A thought for a Sunday

by Al Maurer | 10:29 am, March 14, 2010 | Comments Off

I’m reading Tom G. Palmer’s Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. It is a collection of essays about freedom, liberty, and rights in the classic Western tradition. I can’t help but think that if our lawyers read even a few of these essays we would not have judges who felt they could write law or lawyers busy creating new “rights.”

In the essay I’m reading now he describes how Spanish thinkers of the School of Salamanca argued for the personal and property rights of American Indians and how Pope Innocent IV argued in 1250 for those rights for non-Christians in connection with the Crusades.

Have your children been taught in school about the enslavement of native Americans by the Spanish or about those Spanish who advocated for their rights? Have you heard Islamic scholars advocate for the rights of “infidels” the way the pope advocated for theirs?

We are losing our Western culture and history because we don’t know it. It is being replaced with collectivist thought and manufactured “rights.” But as the Founders knew,

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.

Our rights are God-given. Without God there are no unalienable rights–only rights granted or taken away by the state. Without God there are no unalienable rights–just raw power.

In hoc signo vinces.