What does "God-Given Rights" mean?

[Inthemiddle]

If man has constructed our rights

FALSE DICHOTOMY! Entirely false.

Are rights an abstract?

False dichotomy. You're going to have to break out of it if you hope to posit any kind of meaningful question.

 

[SniperFire]

Seriously. I challenge you to explain it in any way that does not amount to exactly that. If rights are "inalienable" and "God" given, then how are they anything more than an entitlement you are redeeming from whatever god you believe in?

I explained just that in my first post. The question isn't whether rights are unalienable or not. As I said, some are, some aren't. An unalienable right is a specific type of right - namely one that you have regardless of whether anyone is around to "give" it to you.

No, I get that, and I'm inclined to somewhat agree that the "source" of the rights in question is not really the meat and potatoes.

But...

My comment was directed toward the supposition of one who is looking at the source of those "inalienable" rights as being of divine origin. If THAT is to be the postulate, then the result is that we are dealing with a divine entitlement program. Now while you might be thinking I'm merely being facetious, hold on just a moment and recognize that in fact I'm opening up a whole new line of exploration.

Were our founders, in their own ways, entitlement "junkies" who were demanding that to which they were entitled by God, particularly an Abrahamic God? Is there, in fact, a nexus between the entitlement mindset and the religious mindset? Some people think that the reason Hispanics are so inclined to be Democrats is because of the immigration issue. I suggest that in fact such an explanation is superficial. Mexico is a very religious culture. Perhaps the same divinely entitled mentality translates into a worldly entitlement mentality.

Are our rights an abstract?

 

[SniperFire]

FALSE DICHOTOMY! Entirely false.

Are rights an abstract?

False dichotomy. You're going to have to break out of it if you hope to posit any kind of meaningful question.

Why do you refuse to answer the simple question?

 

[regent]

Jefferson did not use the word God, it was left to the reader of the Declaration to interpret creator in his own way, maybe God, maybe nature's God, maybe whatever. Maybe naming our own creator was one of our rights.

Bullshit.

'Creator' is capitalized. It is a proper name.

Absolutely it's capitalized. He or she is is a Creator, why take chances it covers a multitude. If Jefferson wanted to say God, he well could have, but he didn't. The Declaration was an argument to explain our rationale for leaving Britain, and also a form of propaganda (wow) to convince people to support the revolution, Jefferson wanted to alienate no one. This was the Age of Reason, reason explained all and religion was in a state of flux, Nature's God was often used, and what who or what was Nature's God?

 

[Inthemiddle]

Are rights an abstract?

False dichotomy. You're going to have to break out of it if you hope to posit any kind of meaningful question.

Why do you refuse to answer the simple question?

Because it's a non-sequitor to the position I have stated. You insist on painting the matter of rights either being from God, or alienable. It's a false dichotomy. Rights can be inalienable without appeal to the Divine. The problem is that you're incapable of comprehending an existence that isn't predicated on divine entitlement.

 

[SniperFire]

Jefferson did not use the word God, it was left to the reader of the Declaration to interpret creator in his own way, maybe God, maybe nature's God, maybe whatever. Maybe naming our own creator was one of our rights.

Bullshit.

'Creator' is capitalized. It is a proper name.

Absolutely it's capitalized. He or she is is a Creator, why take chances it covers a multitude. If Jefferson wanted to say God, he well could have, but he didn't. The Declaration was an argument to explain our rationale for leaving Britain, and also a form of propaganda (wow) to convince people to support the revolution, Jefferson wanted to alienate no one. This was the Age of Reason, reason explained all and religion was in a state of flux, Nature's God was often used, and what who or what was Nature's God?

You are of course babbling, as Creator is a very specific reference in our Judeo-Christian culture.

 

[SniperFire]

False dichotomy. You're going to have to break out of it if you hope to posit any kind of meaningful question.

Why do you refuse to answer the simple question?

Because it's a non-sequitor to the position I have stated. You insist on painting the matter of rights either being from God, or alienable. It's a false dichotomy. Rights can be inalienable without appeal to the Divine. The problem is that you're incapable of comprehending an existence that isn't predicated on divine entitlement.

Are rights an abstract, or not?

 

[Inthemiddle]

Why do you refuse to answer the simple question?

Because it's a non-sequitor to the position I have stated. You insist on painting the matter of rights either being from God, or alienable. It's a false dichotomy. Rights can be inalienable without appeal to the Divine. The problem is that you're incapable of comprehending an existence that isn't predicated on divine entitlement.

