Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[M.D. Rawlings]

While I believe in God, I have struggled with the idea that Thomas Jefferson put forth:

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.

Unalienable means (from the net): incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another.

Now, if China chooses to be communist....and forbids your rights, what difference does it make if they can't "repudiate" them (refuse to accept that they exist) ? You still don't get to exercise them....and, in effect, they have been removed.

While recently reading Ezra Taft Benson's talk on the proper role of goverment, he states that the most important function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individuals.

Can someone explain to me how we don't have secure rights without government ?

I just don't see it.

Without government informing us what our rights might be, or not be, the only law in effect is the law of the jungle. We're animals, and if you have something I want, I might opt to simply take it, and if you resist me you do so at your peril (purely a hypothetical.) Can't imagine many like government of any stripe telling you what you can or can't do, but they do protect us well from the alternative.

As mere animals, we don't have any 'inalienable rights.' Since without a government to write them down they simply don't exist in nature. Big fish eat little fish is what it boils down to. But no fish are backing away from an easy meal out of some observance of the little fish's right to exist and be happy (and not be eaten.) Even WITH religion that right doesn't exist.

You couldn't be more wrong. Government doesn't inform us about what our rights are. We know what our rights are by way of the self-evident realities of human interaction in the state of nature. It's not the other way around at all. We come from the state of nature--ontologically, epistemologically and historically!

Not convinced?

Let's get to the tangible nuts and bolts of the matter. . . .

Should I raise my hand against your life, your liberty or your property, you bloody well know that you have but four alternatives: fight, flee, submit or die.

Choose.

And you bloody well know that should I prevail, though spare your life as my slave, we are still locked into a state of war, as it were, relative to the imperatives of natural law and the inalienable rights thereof; for as long as I fail to love God and obey His law and, consequently, fail to love you as my equal, we remain locked into a state of fear and oppression, alternately, one ever subject to the threat of revolt and the reversal of fortunes. Except in the face of overwhelming initial force, what human being has ever surrendered any aspect of his liberty or his property in the absence of some form of due process or compensation?

Speaking of which. . . .

Humans are either born/forced into a state of civil government or they willingly unite themselves to form a civil government in order to establish a semblance of mutual security. The degree to which they retain the right of self-governance within the parameters of the respective social contract varies.

But make no mistake about it, you know very well that it's wrong to arbitrarily violate the life, the liberty or the property of another, as you would not like it one damn bit if another were to do the same to you.

Do unto thy neighbor as you would have thy neighbor do unto you.

Hence, the only legitimate, sustainable and coherently just form of government is a constitutional Republic of limited power relative to the imperatives of natural law.

Natural Law of the Anglo-American Tradition, Relative to the Inescapable Realities of Human Interaction as Ontologically Justified by the Sociopolitical Ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's Ethical System of Thought 101.
_____________________________________

What is this risible nonsense of so many of you who fail to see or pretend not to see the tangible, every-day-walk-in-the-park dynamics of inalienable rights? At the very least they are obviously endowed in terms of the inherent exigencies of human interaction and those of self-preservation.

Dudes! Get real. There's nothing theoretical about natural law or natural rights. They're self-evident. Let me point my Smith and Wesson 9mm at your head: you'll either be standing in a puddle of urine or drop a load in your pants . . . or fight back if you can manage it without getting shot first.

Got tangible substance now?

Can you smell it?

And the conservatives among you are being especially silly, talking like leftist space cadets as if these realities were the mere protestations of human culture or the specters of human imagination. Really? Since when?

And for those of you who can track the implication of the following to its unmistakable conclusion at the most intellectually intimate level of apprehension, in the light of the rational forms and logical categories of human consciousness and moral decision, concerning the imperatives of natural law: since when did the relativist acquire the power to explain how two diametrically opposed ideas could possibly both be true at the same time, in the same way, within the same frame of reference?

Anyone can say that truth is relative. But no one who says that can heal the inherently contradictory and self-negating assertion that there are no absolute truths, except the absolute truth that there are no absolute truths.

That is to say, the assertion that there are no absolute truths is necessarily false.

God is not mocked; He just laughs at the foolishness of the "wise."

