IT TAKES AN IDEA TO BEAT AN IDEA.

A recent American Thinker article, "American Marxism and Unalienable Rights," by Steve McCann, appears to take on the attempt by the usual sort of social constructivists to deconstruct the notion of natural rights, or perhaps, of rights that inhere in the individual.  I suspect the Deep Thought he is attempting to take on runs something like this.  Suppose for the sake of argument that there is no Creator.  Then there is no endowment of rights that inheres in individuals.  Therefore, any assertion that rights inhere in individuals is a construction of ... individuals, which is to say, a social construction.  Thus the whole intellectual apparatus of Radical Skepticism can be unleashed on it.

Mr McCann casts the argument as a tussle between the visions of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke on the relationship of Citizen and State.

Over the centuries, those who deem that the state is paramount and, thus, the source of all human rights, believe that granting or limiting these rights is the sole discretion of the state based on what the state defines as the greater good. On the other hand, those who deem that certain rights are God-given, and thus unalienable, believe the state cannot limit or deny these rights but must guarantee them. There is no middle ground.

The United States is the only nation in the annals of mankind to be established on the basis of a political and social philosophy centered on natural, or God-given, rights. Among these are life, liberty, self-preservation, and property. Property rights are the bedrock of the American political system; without that foundation, there are no freedoms.

The Founders held that property rights encompass not just physical property but also one’s life, labor, speech, and livelihood. As individuals own their own lives; therefore, they must own the products of that life. Further, as there is a natural right of self-preservation, man has the right and duty to defend himself against transgressors, including the state, who would deny, abolish, or unlawfully seize his property.

The revolutionary advance of our Declaration of Independence is that of Divine Rights as the birthright of any human. "By the standards of the late eighteenth century, resting Divine Rights in all people, rather than in kings alone, is subversive."  I submit for your consideration, dear reader, that Mr McCann poses too stark a choice between God-given rights and the social constructivists.

The founding of the United States was the culmination of a two-millennia evolution of the philosophical and political belief that there are natural or God-given rights that cannot be abrogated by the state. Yet, this nation for the first time in its 248-year history is staring into the abyss that is the inevitable nullification of these rights by the American Marxists who have succeeded in dominating the bulk of America’s institutions and controlling the Democrat Party. Therefore, it is not hyperbole to say that the 2024 election may well be the most consequential in American history.

Let us return to the original source and think through the logic.

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.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

I repeat: that first sentence stands as a rebuke to the Divine Right of Kings.  We could, alternatively, accept as Founding Premises for a government the notion that life, liberty, and the opportunity to pursue one's dreams are rights that inhere in individuals: does that not sound a lot like the Preamble to the Federal Constitution, in particular, like "secure the Blefsings of Liberty?"  Then comes a run-on sentence, in which the primary clause is "laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form."  "As to them shall seem most likely" is an act of construction that recognizes the possibility of future emergence.  "Any saecular order emerges as a consequence of collective actions, organized or otherwise, to deal with the most pressing challenges of particularly hard times.  Eventually, though, what worked, more or less, to settle those challenges, proves untenable to a new set of challenges, even challenges not particularly pressing."  Deconstructing them for their own sake isn't likely to end well.  The Founders noted as much.  "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."  How many times, dear reader, have I beat that drum?  "Cultural norms are emergent, and it is not wrong to call them "social constructions," although it is an error to deconstruct them willy-nilly.  That's long been a theme at Cold Spring Shops, and maybe, just maybe, it's dawning on people that you deconstruct them at your peril."

Thus, even if there is no such thing as a Creator to endow humans with rights, as a founding principle "Governments exist to secure the blessings of liberty" strikes me as one conferring evolutionary advantage and meriting advocacy and defense even if it rests on a premise, "rights inhere in individuals," defensible only as a postulate.  "It will take a good idea to replace a bad idea, though. Where there are no ideas, there well might be strongmen."  Until the people who would deconstruct either "natural rights" or "God-given rights" offer a better organizing principle, they would do well to respect the governance organized under those principles.