Are rights an abstract, or not?

False dichotomy.

 

[PoliticalChic]

We've seen five or six different threads on this topic over the last week and, in my view, they've been an unproductive mess. Mostly we're talking past each other without a very clear understanding what it is we're really talking about.

So, just what is meant by God-given rights? In most of the debates on here, the discussion breaks down into a debate over the "source" of rights (God, government, neither?) and I think that fundamentally misses the point. When Jefferson wrote that people 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

..., what did he mean?

His purpose was to lay out a justification for government. Here he's saying that governments are instituted to secure "unalieanable rights". That term is actually very specific and narrow. It's meant to refer only to certain kinds of "rights" - those that are unalienable.

'Unalieanable' means they can't be taken away. It doesn't mean the shouldn't be taken away. It doesn't mean they can't be violated. It means that they are innate to a person's existence, and that, even if you were left on a desert island by yourself, you'd still have them.

So, the key thing here is that he's describing a particular kind of right. Some rights are unalieanable, some aren't. Keep in mind, this isn't by decree - it's just inherent in the nature of the right in question. If the right can't be taken away, if you'd have the freedom to exercise it regardless of whether anyone "gave" it to you or not, then it is, by definition, an unalieanable right.

Freedom of speech, for example, is an unalienable right. It's a freedom that you can exercise without anyone's permission or cooperation. You'd have it whether government existed or not. It's a right that can be violated, to be sure. Someone can pin you down and put their hand over your mouth. But as soon as they leave, you have that right again. It's a freedom of action that doesn't require a grant from anyone, or anything, else.

Contractual rights are not unalienable. They require the active participation of other people or institutions to exist. Many have proposed that government recognize a "right to health care". While we could create this "right" and establish it as an entitlement, it wouldn't be an unalienable right. It depends on the active cooperation of other people. Again, it's not a matter of declaring it to be unalienable, or not. It's inherent in the nature of the right being discussed.

Jefferson wasn't making a statement about where rights come from. He was making a statement about the kinds of rights government should secure. He wanted a government that protected our innate freedoms, not one that granted privilege. Unfortunately, that point seems to get lost as people get preoccupied with debating the supremacy of God vs the supremacy of government.

For purposes of comparison, what to say about an undeserving individual gains the White House but does not believe in free speech...??


Obama nominated a Supreme Court who does not subscribe to free speech as an unalienable right...


"In her 1993 article "Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V," for the University of Chicago Law Review, Kagan writes:

"I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation."

In a 1996 paper, "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government.
That paper asserted First Amendment doctrine is comprised of "motives and ... actions infested with them" and she goes so far as to claim that "First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting."

Kagan's name was also on a brief, United States V. Stevens, dug up by the Washington Examiner, stating: "Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs."

If the government doesn't like what you say, Elena Kagan believes it is the duty of courts to tell you to shut up. If some pantywaist is offended by what you say, Elena Kagan believes your words can be "disappeared".
WyBlog -- Elena Kagan's America: some speech can be "disappeared"
Elena Kagan Radical anti-gun nut? « The Daley Gator


Another good reason to throw the bum out.

 

[Murf76]

Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists (June 1998) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin

Ahh... the old "wall of separation".

[youtube]G2y8Sx4B2Sk[/youtube]


This verbiage, coined by Jefferson, was NOT written into the Constitution at the time when it surely could have been had the Founders decided to do that. They didn't. What WAS written in is, "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,".

That doesn't mean that government officials aren't free to mention God, or that public schoolchildren can't sing God Bless America, or that Army Chaplains can't say "Jesus".
What it means is that the State cannot FORCE you to practice a religion of its choosing. It can't say... "okay, we're all going to be Baptists now", or "okay, we're all going to be Catholics now" or punish you in any way if you refuse to comply. It also means that just so long as you're not impeding any other individual citizen's like rights in the exercise of your own, you can't be harassed.

No one gives up their citizen rights when they're hired for a government job. People STILL have the right to free speech and to worship as they please.

 

[PoliticalChic]

The intentions of the founders was NOT to establish religion as the base of our government

Nor to remove or ban it from the public space.

 

[naturegirl]

Creator is all encompassing, it is nondenominational, non-religious. Native Americans believed in their Creator as the Mother of Nature.

Christians believe their Creator is God, and that's OK. I think Jefferson was very specific not to include any particular religion but yet include all religions and non-religions. He chose his words wisely.

However, his intent probably was not to mean government gives us those rights but rather they should insure those rights are not taken away by too much government.

