  That case, Libertarian Party of Erie County v. Cuomo, is pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  At oral argument last year, the Court indicated it would hold the case until the Supreme Court issued a ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of New York, argued on December 2, 2019.

In the lower courts, I have won some gun cases and lost some gun cases.  My biggest win so far was overturning the first SAFE Act conviction in People v. Wassell, 2019 NY Slip Op 03187 (4th Dept. 2019).  However, overall, New York State courts continue to operate as if Heller and McDonald had never been decided.

Frustrated with lower court rulings ignoring Heller and noting that public opinion appeared to be swinging against the right to bear arms, I helped organize a forum on Second Amendment strategy in Batavia, New York on April 15, 2018.  As a result of that meeting, it was decided that the movement needed a short, readable primer on the Second Amendment that would be made freely available to all those interested in learning the history and purpose of the Second Amendment.  I hope this book fulfills that mission.

There was no foundation or deep pocket behind this book.  It is the product of a genuine grassroots movement.  It effectively responds to and rebuts a gun confiscation movement funded by billionaires who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to take your guns away by force.  These men and women have armed bodyguards protecting them 24 hours a day.  They have the most sophisticated security systems money can buy protecting their many mansions.  They are driven around in limousines.  They are shielded from the mean streets that most of us must navigate daily. Despite being outspent by hundreds of millions of dollars, I have the advantage of having truth and justice on my side.  With all their billions, the sponsors of gun confiscation cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

If you like this book, you can support my work on behalf of American liberty by buying my other books: Political Class Dismissed (2004), Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids (2009), Direct Citizen Action (2010) and Progressivism: A Primer (2014).  These books form a quadrilogy that, together, provides the education about politics and liberty you did not receive in any school.

Though I make much of my living selling books, I decided this cause was so important that I would make this book available for free online at 2awny.com and at libertymovement.org (forthcoming).  We will also be making print copies available at cost.  To take advantage of the world’s best distribution system, the book will also be available for sale at Amazon.com for a nominal cost since Amazon has to make a living too. Please spread the word far and wide because the Gun Grabbers are coming!  The Gun Grabbers are coming!

[1] See, Appendix.

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