Liberty: Where it Ends

America is founded on the basic beliefs in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights, “endowed by our creator,” are vast. However, so many of the debates roiling in this country today can ultimately be traced to one question: where do our rights end?

I won’t make you wait to the end of this post for an answer to the question.

Your rights end where someone else’s begin.

It is on this basis that conservatives oppose something such as abortion. The fact of the matter is, it’s the right-wing that defends freedom will but we oppose abortion because we believe that abortion robs the right of life from another human; abortion infringes on that person’s rights.

To use an example we can all agree on, you do not have the right to rob someone’s house because you are infringing on their right to own private property. You cannot murder someone based on the same logic.

Yet, the liberal would have you believe that it is up to the government to create arbitrary limits on your rights and liberties based on what is “fair.” Who gets to define “fair?” They do. This is because the liberal rejects the idea of God-given rights and instead submits that you have only the rights granted to you by your government. You see, they know what’s best. (Mostly based on the current public opinion polls.)

The fact is that with God-given rights (or “natural law,” for those not inclined toward faith) have natural, logical boundaries. And if you think about it, why wouldn’t they? The universe has rules that govern seemingly every aspect of its existence: physics, logic, etc. The Civil Society simply seeks to codify these natural boundaries in an effort to universalize their enforcement across the Society, not to create (or eliminate) boundaries based on popular opinion or political expediency.

The liberal, however makes every choice with political expediency in mind so as to further his or her personal viewpoint. They way they trample the Constitution, the very basis by which we codify Natural Law, is clearly indicative of a desire to shape our country and society in their image: an artificial, unnatural image. Yet, given what we are taught in school, how is the average student to know that not all opinions are equally valid? The liberal, and all those to the left of them, ignore completely the nature of humankind.

They ignore nature (except, of course, to use it as a propaganda tool), and logic and above all, they ignore nature’s God.

If your rights do not end where the next person’s begin, there can only be two things: overlap, which can only cause conflict, and space.

Overlap occurs when two “rights” interfere with each other. For example, we all know that we have the right to private property. However, the government has created a “right” to welfare.  Uh oh! You have money and these other people don’t! Yoink! Thank goodness the government was there to fix that problem (that it itself created). (I’ll write at a later time about welfare. I’m not against it but it’s in desperate need of reform.)

Ok, that seems clear enough but what about this “space?”

When there’s space between where one person’s rights end and another’s begin, do you really think that the government will be satisfied to leave it be? Of course not! Where there is space, the government will find a way to occupy it.

The first example that springs to my mind is government regulation of speech. The leftist often argues that speech that he labels as “hate speech” should be banned (of course the speech that he argues as hateful is always speech from the right and never the poison spewed from the likes of Jeremiah Wright).

The Conservative, on the other hand, argues that all speech is protected up to the point where an individual’s speech creates both an “imminent” and “probable” threat to the rule of law. A true conservative would fight to the death to protect all speech: even speech he or she disagrees with.

But the leftist would seek to inject government into that contrived space between individuals. Using the false imagery of itself as a shield between the speaker and someone who might have their feelings hurt by his speech, the government stretches its tentacles into still more of our daily lives. Then how do we know where our liberty ends?

You’d better be a legal scholar or something to know what you can or can’t do because common sense just doesn’t cut it anymore.