Every living being deserves the right to life, liberty (aka freedom), and the pursuit of happiness. Government should not be the root of our happiness, ever.

 

[SniperFire]

Because it's a non-sequitor to the position I have stated. You insist on painting the matter of rights either being from God, or alienable. It's a false dichotomy. Rights can be inalienable without appeal to the Divine. The problem is that you're incapable of comprehending an existence that isn't predicated on divine entitlement.

Are rights an abstract, or not?

False dichotomy.

You exhibit great intellectual cowardice.

We both know why.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I explained just that in my first post. The question isn't whether rights are unalienable or not. As I said, some are, some aren't. An unalienable right is a specific type of right - namely one that you have regardless of whether anyone is around to "give" it to you.

What makes a right 'unalienable' if man decides what is alienable and what is not alienable?

Man doesn't get to decide that though. An unalienable right is always inalienable.
People who believe in God, believe that "their Creator" is God, who created Nature. People who don't believe in God, believe that "their Creator" is Nature through evolution. Either way, our unalienable rights stem from our human condition.

I'm a believer, but that doesn't mean that somebody else HAS to agree with me on the existence of God. That's between them and God as far as I'm concerned. The beauty of our Constitution is that both positions are tolerated. What's NOT tolerable is the notion that these unalienable rights don't exist at all, because what that position does is erode the very basis of our ability to tolerate one another in such a vast country with so many disparate opinions. We have to have something to homogenize us. It used to be that we nearly uniformly accepted such ideals as unalienable rights, guaranteed Liberty, and the people as sovereign. Now... not so much. Hence the deep divides in faction.

God and/or nature.


There are four references to ‘Devine’ in D of I… 1)in first paragraph ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,’ 2) next paragraph ‘endowed by their Creator,” 3) Supreme Judge of the world, and 4) ‘divine’ Providence, last paragraph.
This is important because our historic documents memorialize a government based on individuals born with inalienable rights, by, in various references, by the Devine, or Nature’s God, or their Creator, or the Supreme Judge, or divine Providence.

Since these rights are associated with each individual, they cannot be withdrawn, or subjugated to the will of a governing body.

Despite the secular nature of our national government, there is one unambiguous reference to Christ in the Constitution. Article VII dates the Constitution in "the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven."
"The Year of Our Lord" and separation.

 

[SniperFire]

Creator is all encompassing, it is nondenominational, non-religious. Native Americans believed in their Creator as the Mother of Nature.

Christians believe their Creator is God, and that's OK. I think Jefferson was very specific not to include any particular religion but yet include all religions and non-religions. He chose his words wisely.

However, his intent probably was not to mean government gives us those rights but rather they should insure those rights are not taken away by too much government.

Every living being deserves the right to life, liberty (aka freedom), and the pursuit of happiness. Government should not be the root of our happiness, ever.

Unless our rights are supernaturally granted, this is an arbitrary abstract of mankind's imagination, subject to revision. There really is nothing intrinsically unalienable about them.

Thus the reason why our fundamental rights are acknowledged to be SUPERNATURALLY endowed.

 

[dblack]

For purposes of comparison, what to say about an undeserving individual gains the White House but does not believe in free speech...??


Obama nominated a Supreme Court who does not subscribe to free speech as an unalienable right...

Without getting into the specifics of the court case, I don't think Jefferson was saying government should protect all unalienable rights in all cases. Certainly if exercising a right violates someone else's rights it's not protected, or is at least limited to the extent that it does violate others' rights.

 

[Murf76]

For purposes of comparison, what to say about an undeserving individual gains the White House but does not believe in free speech...??


Obama nominated a Supreme Court who does not subscribe to free speech as an unalienable right...

Without getting into the specifics of the court case, I don't think Jefferson was saying government should protect all unalienable rights in all cases. Certainly if exercising a right violates someone else's rights it's not protected, or is at least limited to the extent that it does violate others' rights.

I think the litmus test on limiting an unalienable right though has to be whether or not another Individual citizen is harmed, or will predictably be harmed. When we remove the Individual, we leave ourselves open to social engineering by the political class.

 

[regent]

Bullshit.

'Creator' is capitalized. It is a proper name.

Absolutely it's capitalized. He or she is is a Creator, why take chances it covers a multitude. If Jefferson wanted to say God, he well could have, but he didn't. The Declaration was an argument to explain our rationale for leaving Britain, and also a form of propaganda (wow) to convince people to support the revolution, Jefferson wanted to alienate no one. This was the Age of Reason, reason explained all and religion was in a state of flux, Nature's God was often used, and what who or what was Nature's God?

