Man’s Rights - An Economic Treatise
The
concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not
grasped it fully to this day. In
accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some
men assert that rights are a gift of God
- others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source
of rights is man’s nature.
There
is only one fundamental right: a human being’s right to their own life. All the others are its consequences or corollaries. The
right to life is the source of all rights.
Thomas
Jefferson, the brilliant author of The Declaration of Independence, laid down
the principle that “to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men.” This provided the only valid justification of a government and
defined its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from
physical violence.
Thus
the government’s function was changed from the role of ruler to the role of
servant. The government was set to
protect man from criminals - and the Constitution was written to protect man
from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against
private citizens, but against the government - as an explicit declaration that
individual rights supersede any public or social power.
Thomas
Jefferson knew that to violate man’s rights meant to compel him to act against
his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, he knew there was only one way to do it: by the use
of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and
the government. The great
achievement of Jefferson was to draw a distinction between these two—by
forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.
Several
years after authoring The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said in
his first inaugural address, “A wise and frugal government, which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, which 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. This is the sum of
good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicity.” For Thomas Jefferson, this
was the purpose of government. Do today's politicians measure up to
Jefferson? Do any of them embrace this
philosophy? Do any of them believe, “
That government is best which governs
the least, because its people discipline themselves.”
The
current administration, under the misdirection of Slick Willy Clinton do not believe in a small, non-intrusive federal government. They believe a Government, emanating from
Washington D. C., can be all things to all people at all times regardless of
what it costs or even if the majority of Americans disapprove of so much
intervention into their private lives.
Compare this illogical premise with what Thomas Jefferson said about
Divine guidance from Washington. “The care of every man's soul belongs to
himself. But what if he neglects the care of it? Well what if he neglects the care of his health or his estate, which
would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he
not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others, but not from
ourselves. If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we
would soon want for bread.”
Today
our needs go much beyond the necessity for bread. Food we have in abundance.
What we have lost is our economic and personal freedom in the name of
doing good. Ronald Reagan said it best
when he said, “You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I
suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down.
Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom
consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their
humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have
embarked on this downward path.
Plutarch warned, ‘The real
destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties,
donations and benefits’."
C.
S. Lewis said it another way "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely
exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be
better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The
robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for
own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their
own conscience." There can be
no doubt this is the belief of Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Jefferson’s
views on Fiscal policy were, “I place economy among the first and important
virtues, and public debt as the greatest
of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must
make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we
can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the
pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.”
Moving
rapidly forward in time from Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt a curious,
cruel change begins to occur. The
Roosevelts, Franklin and Eleanor, switch the Nation’s concept of rights from
the political realm to the economic realm.
Franklin Roosevelt would instill into the American consciousness the
idea of economic rights which would, years later, become his political party’s
written platform. In 1960 the
Democratic Party blatantly proclaimed these “economic rights” as follows:
“1.
The right to a useful and remunerative
job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
“2.
The right to earn enough to provide
adequate food and clothing and recreation.
“3.
The right of every farmer to raise
and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent
living.
“4.
The right of every businessman,
large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition
and domination by monopolies at home and abroad.
“5.
The right of every family to a
decent home.
“6.
The right to adequate medical care
and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
“7.
The right to adequate protection from
the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment.
“8.
The right to a good education.”
These
“economic rights” are obnoxious and illogical and beg for an answer to the
question, “at whose expense?”
Any
alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of
another, is not and cannot be a right.
No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded
duty or an involuntary servitude on another.
A right cannot include the confiscation of another man’s earnings:
remember, there is only one fundamental right that
any human being has: the right to their own life. Reflect on the intellectual precision of Thomas Jefferson and his
contemporaries when they wrote into The Declaration of Independence of the
right of the pursuit of happiness.
They did not write about the right of happiness. If they had, Bill Clinton would have
installed a Department of Happiness, no doubt headed by Hillary.
The
right to life mandates that each man must support himself by his work. He is free to aspire to the highest economic
level his talents will permit. The founding fathers make no mention of any
requirement to make another happy or provide them with property or a job or an
education.
The Founding Fathers also never intended for
the U. S. government to spy without reason upon its citizens.
Intellectually,
many Americans would agree that for man to have the right to his life requires
economic freedom. Realistically, most
haven’t a clue as what is required to preserve this right and to insure that
the philosophies and dreams of the Founding Fathers be reinstalled in
government. These men made it hard, if
not impossible, for any “faction” to combine against the public interest and
common morality.