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

A concept that even conservatives get wrong is that government is supposed to secure our rights. That is wrong. Government is supposed to leave our rights alone.

I get you. I'm with you. See my posts in the above. But, actually, relative to the construct of natural law, the term secure means promote and protect. That's the only legitimate purpose of government relative to the collective good against the threats in the state of nature.

Of course the people retain the ultimate responsibility to secure their rights and retain the ultimate check against tyranny, which is what you're getting at. Absolutely!

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Nobody seems to get this. Jefferson was describing a particular kind of rights, namely innate freedoms that are simply byproducts of our capacity for volition. He was doing this deliberately to distinguish them from privileges that must be granted, that require the service of others. In his view, we don't create government to grant us any rights we don't already have; we create it to protect those we possess naturally as thinking creatures.

An accurate understanding of this concept would go a long way toward clearing up the confusion that leads to incoherent conceptions like a "right" to health care, or other services.

Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk

But Jefferson was full of shit. It wasn't him, of course. He was a product of his times. But it is instructive that no society ever produced the notion of "rights" as understood by the Founders until the Enlightenment.

False.

 

[The Rabbi]

Nobody seems to get this. Jefferson was describing a particular kind of rights, namely innate freedoms that are simply byproducts of our capacity for volition. He was doing this deliberately to distinguish them from privileges that must be granted, that require the service of others. In his view, we don't create government to grant us any rights we don't already have; we create it to protect those we possess naturally as thinking creatures.

An accurate understanding of this concept would go a long way toward clearing up the confusion that leads to incoherent conceptions like a "right" to health care, or other services.

Sent from my GT-P7510 using Tapatalk

But Jefferson was full of shit. It wasn't him, of course. He was a product of his times. But it is instructive that no society ever produced the notion of "rights" as understood by the Founders until the Enlightenment.

False.

Please defend your statement. Add facts as you go.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

I don't think so. They're not self-evident in nature like apples and crickets. Should humans on Earth all cease to exist, do rights still exist? They don't exist under the scientific microscope, much like religion or concepts. They are all created and perpetuated by humans.

More rubbish.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

But Jefferson was full of shit. It wasn't him, of course. He was a product of his times. But it is instructive that no society ever produced the notion of "rights" as understood by the Founders until the Enlightenment.

False.

Please defend your statement. Add facts as you go.

I already did in the above, quite thoroughly. The essence of the inalienable rights of man are self-evident. More to the point, as dblack pointed out, they are innately inviolable, not the stuff of privileges or social constructs at all. Hence, they are as old as humanity, obviously, and have been recognized by humanity as such under one guise or another. Hammurabic law and Mosaic law recognized the innate prerogatives of man.

And the formal iteration of them in terms of the construct of natural law predates the Enlightenment. It dates back to Augustine. Further, Aristotle, in his refutation of Plato's silliness, The Republic, propounded the distinction between initial force and defensive force relative to the inherent "dignities" of man. Just ask any Objectivist. Even an Objectivist knows that much, though he understands little about anything else.

There's nothing difficult about any of this. Self-evident. No man willingly lays down his life or surrenders his liberty or property, just because, to use your phrase, without resistance at some level or another--chomping at the bit to overthrow his oppressors and break his foot off in their asses. Self-evident. Let me sum it up. It all comes down to one thing: Self-preservation! It's not rocket science. Self-evident.

The fact that a human being or a government can violate one's life or liberty or property is utterly irrelevant. Make no mistake about it, the moment that human being, for example, loses his grip on the instrument of his dominance, he will flee from those whom he has oppressed knowing damn well that his ass is grass, knowing damn well that he doesn't want put on him what he put on others. Self-evident.

 

[Sallow]

No

 

[The Rabbi]

False.

Please defend your statement. Add facts as you go.

I already did in the above, quite thoroughly. The essence of the inalienable rights of man are self-evident. More to the point, as dblack pointed out, they are innately inviolable, not the stuff of privileges or social constructs at all. Hence, they are as old as humanity, obviously, and have been recognized by humanity as such under one guise or another. Hammurabic law and Mosaic law recognized the innate prerogatives of man.