You are of course babbling, as Creator is a very specific reference in our Judeo-Christian culture.

Maybe in your Judeo-Christian culture it is specific, but in the non Judeo-Christian cultures it might not be, and maybe that's one of the unalienable rights.

 

[FA_Q2]

We've seen five or six different threads on this topic over the last week and, in my view, they've been an unproductive mess. Mostly we're talking past each other without a very clear understanding what it is we're really talking about.

So, just what is meant by God-given rights? In most of the debates on here, the discussion breaks down into a debate over the "source" of rights (God, government, neither?) and I think that fundamentally misses the point. When Jefferson wrote that people 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

..., what did he mean?

His purpose was to lay out a justification for government. Here he's saying that governments are instituted to secure "unalieanable rights". That term is actually very specific and narrow. It's meant to refer only to certain kinds of "rights" - those that are unalienable.

'Unalieanable' means they can't be taken away. It doesn't mean the shouldn't be taken away. It doesn't mean they can't be violated. It means that they are innate to a person's existence, and that, even if you were left on a desert island by yourself, you'd still have them.

So, the key thing here is that he's describing a particular kind of right. Some rights are unalieanable, some aren't. Keep in mind, this isn't by decree - it's just inherent in the nature of the right in question. If the right can't be taken away, if you'd have the freedom to exercise it regardless of whether anyone "gave" it to you or not, then it is, by definition, an unalieanable right.

Freedom of speech, for example, is an unalienable right. It's a freedom that you can exercise without anyone's permission or cooperation. You'd have it whether government existed or not. It's a right that can be violated, to be sure. Someone can pin you down and put their hand over your mouth. But as soon as they leave, you have that right again. It's a freedom of action that doesn't require a grant from anyone, or anything, else.

Contractual rights are not unalienable. They require the active participation of other people or institutions to exist. Many have proposed that government recognize a "right to health care". While we could create this "right" and establish it as an entitlement, it wouldn't be an unalienable right. It depends on the active cooperation of other people. Again, it's not a matter of declaring it to be unalienable, or not. It's inherent in the nature of the right being discussed.

Jefferson wasn't making a statement about where rights come from. He was making a statement about the kinds of rights government should secure. He wanted a government that protected our innate freedoms, not one that granted privilege. Unfortunately, that point seems to get lost as people get preoccupied with debating the supremacy of God vs the supremacy of government.

I don’t see how any of that precludes the idea that said statement also was about the origin of those rights. I see no reasoning that would convince me the founders did not specifically mean such rights were not endowed by God (or creator). It seems to me that this would only be a natural thought.

What is worth saying though is that none of that matters. Where we get our rights is utterly meaningless outside of the context of man. In other words, if rights are not given by man (as it is clear that this is the rights the founders were getting at) then their source is meaningless as they cannot be taken away by man.

I think that the right jumps on the ‘God’ given rights idea because it means that man has no jurisdiction to take those rights away (though that happens anyway such as with convicts that have served their time) The disconnect seems to come in that even if you do not believe that they are god given that does not mean they are not NATURAL rights that are equally inalienable.

To the religious ones here that are fighting dblacks original post so hard, what is so unacceptable about this stance? The founders did use Creator instead of God and I personally believe that was NOT a mistake and done quite purposefully as they believed those rights were yours weather or not you were religious, Christian, Islamic, or Wiccan for that matter. Those rights are inalienable no matter who or what you believe is your creator and are yours irregardless of your belief. Funny enough, it is the right here attacking the OP when the OP is actually supporting the view the right generally takes on rights and goes against the lefts idea that rights are subject to change and reinterpretation. All over the term ‘God’ as though the term itself is what matters and not the rights.

 

[SniperFire]

Absolutely it's capitalized. He or she is is a Creator, why take chances it covers a multitude. If Jefferson wanted to say God, he well could have, but he didn't. The Declaration was an argument to explain our rationale for leaving Britain, and also a form of propaganda (wow) to convince people to support the revolution, Jefferson wanted to alienate no one. This was the Age of Reason, reason explained all and religion was in a state of flux, Nature's God was often used, and what who or what was Nature's God?

You are of course babbling, as Creator is a very specific reference in our Judeo-Christian culture.

Maybe in your Judeo-Christian culture it is specific, but in the non Judeo-Christian cultures it might not be, and maybe that's one of the unalienable rights.

Those rich white guys were writing from the Judeo-Christian perspective.

Stop being silly.