There
is a solution to returning economic rights to the American citizenry , but, it
would require a constitutional amendment.
The amendment would read more or less as follows: “No citizen shall be taxed
for the benefit of another.” This
concept of forbidding taxing one group for the benefit of another is not new. Frederic Baftiat, the 19th Century French reformer, suggested a
moral test for any law: “See if the law
takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to
whom it does not belong. See if the law
benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen
himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
In
1937, a Federal Court of Appeals struck down the Social Security Act as
unconstitutional. As part of its
argument, the court said: “A tax, in
the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution,
signifies an extraction for the support of the government. The word has never been thought to connote
the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another.”
Later,
Harold Goddard wrote: “There are laws, like reasonable traffic regulations,
which are a genuine expression of the will of a vast majority of the
community. There are others, like many
tax laws, which are only a disguised process whereby a part of the community
confiscates the liberty or property of the rest. (Whether it is a minority robbing the majority, or the majority,
makes, in the morality of the act, not a particle of difference.)”.
There
is evidence to suggest that at the time of the drafting of The Declaration of
Independence the Founding Fathers did not intend for those who did own property
to vote. They most certainly did not
intend for any man to take, with or without force, the fruits of the labors of
others. Perhaps it is time to rethink
who can vote. Basically all Americans
should be permitted to vote unless they are on the public dole. No citizen has the right to steal from
another and logically no citizen should be permitted to vote him or herself an
ever increasing share of any other citizen’s earnings.
John
Stuart Mill argued this point years ago.
He believed that anyone who accepted government relief should thereby
forfeit his right to vote. Mills
wrote: “Thee who cannot by his labor suffice for his support has no claim to
the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining
members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to
equal rights with them in other respects.”
In
America today citizens on the dole actually cannot vote themselves a bigger
piece of the pie. They don’t have
to. Elected liberal officials gladly do
this for them.
Are there any examples of letting the people
vote on all tax matters and if so what have been the consequences? There is one outstanding example,
Switzerland.
Switzerland
is often said to be the only real democracy in the world. America has what is called representative
government, giving members of the legislature the last word on almost every
major issue facing society. If new
taxes are put in office or if tax rates are raised, this is a legislative
matter.
Taxes are very much a consequence of lobbying, class politics, and
influence. Normally, when one
segment of society becomes burdened with new taxed, another segment benefits
from a reduction. Tax burdens and
benefits shift from one class to another depending upon how much (or how
little) each class influences the legislature.
In
Switzerland the final decision on revenue is made by the voters. Unlike the
Canadian or U. S. legislators, Swiss legislators cannot vote themselves a
salary increase. Salary raises must be
submitted to the Swiss people. If
increases are to be made in the tax rates, the voters have to approve. The Swiss people keep an extraordinary check
on the taxing power of their government.
In 1975 the Swiss government submitted a referendum to the voters for an
increase in the income tax rates. The
voters turned it down cold. When one
prominent Swiss citizen was asked what this meant, he said, “The government will have to live on what it has - like the rest of
us.”
The
Swiss practice of submitting all revenue matters to a vote of the people
embodies the wisdom of separating the power to tax from the power to
spend. Once these two powers reside in
a single governmental agency, the power to spend will invariably override
restraints against tax. Lest we forget,
the English government was originally established to perpetuate the principle
of the separation of these two powers.
The king, as the great tax spender of the realm, was never given the
power to increase or to institute new taxes.
In
reference to kings, the Founding Fathers feared, more than anything, the
horrors of living under a dictator. To
be under the rule of an absolute monarch was unthinkable. They had rebelled against England for this
very reason. Many of their fellow
rebels had died to insure that America would surely be the land of the free.
The
Swiss did not want a king either. When
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Rights - An Economic Treatise
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concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not
grasped it fully to this day. In
accordance with the two theories of
ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of
God - others, that rights are a gift of
society. But, in fact, the source of
rights is man’s nature.
There
is only one fundamental right: a human being’s right to their own life. All the others are its consequences or
corollaries. The right to life is the
source of all rights.
Thomas
Jefferson, the brilliant author of The Declaration of Independence, laid down
the principle that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among
men.” This provided the only valid
justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect
man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence.
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the government’s function was changed from the role of ruler to the role of
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´fJ [1]Ù Man’s
Rights - An Economic Treatise
The
concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not
grasped it fully to this day. In
accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some
men assert that rightotect the individual with his privacy if liberty is to be
defended with success against the dominance of the state. This, and no less, is what is at stake, the
frightening thing is that is should be necessary to state it.”