And the formal iteration of them in terms of the construct of natural law predates the Enlightenment. It dates back to Augustine. Further, Aristotle, in his refutation of Plato's silliness, The Republic, propounded the distinction between initial force and defensive force relative to the inherent "dignities" of man. Just ask any Objectivist. Even an Objectivist knows that much, though he understands little about anything else.

There's nothing difficult about any of this. Self-evident. No man willingly lays down his life or surrenders his liberty or property, just because, to use your phrase, without resistance at some level or another--chaffing at the bit to overthrow his oppressors and break his foot off in their asses. Self-evident. Let me sum it up. It all comes down to one thing: Self-preservation! It's not rocket science. Self-evident.

The fact that a human being or a government can violate one's life or liberty or property is utterly irrelevant. Make no mistake about it, the moment that human being, for example, loses his grip on the instrument of his dominance, he will flee from those whom he has oppressed knowing damn well that his ass is grass, knowing damn well that he doesn't want put on him what he put on others. Self-evident.

You are babbling incoherently. Nothing is "self evident" about this. As I mentioned, no one can give an account for where they came from, hwo we know what they are, and what the parameters of them are. No one has been able to answer these questions.
You have not defended your statements. You have added no facts, except error. The Bible does not have any "rights" in the sense we are discussing here. The opposite. Biblical morality consists of obligations one person has to another. Those are not rights.
No society had rights as we understand them.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Life certainly exists. Life certainly is inherent in the individual. But life itself grants no rights to anyone and people have their lives taken away all the time, sometimes in the most unjust, egregious or even random manner.
God is not the source of rights. How could it be? Where are those rights communicated? How?

The fact that everyone dies in no way changes the fact that they live. In fact, life is part of death because, without death, we would all be screwed.

Seriously? That's your answer? I'll just take that as a "I really have no idea what I mean as I never considered it before."

I think you should take it as the fact that you aren't actually thinking things through.

 

[Politico]

Natural rights?

Show me one that any idiot with a gun cannot take away from YOU.

Show me one he can.

Breathing.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Natural rights?

Show me one that any idiot with a gun cannot take away from YOU.

Show me one he can.

Breathing.

In other words, you got nothing.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Please defend your statement. Add facts as you go.

I already did in the above, quite thoroughly. The essence of the inalienable rights of man are self-evident. More to the point, as dblack pointed out, they are innately inviolable, not the stuff of privileges or social constructs at all. Hence, they are as old as humanity, obviously, and have been recognized by humanity as such under one guise or another. Hammurabic law and Mosaic law recognized the innate prerogatives of man.

And the formal iteration of them in terms of the construct of natural law predates the Enlightenment. It dates back to Augustine. Further, Aristotle, in his refutation of Plato's silliness, The Republic, propounded the distinction between initial force and defensive force relative to the inherent "dignities" of man. Just ask any Objectivist. Even an Objectivist knows that much, though he understands little about anything else.

There's nothing difficult about any of this. Self-evident. No man willingly lays down his life or surrenders his liberty or property, just because, to use your phrase, without resistance at some level or another--chaffing at the bit to overthrow his oppressors and break his foot off in their asses. Self-evident. Let me sum it up. It all comes down to one thing: Self-preservation! It's not rocket science. Self-evident.

The fact that a human being or a government can violate one's life or liberty or property is utterly irrelevant. Make no mistake about it, the moment that human being, for example, loses his grip on the instrument of his dominance, he will flee from those whom he has oppressed knowing damn well that his ass is grass, knowing damn well that he doesn't want put on him what he put on others. Self-evident.

You are babbling incoherently. Nothing is "self evident" about this. As I mentioned, no one can give an account for where they came from, hwo we know what they are, and what the parameters of them are. No one has been able to answer these questions.
You have not defended your statements. You have added no facts, except error. The Bible does not have any "rights" in the sense we are discussing here. The opposite. Biblical morality consists of obligations one person has to another. Those are not rights.
No society had rights as we understand them.

Everything in bold is nothing more than a litany of mindless slogans. My foundational posts above this exchange between you and me most certainly do address and answer every last one of your absurdly obtuse allegations.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Where do they come from?! Are you an atheist?

Babbling incoherently?! No, sir! You just don't know your history or recognize the motifs of natural law.

