Do Humans Own Themselves?

A recent article by Walter Williams, the well-known conservative economist, provides an important opportunity for illustrating and explaining the basis for inalienable rights. I usually agree with Walter Williams, but not this time. He does have some good reasoning, but his underlying premise is deeply flawed.

Williams argues in his article that humans have self-ownership - that they own themselves. He then makes several arguments that flow from this premise. Unfortunately, so many people have forgotten the true basis for inalienable rights and thus don't even recognize the terrible flaw in this thinking.

The proper viewpoint is that humans are owned by their Creator - God. Thus, murder is definitely a matter of destroying someone else's property, as Williams points out, but it is destroying God's property.

If we own ourselves, then suicide (assisted or otherwise) should be legal. We obviously can't provide criminal penalties to someone who killed himself, but we do stop people from committing suicide, and we do penalize those who help others commit suicide. That makes sense if committing suicide is an act of destroying God's property and thus wrong. It does not make sense to make suicide and euthanasia illegal and try to prevent people from committing suicide if people own themselves.

The idea that a person owns himself is also behind much of the pro-abortion position. The idea seems to be that the woman owns herself and can decide what to do with her body, but the child in the womb can't own himself because he has no concept of ownership - no personhood - and thus is either owned by no one (meaning killing him causes no crime) or is owned by the mother (meaning she can do with him what she pleases). On the other hand, if all human beings are property of God, murder of the unborn - whether committed by the mother or someone else - is a crime against God and violates His right to that child's life.

Williams is correct that if humans own themselves, they should be able to sell their organs. But this idea of selling one's body parts, before or after death, introduces a big can of worms and a lot of ethical problems. The root of the problem, however, is the starting premise. People don't own themselves, and thus have no right to sell their organs. They are God's property, and thus to place a price on their parts and sell them is to usurp God's ownership and sell what does not belong to them. The current ban on buying and selling human body parts is the correct one, though we have apparently forgotten the basis for it.

While animal and plant life does belong to mankind (because God gave them to us), the ownership of humans is retained by God and only He can rightfully transfer or give up those rights. We humans have no ability to give up or transfer certain rights (such as the rights to life or liberty), which is what it means to have inalienable rights. If I own myself, then I can give up that right of ownership to another (slavery), sell my body parts, or kill myself. My rights to life and liberty (along with all other rights which come from these) would be alienable rather than inalienable.

It is because humans belong to God that we have truly inalienable rights, which is really just our perspective of God's ownership of us. We can't give up or transfer those rights because they aren't actually retained by us. The premise that humans own themselves is contradictory to the concept of inalienable rights. Both can't be true. The idea of self-ownership is very popular today and sounds good on the surface, but actually creates a cancerous thinking that destroys the concept of inalienable rights and with it the basis for our entire form of government and many of the protections that we have put in place to guard those inalienable rights.


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For more information on inalienable rights, read my 5-part series:

Part 1: What are Inalienable Rights?
Part 2: The Source of Inalienable Rights
Part 3: Liberty in Society and Government
Part 4: Government by Consent of the Governed
Part 5: Some Common Misconceptions

Here's What's Wrong with the Kim Davis Incarceration

There are so many things wrong with the Kim Davis incarceration that it is mind-boggling.

1) There shouldn't have been a Supreme Court ruling for same-sex marriage in the first place because the Constitution simply does not say anything at all about marriage. The 5 justices in the majority opinion just made it up because they wanted it to be true. Everybody knows that, including the leftists.

2) Just because 5 justices on the Supreme Court say something is Constitutional doesn't make it Constitutional. We all need to get away from the idea that they are the final authority on what is and is not Constitutional. The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of us.

Here is what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the matter:

"You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps....

Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves."

3) Even if marriage were a matter that mankind could decide for themselves (instead of a God-ordained institution), the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to decide marriage policy for the states since that power has never been granted to the federal government. The Constitution clearly states that all powers not granted specifically to the federal government are held by the states or by the people. The people grant government its power. The real power lies with the people. And until the people formally and specifically grant a power to the federal government, the federal government has no power in that area. This is definitely the case with marriage. The federal government has never been granted the power to define marriage by the people and thus it has no jurisdiction. For the federal government to try to seize that power by judicial fiat is unconstitutional and tyrannical.

