Thursday, October 21, 2010

"...endowed by their Creator..."

The President of the United States has recently quoted the Declaration of Independence, directly or indirectly, in three recent speeches. Or, perhaps, I should say MISQUOTES it. He suspiciously leaves out the phrase "endowed by their Creator". For those who do not follow either of the hyperlinks to the Declaration or Presidente Obama's speech should know that the text says,

"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."

This clearly is not accidental, as he has done it now three times. Anyone who knows anything about the history of religious liberty in the western world, upon reading the above statement, should be struck by the near meaninglessness of the statement without the words in question ("endowed by their Creator"). If the Creator (whether Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, the Great Spirit, or a higher consciousness) did not endow humans with rights then from whence do they come? For example, if the right to life does is not intrinsic, several questions are raised.

1) Where do these rights come from?
2) Are there limits to these rights?
3) Who determines whom gets these rights?

The bottom line is that if the right to life is not universal then it can be taken away by others. Hitler and Stalin did not appear to believe that Jews, "Homosexuals", and others had this intrinsic value. This may have been because they did not believe in a higher authority. In Stalin's case we are sure of this. It stands to reason that if Mr. Stalin could not believe that a higher power existed, he could not have believed that it had endowed his political enemies with rights. By the way, this does not mean that Theists do not commit human rights violation. They, in fact, do. However, this is in contradistinction to their stated beliefs.

I am not suggesting that one must be a Theist to believe in natural law. One, simply, need see two facts.
First, the political, religious, and social freedoms of the western world depend on this implicit acceptance of natural law, endowed by a higher authority. Second, as G.K. Chesterton wrote, that if God is removed from society then the government will attempt to become the god. Negligence of Natural Law is the canary in the coal mine. If a higher authority is removed, humans try to take its place and history tells us that consequences are often horrendous.

Please Mr. President, the USA has fought too long and too hard to reach this point of balance between individual rights and responsibilities. Besides, to misquote the Declaration of Independence, is simply irresponsible history.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Muslims using Good Cop/Bad Cop tool

There is a link that shows how Muslim Activists use the Good Cop/Bad Cop threat to advance their agenda. As a former Muslim, I truly empathize with Muslims who would like Islam to be more peaceful. I had hoped for the same thing. I suggest that Muslims who want Islam to be peaceful should work with the west and "out" the radicals, instead of subtly threatening western, non-Muslims.