The only thing I wrote out of turn in the above is chaffing at the bit, when obviously I meant chomping at the bit. I don't care who you are, that's funny. Brain fart.

Look, it's late, and I don't have time tonight to address what is in fact the stuff of you babbling incoherently. From the jump, you have uttered one silly ass, self-negating sentiment after another. Everyone of your arguments actually prove the existence of innate rights . . . but it just flies right over your head.

The only aspect of natural law that's theoretical goes to the science of government, i.e., the form of government that would constitute a just and stable instrument to secure (promote and protect) the innate rights of man. This entails the precise formulations and arrangements of powers and institutions, and the Constitution isn't perfect.

In the meantime get this straight: THE ESSENCE OF NATURAL LAW OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN TRADITION OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM IS THE SOCIOPOLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS OF JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM OF THOUGHT. IT IS THE GOLDEN RULE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE SAME.

Hello!

Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government, for example, is directly extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought, replete with one biblical citation after another as the ontological justification for the entire edifice!

Further, the subsequent central themes of natural law are the very real distinctions between defensive force and initial force, between consent and imposition, bottomed on the distinction between good and evil.

Moral conduct verses immoral conduct is the essence of natural law, and the distinction between the two is the very means by which we apprehend what the innate rights of man are and what they are not.

You know damn well when someone is violating your rights, Rabbi, and you know precisely what rights of yours they are violating when they do.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I've put down the foundation for natural law in the posts addressed to the OP and Delta4Embassy; the case for natural law and the inalienable rights of man is incontrovertible. You're throwing yourself up against a brick wall.

I don't see you refuting anything in the foundational posts. I don't see you acknowledging the fact that you were wrong about the origins and the historical development of natural law proper, and I don't see you acknowledging the fact that you were wrong to claim that the notion of innate rights is strictly a product of the Enlightenment either. The notion goes back centuries before that, all the way back to the dawn of man.

In fact, as for natural law proper, Augustine actually expounded his rendition of it from the adumbrations of Aristotle and the Apostolic Fathers of the Second Century A.D. .

No, sir, you are mistaken. The political thinkers of the Enlightenment who arguably perfected the construct of natural law proper did so standing on the shoulders of the progenitors of the construct: the Apostolic Fathers, the early Church Fathers and the Reformationists.

What the hell do you thinking you're doing anyway? What the hell are you trying pull here?

You've made it abundantly clear before God and everybody that you don't believe in the actuality of innate rights, and you obviously can't decipher the pertinent extrapolations from the ontological to the practical. We can all clearly see that you haven't read the works of the historical cannon of natural law. We can all see that you don't know dick about the matter and have never really thought anything through.

Tomorrow I'll take your various statements and those of others and turn them against you, showing you precisely why they actually prove the existence of innate rights. In fact, I'll show you precisely why all you naysayers do apprehend the actuality of innate rights.

You may not admit it out of pride, but make no mistake about it, every honest and astute intellect on this board will see that you are lying and have nothing but slogans for arguments.

We classical liberals of natural law don't give a damn what leftists say, for we know they won't dignify the truth because everything they stand for means to destroy the truth and erect a collectivist tyranny. Oh, yeah. The elites among them know precisely what rights they're out to suppress . . . but, curiously, only insofar as they are exercised by classical liberals, not by them. Gee. How do they manage to pinpoint the inalienable rights that bedevil their designs when they supposedly don't know what they are because inalienable rights supposedly don't exist?

Magic!

Snap out of it, Rabbi. Get a clue. You know better.

 

[Politico]

Show me one he can.

Breathing.

In other words, you got nothing.

No he could do that quite easily.

 

[G.T.]

It's better off that us humans assert these rights; however, they're not magically vested in us they are a construct of the human mind. A great one, at that.

If they are nothing but a construct of the human mind why do wild animals suffer in captivity? Why do animals fight to live?

Can't tell if serious.

 

[editec]

Natural rights?

Show me one that any idiot with a gun cannot take away from YOU.

Religious freedom.

BANG! you're dead.

You now have the unalienable right to remain silent FOREVER.

