Looters and Shooters

British man stripped by thug

What happened to the British bulldog?

Stripped naked, unable to fight back. An apt metaphor. Cameron's government is talking water cannons when they should be deploying machine guns and restoring the right to keep and bear arms.

This is not a slap at Great Britain. It’s a lament. We’re not far behind.
 

The End of Progressivism

Is it any wonder looters on Main Street and Wall Street are running rampant? They've lived off of government-confiscated loot for so long now, can you really blame them for cutting out the middleman?

Self-Defense: An Inalienable Right

The 2nd Amendment isn't for hunting.  It's for shooting people who are threatening your life, liberty and property.

When the progressive constituency turns rabid, ordinary citizens must have the means to defend themselves. The absolute right to bear arms is a logical extension of the natural rights to life, liberty and property.

Statesmen from ancient Rome to the American Revolution laid the foundation in law for the right of self-defense. America's founders were influenced by these classic philosophic teachings and the European tradition derived from them.

"Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself," wrote the great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

"They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power." ( Claremont Institute)

Think we should surrender our self-defense rights to the state?

 OK, then riddle me this: Does the family of a murder victim have a legal right to sue the state for failing to use its police powers to prevent the murder?

American courts have ruled again and again that police have no duty to protect individuals from deadly assault. The only alternatives for a person in such danger are to rely on the mercy of criminals or to carry a gun illegally. No one should be forced to break the law to exercise a basic right. (Claremont Institute)

Your only recourse is to your natural right of self-defense. Take that away (violate it) and you have deprived a free person of the fundamental right to life. Welcome to progressivism!

For an interesting and understandable legal discussion of the right of self-defense, see Volokh - Jim Lindgren

Related Western Hero post:  Dead and Paralyzed Criminals Commit Less Crime

Natural Rights

Fellow Right Blogistani Bastiatarian has done it again.  His wise comments were spurred by Jersey McJones' absurd outburst that our rights come from man.

Here is Bastiatarian's off-the-cuff response, which is better than my best planned-out one. Here it is without further editorial comment:

But let's play your pitiful little game and pretend that there is no God, and that rights do not come from Him. Even then, it would be impossible for my right to my life, my liberty, and my property to come from other mortals. Does another man own my life? If there is no God, and I have a life, the only rational conclusion would be that I own my life, and because I own my life, I own the right to direct it (my liberty), and therefore I own the product of combining my life and my liberty (my property).

Either way, my rights are not determined by others. They are "unalienable" and absolute.

Or do you believe that those rights don't exist at all? Such a twisted belief leads to the conclusion that I can do anything I want, and nobody has a right to do anything about it. I could shoot you in the face just for fun, and nobody would have a right to punish me for it. Without rights, there is no right and wrong.

Others might not like what I did, and may attempt to use whatever strengths they have to take revenge, but what would be the point of that? Revenge for what? If there are no rights, then I haven't violated anything; I haven't done anything wrong, so even simple vengeance would be irrational. The only point of harming me would be for those people to gain some type of pleasure from it. But if doing whatever is pleasurable here and now is the only point of life, then there really is no point. It doesn't last, so why bother even living? Why not just end it and get the hassle over with?

No God, No Rights

What's behind Barack Obama, NBC, Harry Reid and a host of other progressives editing God out of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, and public discourse in general?

Simply put, get rid of God (or The Creator, or Divine Providence if you prefer), and you eradicate the concept of natural rights.  Erase our natural rights, and you destroy the foundation upon which rests our constitutional republic.  Progressives hate the concept of natural rights as espoused by our founding fathers, because it stands in the way of their grandiose master plan to remake society in their own twisted image.

Awhile back, a liberal blogger said a very ignorant thing:

There is no such thing as "God given rights" because if we returned to the original state of nature, or that which was "God given" we would find ourselves bound only by our own personal power, our conscience, and or by forces superior to our own.

The rights that we enjoy today are man made rights; and as such are not "natural rights" nor are they permanently fixed.

The first sentence is incoherent, and the second absurd. They cannot be defended. The first sentence is either nonsensical or it contradicts the author's thesis. It is so poorly written that a sane person cannot tell what was intended.

The second sentence is absurd. We get our rights from man? OK. So if "man" decides to enslave all bloggers then it's OK? If man grants rights, he can take them away. This explains liberals' infatuation with strongmen like Mussolini, as well as uber-liberal Tom Friedman's current love affair with the Red Chinese politburo.  It also explains how 20th century statism was able to kill over 100 million people.

The writer didn’t even cite a philosophical work to defend his unsubstantiated claim. I know why. No credible thinker could defend this. Even if there were someone loony enough to try to defend such a preposterous supposition, it would be written in incomprehensible Cornell West psychobabble.

American liberalism is a hopeless, self-contradictory tangle, an intellectual cul-de-sac.  In contrast, our Natural Rights, as enunciated by our founding fathers, are axiomatic:

"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." (Declaration of Independence)

Yes, we have a social contract called the US Constitution, but our rights do not emanate from that document.  They are natural rights that preexist and supersede man-made institutions. 

Natural Law -- Our Foundation

Natural Law is a philosophy, a theory.  As such, it is open to debate and question, as is Christianity and global warming.  Natural Law is the philosophical foundation of our constitutional republic, and today it stands in stark contrast to the central economic planning and social tinkering of progressives.

Jonathan  Dolhenty explains:

What do we mean by "natural law"? In its simplest definition, natural law is that "unwritten law" that is more or less the same for everyone everywhere. 

To be more exact, natural law is the concept of a body of moral principles that is common to all humankind and, as generally posited, is recognizable by human reason alone. Natural law is therefore distinguished from -- and provides a standard for -- positive law, the formal legal enactments of a particular society.

To sum it up, then, we can say that the natural law:

• is not made by human beings;
• is based on the structure of reality itself;
• is the same for all human beings and at all times;
• is an unchanging rule or pattern which is there for human beings to discover;
• is the naturally knowable moral law
• is a means by which human beings can rationally guide themselves to their good.  

(Source:  Radical Academy)

Banish God, and you destroy the concept of Natural Rights.  Without natural rights, the US Constitution is a worthless piece of paper.  This opens the gates for progressive hordes to storm the citadel of individual liberty, and that is the goal of those statists who are offended by free people exercising their God-given individual rights to shoot guns, drive gas guzzlers and live however they damn well please. 

Such a free society is deeply offensive to the social engineers afflicted by Hayek's fatal conceit.

Further Reading:
Locke's Second Treatise Of Civil Government
The Principles of Natural and Politic Law