On Rights and The Federal Government’s Ambassador to New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen’s belief that Government CAN and should “bestow” a new Right upon its subjects citizens:
Did you realize you have a right to not be offended? That you have a right to other people’s property and their labor? Were you unaware that you, as a citizen, have the same rights in the United States of America as an illegal alien? These are among the newly declared “rights” Democrats have bestowed on people through the power of simply saying they exist. The problem is this concept is fundamentally un-American. Our rights as Americans are not granted to us by the government. Our government is empowered by us on the condition it does not infringe upon the rights with which we were born.
The Founding Fathers were brilliant in that they wrote the Constitution to limit government, not citizens. The First Amendment, for example, is explicit in how it starts, “Congress shall make no law…” The rights to free speech, freedom of religion, the press, assembly, etc., are not granted by the Constitution, they are protected from government by it.
The whole of the Bill of Rights is written the same way, “Shall not be infringed,” etc.
Since the government is not granting those individual rights – we were born with them – it can’t take them away. For liberal progressives, this concept is a threat – they prefer the government being not only the protector of rights, but the decider of what is and is not a right. That’s not liberty; it’s closer to slavery.
And he is right. The Left (and those not really thinking it through) will never admit that much of their agenda is to have you, involuntarily, service the needs and wants of others. Again, involuntarily. That is the quintessential definition of slavery. Sure, it is our elected officials that are causing this – and Democrats want more and more of it with more and larger government programs to “fix what ails us” – except they realize NO boundary to what Government can do. It is a never ending spiral and as we have seen from history, it never ends well.
Libertarians are oft to be heard that this level of taxation is “legalized theft”. The definition of theft is the appropriation of one’s private property by another – aka, stealing. At what point can we decide that Government is stealing? How high of a level of taxation is too much? I believe a lot of folks have already reached that level for if you are now having the majority of your income is being taken by all levels of government, who are you really working for? Too many people use the euphemism of “being used like an ATM machine” – sure, it is a modern and up to date meme but it hides the true meaning.
I have been Consistent – I have no problem in paying taxes to funding a limited government. The problem, as I said above, is that we don’t have such and that we haven’t for a long number of decades (insert mental image of spinning Founding Fathers here). However, politicians and bureaucrats in their rush to prove that they are relevant, useful, and needed, keep the mission creep going in all direction outward (and demanding more $$$ to do so).
Slavery is not just the stereotypical image of a Southern plantation; it is ANY time that someone is forced by another to serve or provide for others without consent and agreement to an agreeable level of compensation. This is un-American.
A refresher from our founding philosophical document:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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.
We waged a Revolution against the British Crown under the rubric of excessive taxation – in essence, demanding that we service others with representation. While there is no such “Arc of History” (as Progressives keep wrapping themselves around in a massive act of virtue-signaling; just ask Obama!) it does repeat itself over and over.
Are we in the process, as a country, of becoming yet another Retread of Time and History that our Founders tried to save us from but our Progressive Totalitarians (and spineless Republicans) are hellbent on taking us to?
From the Tenth Amendment Center –