4) Because the Supreme Court cannot legislate, no ruling of theirs is a law. Thus, Kim Davis has broken no law by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On the contrary, she has upheld the actual law, which in her case is the Constitution of Kentucky, which defines marriage as the union of a man and woman. Even the people who agree with Kim are saying she broke the law for good reason. Pay attention, people. She didn't break any laws. She followed the law. It's all the other county clerks in the state who are not following the law out of a misguided belief that the Supreme Court has the right to make law and to dictate to the states what they will do in a matter on which the federal government has no jurisdiction.

5) So, for the reasons above, Kim Davis should be lauded as the one person actually following the law. She certainly shouldn't be punished in any way. But even if she were failing in her duties as a public servant, putting her in jail is not the proper response. The proper response is to impeach her. She is an elected official, and when elected officials fail to uphold their duties, the people should impeach them or vote them out. It's not like she broke some actual law by stealing or murdering that has written law against it that defines the penalty for the crime. So by what statute is she being placed in jail? None whatsoever. Her only "crime" if there was one, was in being bad at her job and that is something that would properly be corrected (if there were a flaw) by removing her from office. There is no basis whatsoever for imprisoning her.

6) Even if Kim Davis had broken a law and was rightfully imprisoned, there is absolutely no reason to deny her bail. She's not accused of any kind of violence. And even suspected murderers and rapists get out on bail. It's not like she's so wealthy or well-connected that they fear she's a flight risk and will go somewhere she can't be extradited. So there's no reason whatsoever to deny bail. It's pure animus. It's persecution of one society sees as unworthy of equal rights solely for her unpopular views.

The points above are just some of the more blatant problems with the case. If any one of the items above had been properly understood and properly handled, this wouldn't be happening. The fact that it is happening is evidence that we have greatly lost our way as a country, that we the people are not holding government properly accountable, that most people do not understand the basis for just government, and that we have allowed persecution of an individual and violation of her rights because her views and actions are not politically-correct. May God have mercy on us. And may the people learn from this case, rise up, and never let it happen again.

Why Government Should Protect Traditional Marriage

The problem with the same-sex marriage debate is that nobody (or almost nobody) is making the right argument.
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On one side of the issue we have those who advocate for same-sex marriage, claiming that heterosexuals have the right to marry whoever they want and homosexuals should be allowed that also, out of fairness. On the other side you have people saying that homosexuality is a sin and thus should not be allowed. Both sides are making flawed arguments.

The problem with claiming that homosexuality is a sin is that whether or not it is a sin is irrelevant to making law. We live in a secular country, not a theocracy, and we don’t make everything that is wrong illegal – nor should we. Coveting, lust, and not remembering the Sabbath are sins, but I think we all agree that making and enforcing laws against these things would be bad. 

In this country, laws are based on the concept of inalienable rights (also known as human rights or natural rights) – rights that all people have by virtue of being human and which government cannot grant or take away. These principles of inalienable rights are consistent with Christianity, but can stand alone as a justification that all people can agree with. What’s more, they offer an objective means of determining how government should be involved in making law about various issues. 

Before we get into the arguments about same-sex marriage, we need to understand how government handles different behaviors and why. There are only 3 ways that government can treat behaviors. It can prohibit them, permit them, or promote them. 

Because the highest purpose of government is the protection of inalienable rights, government should NOT prohibit behaviors that the people have an inalienable right to engage in. For example, we have the inalienable right to bear arms and thus government should not prohibit gun ownership. Government prohibition of something the people have a right to do creates an unjust law that itself violates inalienable rights. 

On the other hand, government SHOULD prohibit behaviors that violate the rights of others. So, for instance, government must make murder and theft illegal because these behaviors violate inalienable rights. Any violation of inalienable rights should be prohibited by law in order to protect those rights.

