Captain's Log - Unalienable Rights

The Declaration of Independence says, "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."

At the time this was a radical idea. Citizens were viewed as property and subjects of the state. The idea that the state was created for the citizen not the citizen for the state was truly revolutionary. What had led the Colonialist to this radical position?

America had been founded by Puritans and others searching for religious freedom in the New World. They were scriptuarists who desired to form all their beliefs, philosophy and society around the teaching of scripture. They developed the concepts for the foundation of our country from the Bible.

Proverbs 31:4-5 teaches us that. "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what the law decrees, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights."

Notice the dangers listed here. It is not only against drinking wine. The real danger for the king was to forget the purpose of law and "deprive all the oppressed of their rights."

Did you catch that? The Bible teaches that citizens have rights and it is the government’s job to protect those rights. In fact,that is the purpose of the law. Proverbs 31:8-9 goes on to say, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."

The destitute have rights. The poor have rights. The needy have rights. And look at this, those who cannot speak for themselves have rights! That means, the child in the womb of its mother, has rights. The mentally handicapped have rights. The person with brain damage, who can't speak for herself, has rights.

The founders of our nation believed that the first among those rights was the right to life. They listed it first, before liberty, property, or the freedom to pursue happiness. Life was the first right in the mind of our founders.

There is a growing philosophy in our culture today toward death for those who cannot speak for themselves, as if the inability to speak takes away your humanity and rights. Just because a child in the womb cannot speak; because the mentally handicapped cannot talk; because those with brain damage cannot articulate their rights; does not mean they don't have them. It also doesn't mean that the government should not defend them. People should not have to speak in order for the government to defend their right to life.

The philosophy of socialism and communism is that the person exists for the good of the state. Rights are given by the state along with necessities like food, water, shelter, education and health care. In the socialist and communist mind we all work for the state and the state provides all our needs. The state controls production and distribution of goods and services. It redistributes wealth and property according to the needs of the state. In this world view, if someone becomes a burden on the state and cannot contribute to the good of the state, they lose their rights.

The fascist socialism of the Nazi state best illustrates this philosophy lived out to its full extent. They considered the mentally handicapped a burden on society along with the aged. They had a policy of euthanasia to relieve the state of people who were a burden on the resources of the Nazi government. This same philosophy of killing the undesirables was then used next on the Jews, the Polish, the terminally ill, and the aged. Anyone who the state felt was a burden, they killed. Why keep them in concentration camps, when you can kill them? Why house the mentally ill ,when you can kill them? Why burden the state with the cost of those who did not help the state? This was called "The Final Solution."

This exists still today. The Chinese abort thousands of babies because they are girls. Most people in China want a boy to carry on the family name and the state only allows the family to have one child each. Many couples, when they are told they are having a girl, have it aborted and try again for a boy. If they already have a boy, any second child is aborted. And china is not the only place where this happens. How many "undesirable" children are aborted each day in America? We are no better than the Nazis.

The Bible, self-evident truth, and the declaration of independence agree, every person has the right to live and it is the governments job to protect those rights not infringe upon them. That is the purpose of the three branches of government. If one or two of those branches don't protect the rights of those people, our founders believed, the other branch should balance them out and rein them in. Government was given by God to protect the innocent and punish those who would infringe on others rights, especially the rights of the weak who can't speak for themselves.
For more on the Declaration of independence go here: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

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