Some
Left-wing journalists, politicians, and judges are engaged in a singular effort
to overturn the central tenet of American rights and government, the concept of
“unalienable rights” which should not be limited or abolished by elected
officials.
Recently,
news commentator Chris Cuomo disturbingly displayed what has become a major
thrust of Progressive political philosophy.
The
exchange, as described in the Washington
Times: “It isn’t often that a
member of the media reveals the philosophy behind his political ideology, but
last week, CNN anchor Chris
Cuomo outed himself.
In an
exchange with Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore…Moore said ‘…our rights contained in the Bill of Rights do
not come from the Constitution, they come from God.’
Cuomo disagreed: ‘Our laws do not come from God, your honor,
and you know that. They come from man.’ Obviously, Cuomo flunked civics….The framers of the Constitution
clearly understood that in order to put certain rights out of the reach of
government, whose power they wished to limit, those rights had to come from a
place government could not reach.
If
this exchange was an isolated incident, some might feel comfortable in ignoring
it. However, that is clearly not the case. No less a person than an
incoming United States Supreme Court Justice has also expressed a similar lack
of respect for the central principle behind the entire structure of American
government and law.
During
the confirmation hearings of Obama Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Sen. Tom
Coburn had a testy exchange in which he pushed her to state her belief in
fundamental rights. She evaded answering.
Cuomo
nor Kagan are not isolated examples. They are emblematic of a significant
movement favoring the eliminating the concept of unalienable rights.
The
primacy of unalienable rights in America’s governing concept is neither complex
nor obscure. The Declaration of Independence is crystal clear, using
these unambiguous words: “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness…That to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men…”
It is
also enshrined in the Bill of Rights, which specifically states in Amendment 9:
“The enumeration in the Constitution,
of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
by the people.”
Amendment
9 recognizes that the government only has those rights specifically provided in
the Constitution. The concept of limited federal government is fortified as
well by the Tenth Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.”
Nor
is the concept a Republican-partisan one. In his extraordinary inaugural
address, President John F. Kennedy stated: “…the rights of man come not from the generosity of
the state but from the hand of God.”
A
study by Lonang
Institute described unalienable rights
as those that are incapable of being
lost or sold. Unalienable rights are retained despite government decrees to the
contrary because civil government does not grant them in the first case.
Moreover, no future generation may be disenfranchised of any unalienable right
by the present generation…The Declaration translated the common principles of
equality and unalienable rights into positive law. Civil government was and is
obliged to observe the rule of legal equality.
It must recognize that all human
beings enjoy certain unalienable rights from God–rights that are not created by
the civil government, but which that government is nevertheless obligated to
protect to the extent that the people articulate such rights in their
constitutions or statutes…The modern lament is even more sweeping. Not only are
there philosophers who deny these principles, but their protégés are appointed
to the judicial bench, they percolate through the state legislature and through
Congress, they occupy the state house and [have occupied the] White House, and
they teach and are taught in the law schools.
http://affluentinvestor.com/2017/03/war-unalienable-rights/
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