However, there are many behaviors that are not a direct violation of inalienable rights. In such cases, government's main purpose (its secondary purpose, if you will) is the good of society. Thus, behaviors which are definitely bad for society should be prohibited while behaviors which are definitely good for society should be promoted. For example, driving very fast in a car may not always violate the inalienable rights of others (it only does if you hurt them or their property), but it is bad for society for people to be driving recklessly, so driving too fast is prohibited. On the other hand, government promotes giving to charity by providing tax incentives for doing so. Of course, it is necessary for the people to consent to any laws that limit their freedom through their representatives in government. But these are good laws that the people can pass on themselves for the good of society as long as the laws do not violate anyone's inalienable rights. 

The default government position for behaviors is to simply permit them. Before a behavior can be prohibited, it is necessary to prove one of two things. You either have to prove that the behavior violates someone's rights OR you have to prove that it is bad for society and that prohibiting it does not violate anyone's rights. You can't just decide to prohibit something for no good reason or you violate the right to liberty.  

Similarly, before you can promote a behavior you must prove that it is good for society and that it does not violate anyone's rights. You can't just go around promoting behaviors without good reason or you are not protecting the interests of society as a whole. 

So that's the background. The question is, what is government's role with regard to different kinds of human relationships? Which behaviors should be prohibited? Which should be promoted? Which should be simply permitted? 

Certainly some types of sexual relationships should be prohibited. Pedophilia, for example, is prohibited because it is harmful to children (and therefore society) and because it violates the inalienable rights of children (who cannot consent to sex). 

Traditional marriage between a man and a woman has been promoted by government since the beginning because it is good for society. A traditional marriage is procreative, producing the next generation of citizens, and also forms a stable environment in which to raise those children, making them more likely to be good and responsible citizens. Thus, stable marriages are in society's best interest and government promotes this ideal by recognizing and protecting the marriage relationship and by providing economic incentives (such as tax breaks) to encourage people to marry and raise children in stable homes. It's an investment in the future. 

In addition to producing the next generation, marriage forms both an economic and a social unit and provides benefits to society in this way as well. Economically, marriage is a wealth-building institution. Married people make more and save more than singles and children of married couples are far less likely to be poor. Socially, marriage is good for all parties – men, women, and children. Married men live longer and are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Women who are married and children who live with their married parents are far less likely to be abused. Children of married couples are more likely to do well in school. These are just a few of the many advantages of marriage to the individuals and to society as a whole. 

By contrast, homosexual relationships do not provide these benefits to society. No logical conservative is advocating that we prohibit same-sex relationships between consenting adults. We don't cart people off to jail for engaging in consensual homosexual acts, nor do we want to. However, because same-sex relationships have not been shown to be a good for society, the proper role of government with respect to same-sex relationships is to simply permit them. Until same-sex relationships can be shown to have the same benefits to society as traditional marriage, we should not promote them.  

Of course, some claim that same-sex couples have a right to marry. The problem with this claim is that there is no such right to marry whoever one wants. If there was such a right, then it would apply to many more than just homosexuals. Pedophiles who want to marry young children, zoophiles who want to marry animals, those who wish to marry close relatives, and those who want to marry multiple people would all have a “right” to do so if there is a right to marry whoever one wishes. I think we all agree that this is not the case. Civilization has always placed restrictions on marriage and it always will. The only question is what the proper restrictions are. 

The thing is, marriage means much more than just two people that love each other or who want to commit to one another. Marriage is a natural unit based on the biology of human reproduction and, most importantly, the needs of children for care and stability. Only a union of a man and a woman can produce children naturally. Every child has just one biological mother and one biological father. And since both parents have equal responsibility for their child’s care, it is only natural that parents would form permanent unions in order to share that care and provide the stable home the child needs. Thus, every society on earth has figured out how to have marriages as individuals form a marriage relationship with another person of the opposite sex in order to raise a family together. There are lots of kinds of sexual relationships (committed or not), but only the permanent, exclusive, and comprehensive union of a man and woman produces a natural family unit. 

