Men are Endowed by Their Creator with Certain Unalienable Rights.

Acts 17:24-28 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.”

It is obvious from Scripture that our basic rights come from God and not from man, and our Founding Fathers believed also that the basic rights of men did not originate with governments, dictators, kings, but from God and because of the sacredness of those rights they needed to be protected. It was John Locke who said: “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

However, when we speak about unalienable rights it is important that we know what is meant by unalienable. An unalienable right is one that cannot be repudiated or given to another. It is not something that can be taken away or denied. Blackstone, in his commentaries on the laws of England, states that no human authority can take away those rights, but the owner of the rights might on his own free will forfeit those rights. This is why in our Declaration of Independence we declare that people have unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as our Creator gave.

We also have what is known as “vested rights.” A vested right is one that is created or originates with the community, state or our country for our protection and safety, and as the need arises these vested rights can be changed by our law makers. What seems to happen is that the unalienable rights seem to have become vested rights. While we still have the power of the vote we need to make sure that we vote for people who recognize the difference between these two kinds of rights.

Here are some of our natural rights taken out of the book THE 5000 YEAR LEAP. Natural rights which the Founders knew existed but did not enumerate in the Declaration of Independence – are:

The right of self-government.

The right to bear arms for self-defense.

Develop, and dispose of property.

The right to make personal choices.

The right to a free conscience.

The right to choose a profession.

The right to choose a mate.

The right to beget one’s kind.

The right to assemble.

The right to petition.

The right to free speech.

The right to a free press.

The right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors.

The right to improve one’s position through barter and sale.

The right to contrive and invent.

The right to explore the natural resources of the earth.

The right to privacy.

The right to provide personal security.

The right to provide nature’s necessities—air, food, water, clothing, and shelter.

The right to a fair trial.

The right of free association.

The right to contract.

What did Jefferson mean by the unalienable right: the pursuit of happiness? This was something that was probably well understood when it was written, but for in the 21^st century citizen it brings out the idea of pursuing whatever our heart desires to make us happy whether good or evil.

Perhaps John Adams said it even more clearly: “All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

Possibly Jefferson took the three unalienable rights that he put into our Declaration of Independence from what Blackstone called the three great natural rights: “right of personal security; the right of personal liberty and the right of private property.” It would seem from what John Adams is saying that the pursuit of happiness mentioned in our Declaration of Independence ties in with “that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.”

Here in America we have been given a rich heritage and each generation needs to protect what has been handed down to us. Outside the archive building in Washington, D.C. are inscribed these words: THE COST OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE.

Principle #7 – The Proper Role of Government is to Protect Equal Rights, Not Provide Equal Things.

Proverb 22:13 “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside!’ or, ‘I will be murdered in the streets!’”

Our Founding Fathers were aware of the sentiment in Europe of taking from the ‘haves’ to give to the ‘have nots’ so that all might be equal, but our Founding Fathers would not have any of that idea or reasoning.

Benjamin Franklin after living for some years in England and being one of the ‘have nots’ and seeing the welfare program in operation made this comment: “I have long been of your opinion that your legal provision for the poor (in England) is a very great evil. Operating as it does to the encouragement of idleness. We have followed your example, and begin now to see our error, and, I hope, shall reform it.”

The Founding Fathers wrestled with the thought of what powers can be assigned to government and came up with the idea that the only powers assigned to government would be what the people assigned to themselves. For example, every person is entitled to protection of life and property and so then it would be perfectly legitimate to delegate to government the power to have a police force to make sure that all citizens’ life and property are protected.

An example is given of a kind-hearted neighbor who saw that his neighbor had two cars, but another neighbor did not have one and so decided that he would take one and give to the neighbor that had none. If this happened he would have been jailed for being a thief.  But what if the kind-hearted neighbor went to the local government to have them ‘force in the name of the law,’ the two car neighbor to give one of the cars  to the ‘have not.’ Is this any different from what the kind-hearted neighbor did in stealing one of the cars to give to the ‘have not?’ We see that government can sometimes commit ‘legal’ crimes.

Once government goes down this road of being authorized of leveling the possessions of the rich in order to have an equal distribution of goods, the government then has the power to deprive any of their equal rights to enjoy life, liberty and property. It is indeed a slippery downward path. The poor might think that this is equal justice, but what happens when government takes from the poor? They soon find out that government is not working right for all people. In other words, when government can take from the rich it automatically cancels the principle of the guarantee of equal rights for all.

