By Gen LaGreca
A few of my favorite parts:
1. Our Rights are Unalienable.They are inherent in our nature as human beings. No government gives us our rights, and no government can take them away.
2. Our Rights are Rights to Take Action.They are not entitlements to the free goods and services of other people. In a letter to Isaac Tiffany, Jefferson defines liberty as “unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
4. The Majority Cannot Violate the Rights of the Individual.Because individual rights are unalienable, they are not subject to any majority vote.
5. There are No Rights of Groups.Rights belong to individuals.
6. Our Rights Include the Right to Property.Without property rights, no rights are possible.
9. Our Rights are Violated Only by Force.Only acts of physical force or fraud violate our rights. In Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia he states: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
10. Government’s Sole Job is to Protect Individual Rights.Wise government, explains Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address, “shall restrain men from injuring one another . . . shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” And that’s it. That’s the whole of the job of government...
Giving the practical argument from the inefficiency of a draft is like trying to walk with one leg. Adding the moral argument from individual rights gives us two legs—plus a spine...
Defending any person’s individual rights is scoring a point for all of us. Therefore, we need to be the one non-special interest group that places the individual in the center of the battle for liberty. In each instance in which we want to fight for freedom, we need to ask ourselves two questions:
—1. Whose individual rights are being violated?
—2. What can I say or do to defend them?.
2 comments:
6. Our Rights Include the Right to Property.
Without property rights, no rights are possible.
So when will all you free-market types support the right of poor people to buy property?
Care to elaborate?
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