Because the natural family is a natural unit, it has natural rights and responsibilities of its own that government should recognize in order to protect those rights. One of those rights, for example, is the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. If there is no such thing as a natural family with its own natural rights, then there is no such thing as parental rights. In such a case, every man, woman, and child is an individual ward of the state and has no natural family ties. This would also mean that parents bring up their children only by permission of government, which may be revoked at any time. In a society that is increasingly denying the existence of the natural family, it is no wonder that parental rights are also under attack.

One of the responsibilities of the natural family is that parents care for their children, providing food, shelter, love, and education. One of the advantages of this arrangement is that both the mother and the father bring different strengths to the parenting table which are both needed by the child. When one is missing, the child will be disadvantaged. 

In addition to these profound reasons that marriage between a man and a woman is important to promote, there is the extremely important issue of children’s rights. One of the rights of children is to be cared for by their parents. Every child deserves to know and live with their biological mother and father. They also deserve to know where they came from and have a sense of their family history. Obviously, in an imperfect world, this doesn’t always happen, but it is an ideal worth holding up and encouraging in our society. That is why promoting traditional marriage is important in order to help as many children as possible to have this ideal in their lives. 

But not only does a same-sex “marriage” not provide this ideal to a child, it actively undermines this ideal by encoding in law that children have no right to both of their parents and that children don’t need both a mother and a father. Thus, not only are children raised in same-sex household purposely deprived of either a mother or a father, but they are being told by the law and by society that they aren’t lacking anything - they have two parents, after all, and there is nothing about those parents’ genders that matters to their upbringing. But this is quite untrue. Children need and deserve both their mother and their father. Thus, same-sex marriage denies children their rightful parents inherently, as part of the design, not merely as a response to unavoidable circumstances as adoption does. And thus elevating same-sex relationships to the status of marriage unavoidably violates the rights of children and should not be made law. 

In conclusion, it is because of the many benefits of traditional marriage to society as well as its intrinsic natural rights that government protects and encourages marriage. Same-sex relationships do not have the same status as marriage because they are intrinsically different relationships. Homosexual relationships are not a natural unit and can produce no children. They thus have no claim to the natural rights that marriage has. Since same-sex unions have not been shown to provide the benefits to society that marriage does, they are not and should not be encouraged the way marriage is. 

Most importantly, in order to protect the rights of children to their mother and father, we must not pretend that same-sex relationships are marriages. We must not encode a vision of the family in our laws that denies children one of their parents as an inherent part of the design. We must uphold the ideal of a married mother and father for every child.

Legislating Morality: Should All Wrong Things be Illegal?

Murder ought to be illegal. Theft ought to be illegal. Rape ought to be illegal. Few people question these. Most would agree that these things (among others) should be illegal. But the important question is WHY? Why should some things be illegal and some should not? The reason matters. Without a reason for our laws, they become totally arbitrary. How can we advocate for making anything illegal unless we have a good reason for it? How can we expect anyone to agree with us, that some behaviors should be illegal, if we can’t give them a good reason for our views?

One potential reason that is often given in such cases is morality, often based on the Bible. The idea here is that wrong things should be illegal. However, this explanation is insufficient. There are many things that are wrong that should not be illegal. Some wrong things can’t be legislated because we humans cannot detect when they are occurring. Lust and coveting, for example, are wrong, but how could you tell if someone is doing those things?

But even beyond that, some wrong things are none of government's business. Government has authority over some areas of life, but not all areas. So some things, which might be wrong, simply do not fall under government’s jurisdiction, and thus, government has no authority to punish those who do them. For example, if a child disobeys his parents – perhaps he ate candy he was told not to eat – that is wrong. But the government has no jurisdiction to punish the child for the wrong he did. The punishment should be decided and administered by the child’s parents. Government simply has no authority to step in and haul the child off to juvenile hall for eating the forbidden candy. Similarly, if two adults engage in premarital sex, it is wrong. But it is not government’s responsibility to punish them for what they do in the privacy of their homes. A third example would be someone who swears. It might be wrong, but saying an expletive ought not to send you to jail or even cause you to pay a fine.

Because government has limited authority, there must be principles that explain the limits of that authority and explain what falls under government’s jurisdiction and what does not. It is very important to know WHEN it is government's business to get involved and WHY government should be involved in those cases if we are to make law properly.