 

[The Rabbi]

The fact that everyone dies in no way changes the fact that they live. In fact, life is part of death because, without death, we would all be screwed.

Seriously? That's your answer? I'll just take that as a "I really have no idea what I mean as I never considered it before."

I think you should take it as the fact that you aren't actually thinking things through.

That would be your error, then.
That everyone dies is irrelevant to the discussion. I dont know why you mention an obvious fact. My point was that simply living does not accrue rights. The proof is that everything can be stripped from someone with no consequence.

 

[The Rabbi]

I already did in the above, quite thoroughly. The essence of the inalienable rights of man are self-evident. More to the point, as dblack pointed out, they are innately inviolable, not the stuff of privileges or social constructs at all. Hence, they are as old as humanity, obviously, and have been recognized by humanity as such under one guise or another. Hammurabic law and Mosaic law recognized the innate prerogatives of man.

And the formal iteration of them in terms of the construct of natural law predates the Enlightenment. It dates back to Augustine. Further, Aristotle, in his refutation of Plato's silliness, The Republic, propounded the distinction between initial force and defensive force relative to the inherent "dignities" of man. Just ask any Objectivist. Even an Objectivist knows that much, though he understands little about anything else.

There's nothing difficult about any of this. Self-evident. No man willingly lays down his life or surrenders his liberty or property, just because, to use your phrase, without resistance at some level or another--chaffing at the bit to overthrow his oppressors and break his foot off in their asses. Self-evident. Let me sum it up. It all comes down to one thing: Self-preservation! It's not rocket science. Self-evident.

The fact that a human being or a government can violate one's life or liberty or property is utterly irrelevant. Make no mistake about it, the moment that human being, for example, loses his grip on the instrument of his dominance, he will flee from those whom he has oppressed knowing damn well that his ass is grass, knowing damn well that he doesn't want put on him what he put on others. Self-evident.

You are babbling incoherently. Nothing is "self evident" about this. As I mentioned, no one can give an account for where they came from, hwo we know what they are, and what the parameters of them are. No one has been able to answer these questions.
You have not defended your statements. You have added no facts, except error. The Bible does not have any "rights" in the sense we are discussing here. The opposite. Biblical morality consists of obligations one person has to another. Those are not rights.
No society had rights as we understand them.

Everything in bold is nothing more than a litany of mindless slogans. My foundational posts above this exchange between you and me most certainly do address and answer every last one of your absurdly obtuse allegations.

You're just a closed-minded, intellectual bigot. Where do they come from?! Are you an atheist?

Babbling incoherently?! No, sir! You just don't know your history or recognize the motifs of natural law.

The only thing I wrote out of turn in the above is chaffing at the bit, when obviously I meant chomping at the bit. I don't care who you are, that's funny. Brain fart.

Look, it's late, and I don't have time tonight to address what is in fact the stuff of you babbling incoherently. From the jump, you have uttered one silly ass, self-negating sentiment after another. Everyone of your arguments actually prove the existence of innate rights . . . but it just flies right over your head.

The only aspect of natural law that's theoretical goes to the science of government, i.e., the form of government that would constitute a just and stable instrument to secure (promote and protect) the innate rights of man. This entails the precise formulations and arrangements of powers and institutions, and the Constitution isn't perfect.

In the meantime get this straight: THE ESSENCE OF NATURAL LAW OF THE ANGLO-AMERICAN TRADITION OF CLASSICAL LIBERALISM IS THE SOCIOPOLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS OF JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM OF THOUGHT. IT IS THE GOLDEN RULE AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE SAME.

Hello!

Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government, for example, is directly extrapolated from the sociopolitical ramifications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought, replete with one biblical citation after another as the ontological justification for the entire edifice!

Further, the subsequent central themes of natural law are the very real distinctions between defensive force and initial force, between consent and imposition, bottomed on the distinction between good and evil.

Moral conduct verses immoral conduct is the essence of natural law, and the distinction between the two is the very means by which we apprehend what the innate rights of man are and what they are not.

You know damn well when someone is violating your rights, Rabbi, and you know precisely what rights of yours they are violating when they do.

Are you telling us you're stupid or something?

