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February 14, 2015

“Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them;

either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.” Liberal Anchor: “Our Rights Do Not Come From God”

Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 14, 2015 10:35 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

And from where would his authority derive?

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 15, 2015 7:23 AM

Conscience. Used to be plenty of it. Handed down from father to son and mother to daughter. Now in short supply and getting scarcer all the time.

Posted by: Bill Harris [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 15, 2015 7:24 AM

Correct.
My rights do not *come* from anywhere.
They just are.
Deal.

BTW, where does gravity *come* from?
Where does time *come* from?

In the absence of human perception do all 3 of those things exist?

Posted by: ghostsniper [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 15, 2015 7:49 PM

I don't know what life, the universe, anything, is really. The deeper I try to think about it, the more I come to realize that these things are unknowable. And if I can't figure it out, neither can anyone else.

This I do know. I have been given a gift, life, for an unknown amount of time, by an unknown and unknowable agency. Call it God if you like, it is as useful a model as anything else. I don't know why I've been gifted, I don't know what for. My rights come from that. It's been gifted to me and no other, to do as I please. And Gandalf helped me to understand that the only thing I have to decide is what to do with the time I've been given.

My rights. What to do, where to go, who to love, what to say to all whom I meet, who to work together with.

The gift can be destroyed, and the rights can be denied. The world is an imperfect place, our bodies are imperfect, there are droughts and famines and evil ideas that bring the ravaging Mongols to our door to slay us all. It will always be so. We are given a gift in a world that grinds gifts to dust.

I've been given another gift. Powers. The ability to decide and enforce my decisions. The power to, if only for a little while, thrust back the grinding world, know peace and joy and beauty.

Our founders pooled their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to create a new government whose stated purpose was to ***secure*** ***some*** of our rights. We the People loaned some of our powers to our government, to secure some of our rights. As for the rest of our rights, that is for to us to deal with as best we saw fit, making agreements among ourselves.

For if we give all of our powers to our government, then I have no means left to decide and act. I have given away my gift.

This is the way it is now. Cuomo and all his ilk, they are either useful idiots, or they are evil. For when a man or woman deny that our rights come from God, then they are my enemy. And I'm sure that's just the way they want it.

Posted by: John A. Fleming [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 15, 2015 11:45 PM

John A. Fleming. Bravo.

Posted by: tripletap [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 16, 2015 3:20 AM

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