The principles that show us when government should be involved in regulating or punishing behaviors are known as inalienable rights. Government's primary purpose is to protect inalienable rights and, thus, things that violate inalienable rights should be illegal.

If you don’t know what inalienable rights are, check out my 5-part series:

The Inalienable Rights Series
Part 1: What are Inalienable Rights?
Part 2: The Source of Inalienable Rights
Part 3: Liberty in Society and Government
Part 4: Government by Consent of the Governed
Part 5: Some Common Misconceptions

It should be noted here that no one can create inalienable rights just by dreaming them up. Like the principles of mathematics, they are discovered, not invented. They all logically follow from basic principles and apply to everyone. Thus, they form a solid basis for differentiating the things that fall under government’s jurisdiction from those that do not. In short, any behavior that violates the inalienable rights of anyone should be illegal. Government has a duty to make such behaviors illegal and to provide punishment for the violation of rights in order to protect those rights.

So, with that in mind, murder, which is a violation of the right to live, should be illegal. Rape and slavery, which are violations of the right to liberty, should be illegal. Theft, which is a violation of the right to own property, should be illegal.

On the other hand, premarital sex, though wrong, is not a violation of anyone's rights as long as it is consensual. Thus, it is none of government's business. The same goes for homosexual acts. They may be wrong, but punishing them does not fall under government's jurisdiction. Disobedient children, assuming they have not violated the inalienable rights of anyone, should not be punished by government. Taking God’s name in vain, though serious enough to be forbidden in the Ten Commandments, does not fall under government’s jurisdiction because it violates no one’s rights.

At this point, many conservative Christians tend to object. They don’t like idea that not all wrong things should be illegal. They point out that God’s laws are the ultimate foundation for all morality and truth. They question the principles of inalienable rights. They point out that inalienable rights can only exist if there is a God. I’m not unaware of these arguments. However, those who claim that laws should be based simply on morality or the Bible are making some very serious mistakes.

For one, when you conflate “wrong” with “illegal,” you are allowing government to become the arbiter of truth rather than leaving that role to God. God decides what is right or wrong and it is God’s job to punish wrongdoing. In some cases, God delegates the authority to punish evil to government. But in other cases, He doesn't. If it was true that everything that is wrong should be illegal, that means government is doing God’s job. If you think government is the punisher of all evil, then you are displacing God and elevating government to an improper role.

Not only that, but when you conflate “wrong” and “illegal,” people tend to think that if something is legal, it must be okay. Thus, there are lots of people, for example, who think abortion is okay because it's legal. They are looking to government as the arbiter of right and wrong because they think “wrong” and “illegal” are the same thing. People also get the opposite idea too. If something is illegal (like sharing your faith in some countries), people think it's wrong. Again, the problem is a lack of understanding of the proper role of government and its limitations.

Another problem that occurs when people don't understand the proper role of government is government overreach. If you think all wrong things should be illegal, you tend to advocate for government to step in whenever there is something you don't think is right. This grows government to a huge size and gives it far too much power.

It has been said that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything away from you. It is similarly true that a government big enough to disallow every wrong thing is big enough to disallow (or allow) whatever it wants and to try to elevate itself to the place of God in the lives of the people.

So, I’ve explained why it is important to understand which things actually do fall under government's jurisdiction and which do not. It is so important to make the right argument about how we should make law. You can't say, or even imply, that being wrong is the sole reason a behavior should be illegal without assigning government the wrong role and usurping God's place as arbiter of right and wrong. Instead of simply saying that something is wrong, we need a rationale for why a particular sin falls under government's jurisdiction, not just God's. In other words, we need to show how a behavior violates inalienable rights in order to justify making it illegal.

A More Accurate Political Spectrum

People often have a mistaken view that fascism and communism are opposites, with modern conservatives and liberals somewhere in between.

Picture reference

This political spectrum has communism as being to the far left and fascism as being to the far right. The argument is that while liberals are more like communists, conservatives are more like fascists. Part of the confusion on this issue stems from the fact that this political spectrum is actually taught in colleges. However, it is completely false (and I'm certainly not the first to point this out).

