More on origins of rights

Finally, some discussion has picked up on danny's question below -- A Question for Readers on Rights. Click on the link and join the discussion.

The question is interesting nowadays because it relates to some degree to the quesion of sovereignty -- that is, from where does government derive? The theory of natural rights allowed people to argue for, as Lincoln famously put it, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Wherever people believed these rights derived FROM, they agreed that these rights made the people sovereign. As the first paragraph of the Constitution states,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It is my belief that these rights are under serious attack because Americans, in general, do not take the rights and responsibilities of self-government seriously. We love to brag about how we are the greatest country on earth (I wouldn't know, I have only been to a handful or so of them), but we willingly yield our power to liars, thieves, zealots and incompetents.

Brad Delong discusses the chilling perspective of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, namely, as Scalia recently said (twice!) "government comes — derives its authority from God." Delong writes:

Nino Scalia's views on this are profoundly--there is no other word for it--UnAmerican. Here in the United States, we are all children of Thomas Jefferson. God does not give us rulers. Instead, God gives us rights: to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We then institute governments to secure these rights, and they derive their just powers from our consent, not from God's decree. Moreover, it is not the YHWH of Revealed Religion but instead "Nature's God" and Nature itself that are the source of these rights.

I recommend you read his whole posting for his fuller exegesis of Scalia's truly frightening perspective. Frightening, that is, considering this is a man whose job it is to uphold and interpret our Constitution.

Delong concludes nicely:

Now this is a free country. And Nino Scalia is allowed to break with those like Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln who think that legitimate power ascends from the consent of the people. It's a free country. He can take his stand with those like James I Stuart, Innocent III, and Khomeini who think that legitimate power descends from God.

But does such a guy have any business being a Justice of the Supreme Court of a free country? No.