Whose "Rights" are right?

 

 

"My freedom, my right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose..."

 

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

 

There was a very interesting discussion on the thread of one of my postings the other day. It had to do with rights. Rights is a topic so fundamentally important to our way of life, yet we sometimes take the genesis of our rights for granted. I know I do.

My position on rights is very simple. Yes, I do subscribe to the analogy that Oliver Wendell Holmes used. To paraphrase, I can do anything I want until in infringes on someone else's rights. That is where my rights end. I love that way of determining our rights. It just makes sense.

I also believe our rights and our freedoms are two peas in a pod. A saying I had on my study wall when the girls were growing up simply said, "All men are born free. Someone just needs to take that freedom away." What I meant by that is we all are born with natural rights. Many believe these are God given rights. When we pop out of the womb, we are totally free, armed with a plethora of rights. And that is the way it should stay unless someone (voluntarily or involuntarily) takes those rights away.

Our Bill of Rights enumerates our natural rights. Our Declaration of Independence addresses our right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". These are natural or unalienable rights. Should we voluntarily decide to give up some of our natural rights to a government, we then receive legal rights from that government. However, should we not decide to give up our natural rights, our founders believed that those natural rights should always trump legal rights.

So where does that lead us? Today there are many on the "Left" who believe we can't handle our natural rights. We need a 'Big Daddy" government to come and supersede our natural rights with legal rights. However many of us believe otherwise. Our natural rights are the cornerstone of our liberty.

Our Second Amendment is an excellent example. By definition, a person should be able to go out and buy any type of gun, own as many guns, as buy as much ammo as that person desires. This is a natural right. However, should that gun be used for evil purposes, where it infringes on someone other's rights, someone's life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, that natural right would be replaced by the government's legal right.

I liked it when this discussion developed on my posting. We need more discussions like this. We don't teach nearly enough of this subject in our schools today. Way too much Common Core and other confederate teaching going on by left leaning unionists. Sorry - I should not be so harsh. However, our First Amendment reminds me I have the natural right to do so.