The truth is, communism and fascism have more similarities than differences. Both communism and fascism are forms of government that involve little or no freedom of the people. Both forms of government trample on the innate inalienable rights of the people. They also have many other similarities such as unlimited patriotism/nationalism (the country matters more than individuals or their rights), government-controlled media, government control of industry and trade, and lots of pro-government propaganda. Are you seeing a trend here? Fascism and communism are just different forms of overbearing and bloated government. They aren’t opposites at all.

A better understanding of the political spectrum is to rank forms of government by the amount of freedom the people have (or, inversely, how big and powerful government is). So, on this scale we have anarchy on one side and totalitarian regimes (such as communism and fascism) on the other.
 

Picture reference

 
Obviously, while anarchy offers complete freedom and no government oversight at all, the people have no one to protect their rights except themselves. It is difficult to protect one's life and property all alone against the rest of the world. One must be constantly ready to fight (think of the Wild West where there was little or no government) and the weak are easily taken advantage of. Thus, people form governments in order to protect their own rights. Anarchy simply isn’t a viable way to live for long.

However, on the opposite extreme we have governments that trample on the rights of the people. In this scenario, the greatest threat to one's life and property is not a solitary criminal but one's own government run rampant and unchecked. A government with unlimited power is even more to be feared than no government at all. At least in the case of anarchy one might have a chance of staving off an attack from lone predators that wish to do harm. But an organized and powerful government is something that no one person can stop.

The question is, what form of government and what level of governmental power is the best balance? The goal is to protect the people's inalienable rights (that is why they need government, after all) in order to promote freedom, not infringe upon it. One must have enough government power to punish and deter evildoers (those that infringe upon the rights of others). However, one must have a small enough government that the government itself does not infringe upon the rights of the people. In other words, you want the balance where people's rights are best protected. Since government out of control is more greatly to be feared than anarchy, the best balance is to have the smallest possible government that can protect the rights of the people adequately. This is also the most efficient use of resources because the smaller the government, the smaller the number of government middlemen that must be paid.

As for modern conservatives and liberals, liberals tend to move toward greater government power and conservatives tend to move toward lesser government power. The only thing we need to determine is which side of that ideal balance of governmental power we are currently on in order to determine which political view is best. Should we move toward greater or lesser government power in order to reach that balance point?

In order to answer that question, we need to first ask, do we have enough government power to provide for the punishment and deterrence of crime and other forcible infringement of rights? In other words, is our government's power sufficient for its most basic and necessary tasks? I believe so. Of course, crime still exists (as it always will), but we do have a government that is capable of investigating and punishing it. And we have a government that is capable of defending from outside invasion by those who would take away the freedoms of the citizens. So while this aspect might need some adjustment in details, government definitely has enough power to fulfill its mission to protect the people's rights. If it is failing to do so effectively enough, it is not from lack of power, but from lack of efficiency.

So, next we need to ask, is our government getting too powerful, infringing upon the people's rights and liberties itself? Yes, we are beginning to see some signs of government abuse of power and infringement of the people's rights and liberties. Therefore, we need to move back toward a smaller and more limited government where the people's rights are more secure and there is greater freedom.

 

What is Personhood?

What is humanity? What is personhood? What makes a human being so uniquely a human being? Are all human beings equal? These are questions we must answer.

Not answering these questions – as individuals and as a society – means we have no way to apply the law equally to all human beings. If we don’t know who is a human, how do we know who has human rights? If we don’t know what a person is, how can we tell if we are mistreating one? There has to be a conclusive answer and we have to find it. It’s not good enough to say that no one knows and leave it at that. If it’s really true that no one knows, then we are guilty of criminal ignorance because we have not answered this extremely important question. How can we even pretend to have a just law or any measure of equality if we can’t even determine who it is that is supposed to be equal?

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s an easy question to answer. Defining personhood is difficult. But not because it’s too complicated or esoteric or unanswerable. It’s difficult because we don’t like the obvious answer. We want to make it more complicated so we can avoid the question or relegate it to the realm of unanswerable mysteries. The implications of the obvious answer are as profound as they are unsettling.

