Published: September 16, 2007 12:21 am            

Rights are rights

All too common these days I hear statements by people in positions of trust, talking about our constitutional privileges or the rights granted by the constitution. Apparently the entire nation, especially those elected to run the government could use a history lesson.

As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “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.”

Note that the rights are endowed by our Creator and not arbitrarily assigned by the government. The concept of rights granted by the government is actually foreign to our Republican form of government.

Jefferson wrote to David Humphreys in 1789: “There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom. These are instruments for administering the government so peculiarly trustworthy that we should never leave the legislature at liberty to change them.” Think about the current hate crimes legislation and the possibility that you may be punished for saying it is not OK to be gay.

James Madison in his Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 6 June 1788: “The powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

He also wrote to James Robertson, 20 April 1831: “With respect to the words, “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the details of power connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution [that] was not contemplated by the creators.”

The Constitution itself 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 defense, 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.”

The direction is we the people granting limited authority, not the government bestowing rights or privileges.

As Ben Franklin said: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.” Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

With this constant push to relinquish rights for safety, we should all consider that when you give something up you rarely ever get it back. Perhaps if our leaders would do their jobs instead of looking to the citizens to give them more power we would all be better off.

I wish that General Petraeus had presented at this week’s congressional committee hearings, the short version of why the Iraq Battle in the War Against Islamofascism wasn’t won years ago — to wit:

“Mr. Chairman, I won’t need graphs and charts to show you why we are still fighting in Iraq. If you will each turn to the member next to you, you will have found the reason.”

This august body is monitored minute by minute by the Iraqi governmental officials and all Iraqis, down to the man on the street, each waiting for some confirmation that the United States will not cut and run, à la Vietnam.

Even this august body can understand that until this confidence is instilled in the Iraqi people by this very congressional body by a show of valid unity of purpose, Iraqis can’t and won’t provide the vast Human Intelligence (HUMINT) readily in their possession to coalition forces that is necessary to win this battle, and win it fast.

Understandably, without this very body’s commitment, the price is just too high for the Iraqis and their families to face possible eventual retaliatory annihilation by the terrorist enemy in the near future, knowing full well this body’s record of the past —

I will now return to my troops in Iraq and prepare with great anticipation, along with the of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, your rectification of those national military defense deficiencies deemed above by the military’s pay grade.

HUWAH!!



Armond “Si” Simmons

Pell City, Ala.

        

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