I've put down the foundation for natural law in the posts addressed to the OP and Delta4Embassy; the case for natural law and the inalienable rights of man is incontrovertible. You're throwing yourself up against a brick wall.

I don't see you refuting anything in the foundational posts. I don't see you acknowledging the fact that you were wrong about the origins and the historical development of natural law proper, and I don't see you acknowledging the fact that you were wrong to claim that the notion of innate rights is strictly a product of the Enlightenment either. The notion goes back centuries before that, all the way back to the dawn of man.

In fact, as for natural law proper, Augustine actually expounded his rendition of it from the adumbrations of Aristotle and the Apostolic Fathers of the Second Century A.D. .

No, sir, you are mistaken. The political thinkers of the Enlightenment who arguably perfected the construct of natural law proper did so standing on the shoulders of the progenitors of the construct: the Apostolic Fathers, the early Church Fathers and the Reformationists.

What the hell do you thinking you're doing anyway? What the hell are you trying pull here?

You've made it abundantly clear before God and everybody that you don't believe in the actuality of innate rights, and you obviously can't decipher the pertinent extrapolations from the ontological to the practical. We can all clearly see that you haven't read the works of the historical cannon of natural law. We can all see that you don't know dick about the matter and have never really thought anything through.

Tomorrow I'll take your various statements and those of others and turn them against you, showing you precisely why they actually prove the existence of innate rights. In fact, I'll show you precisely why all you naysayers do apprehend the actuality of innate rights.

You may not admit it out of pride, but make no mistake about it, every honest and astute intellect on this board will see that you are lying and have nothing but slogans for arguments.

We classical liberals of natural law don't give a damn what leftists say, for we know they won't dignify the truth because everything they stand for means to destroy the truth and erect a collectivist tyranny. Oh, yeah. The elites among them know precisely what rights they're out to suppress . . . but, curiously, only insofar as they are exercised by classical liberals, not by them. Gee. How do they manage to pinpoint the inalienable rights that bedevil their designs when they supposedly don't know what they are because inalienable rights supposedly don't exist?

Magic!

Snap out of it, Rabbi. Get a clue. You know better.

I've reported your post for personal attacks and violations of the CDZ. Good luck with that.
I am hardly a leftist. Not even the most committed leftists here would claim I am.
You haven't produced anything but a run of verbiage, appeals to authority, terms and obfuscations. Good luck with that.

 

[Wake]

I don't think so. They're not self-evident in nature like apples and crickets. Should humans on Earth all cease to exist, do rights still exist? They don't exist under the scientific microscope, much like religion or concepts. They are all created and perpetuated by humans.

Are you telling me that there is absolutely no evidence of rights outside your head? How do you explain the fact that species survive better of they cooperate if there are no rights?

I believe so. It's much like how concepts of communism, equality, righteousness, and evil all exist in our heads. Remove humans from the equation, and concepts, beliefs, and morals all cease to exist.

These things are all man-made hypothetical structures. Created by humans to influence humans. Take scientology, for example, which is a relatively new fabrication. It doesn't exist naturally in nature with the foxes and bumblebees without the existence of humans. Cooperation is beneficial within a species, but how they go about it is based on things not inherent in nature, like chemical anatomy.

I don't think so. They're not self-evident in nature like apples and crickets. Should humans on Earth all cease to exist, do rights still exist? They don't exist under the scientific microscope, much like religion or concepts. They are all created and perpetuated by humans.

More rubbish.

Why, please?

 

[editec]

Where do this innate "rights" come from?[

From being?

Okay I can fathom what is meant by those "innate" rights.

Basically those rights are the right (not TO but OF) existence.

Is anyone getting where I am coming from here BESIDES RABBI?


I mean if that's the inanate right one has well.... that's pretty lame and hardly "UNALIENABLE".*

*(at least on this realm of reality)

 

[GreenBean]

A concept that even conservatives get wrong is that government is supposed to secure our rights. That is wrong. Government is supposed to leave our rights alone.

Unfortunately, due to Human Nature these "rights" can not exist without Government. Should the Government cease to exist tomorrow we would all be left at the mercy of well organized gangs . Bloods, Cryps, MS, Hells Angels, Liberals whose members are at the beck and call of their masters.