We can learn from history in what happened when the communists took over in Hungary. The peasants were excited with the justice when the large farms were confiscated and given to them. However, later the communists seized about three-fourths of the peasants’ land to set up communal farms. Peasants complained and found that they not only lost their land, but their liberty and if they kept on complaining – lost their lives. One thing, to me, that comes out of this is what Proverbs says: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 16:25) In the 20^th century millions died by our governments, because of the ‘ways’ (the thinking) of man.

Only through the principle of equal rights can we prosper without any penalty for the rich, for being rich. When some became very rich the Founders’ response was: “The more the better.” So should it be today. It is inevitable when there is freedom that some will become richer than others, because of inheritance, but mostly that good fortune comes from hard work and wisdom. The idea in back of this was to maximize prosperity and minimize poverty. The Founders knew that what worked for the USA would also work for any country. The key was to get the government to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.

The Founders had a deep concern for the poor, the marginalized and the needy, but how to implement this concern into practice was something that they gave a lot of thought to and came up with the following criteria.

1. Do not help the needy completely. Merely help them to help themselves.
2. Give the poor the satisfaction of “earned achievement” instead of rewarding them without achievement.
3. Allow the poor to climb the “appreciation ladder”— from tents to cabins, cabins to cottages, cottages to comfortable houses.
4. Where emergency help is provided, do not prolong it to the point where it becomes habitual.
5. Strictly enforce the scale of “fixed responsibility.” The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community; finally the country and, in a disaster or emergency, the state… under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No constitution authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare.

The Founders felt that by the federal government not intervening in the local affairs of the people they were protecting the ‘unalienable rights’ of the people from the abuse of an over-reaching government.

Principle #6 – All Men are Created Equal

Psalms 8:4-5 “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

One of the self-evident truths that our Founding Fathers talked about was that all men were created equal, but since each one created is unique how then can they be equal?

Men were created equal in the sight of God; that means, in the sight of the law and in the protection of their rights. According to Clarence Carson, a Constitutional writer, “There are no classes of people created by law, but are all equal before God and secondly, each man has an equal title to God.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy was that all men were designed to be equal. (You can read more about Rousseau’s philosophy on our web site menwithfaith.com under teaching and the title ARE WE LOSING THE WEST.)

John Adams was in France when Rousseau was teaching and commented: “To teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution.”

Equal rights for the Founding Fathers was for society to provide ‘equal justice,’ which means protecting equally the rights of the people. So in a just society what are our rights? In this regard the Founding Fathers mention several things:

• in the courts to secure their rights
• at the ballot box to vote for our choice
• in the public school to obtain an education
• to be able to compete for a job
• to be able to purchase a home or to rent
• in our churches to be able to have freedom of religion
• it also means the freedom of speech and be able to present views on the issues of today
• to be able to peacefully assemble
• to enjoy freedom of the press
• to be able to buy essentials for life and enjoyment
• to be able to save and prosper
• to pay no more than their fair share of taxes and the ability to be able to pass on to our heirs what we have

One of the problems that our Founding Fathers faced in our society is the problem of minorities, because equal rights have not been completely established in all of these areas for minorities, but the Founders set a course in providing balance in administering justice in the equality of rights like no other country at that time. The breakdown in our society is not the problem of equal justice, but the treatment of minorities.

Minorities in any country call themselves outsiders who want to be insiders. When it comes to America every ethnic group in this country at one time once was a minority. We are a nation of minorities. We are and have been a melting pot. When you talk about an American who are you referring to? Even my own back ground is German and Irish and my wife is Finnish, but we identify as Americans.

Because of this principle that “all men are created equal” we have a society of freedom and opportunity which have attracted people (immigrants) from all over the world and it is remarkable that within two or three generations these immigrants have become first class citizens. To do this they had to cross the “cultural gap,” which means learning the English language and at the least get a general education.

There is not a single ethnic group in the United States that at one time was not treated as a minority and less than a first class citizen. My wife was reading to me an article that was written by a Finnish young person who had come to the States and what they endured to eventually fit in. It is a fascinating story to read about the French in the 1500s, the English in the 1600s and in between the Swedes, Germans, Irish, Scots, etc. In this melting pot there were tensions, discrimination, malice and sometimes outright persecution, but because of an overriding principle that “all men are created equal” they joined together to fight in the Revolutionary War and to create what we call the United States of America.

A danger that I see developing here in the States is that we are losing the idea of this very important principle of truth that “all men are created equal,” and the outcome is a nation that has become divided.