The simple truth is that all living biological organisms with human DNA are human persons, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, stage of development, location, gender, disability, or any other characteristic. Those things are only ways of describing a person. They don’t define one.

The problem is that we humans are really good at ignoring or denying this simple fact. We have a really bad track record when it comes to how we treat other humans. We’re very good at rationalizing our prejudices and bad behavior. One way we rationalize this mistreatment of each other is to deny that the other person IS a person. We tend to explain away the humanity and worth of our fellow humans so as to justify treating them differently. We say we want equality, but we really mean “equality” for people like ourselves.

History is full of examples. Trying to separate humanity and personhood, as if they were different things, has been done throughout the ages by those who wish to trample on the rights of others. In Nazi Germany, it was the Jews, the physically and mentally disabled, and the gypsies (among others) who weren’t “persons.” In US pre-Civil War times, it was the African Americans who weren’t “persons.” Even women were once considered less of a person than men. And those are just a few of the more recent examples. But every time we have tried to separate humanity and personhood, we have been wrong. And it has led to horrific crimes against other people.

On this side of history, we see the mistakes of the past and we wonder how anyone could think it was okay to murder, rape, and enslave other human beings. Couldn’t they see how wrong it was? And yet we still haven’t learned our lesson. We still try to define personhood as some esoteric property that some humans do not possess.

I’m referring, of course, to abortion. The murder of the unborn.

We aren’t as enlightened as we think we are. We’re still trying to pretend that some humans aren’t people so we can justify mistreating them. We just changed the criteria. Rather than looking down our noses at people of another skin color, we are ignoring the rights of the youngest and weakest among us. Why? Well, they look different. Same argument, different wrapping paper.

Not only do we ignore the rights of the unborn, but we pat ourselves on the back for our cleverness in defining personhood in the process. We’re so proud that we’ve given up defining personhood by superficial characteristics like skin color or gender. We have better criteria now.  Personhood has to do with self-consciousness. Or maybe it’s about being able to survive outside a womb. Or maybe it’s a heart beat. Or brain waves. Or eating chocolate. Ok, maybe we aren’t sure. But we are sure that those unborn children aren’t the same as us. The details aren’t important. They don’t have whatever it is that makes us a person, so it’s not like it’s murder to kill one. Until they develop that property – whatever it is – it’s okay to end their lives.

The problem with this argument is that “human-ness” or personhood – this elusive quality that makes us uniquely valuable and gives us human rights – is an either-or proposition. You either have it or you don’t. You either are a person or you aren’t. There are no gradations of humanity. We can’t be partially human or almost human. We don’t have some people that are more of a person than others. We have people that are bigger or older or more developed. We have people that are richer or poorer, taller or shorter, more or less capable. But we’re all equally human and equally valuable. We don’t gain our humanity by gaining any physical or mental abilities; nor do we lose it if we lose those abilities. We have this personhood attribute when we begin to exist and we have it for as long as we exist. There is no in-between.

Since development is a gradual process, taking tiny steps of growing ability, it cannot bestow humanity. Personhood must be gained all at once – going from “not a person” to “person” in one giant leap. It cannot be achieved gradually because there are no gradations of humanity or personhood. You can’t gradually develop personhood as you gradually develop consciousness or body functions.

In the end, we see that all attempts to separate humanity and personhood fail. Race doesn’t provide a logical basis for denying personhood. But neither does development. We have to face the facts, no matter how uncomfortable we find them.

The ONLY event that objectively and categorically produces a new human being where there wasn’t one before…

The radical event that we can all point to as the beginning of life…

The time when development starts and a new and unique individual is formed…

…is fertilization.

Only fertilization meets the criteria for an event that creates a new human life. All humans must be persons. Fertilization creates a human. So at fertilization we achieve our humanity and our personhood. The two cannot be separated.

Nothing else makes sense.

 

Why We Need A Secular Argument Against Abortion

Many pro-life advocates use the Bible in making their arguments. While the Bible does have a lot to say about the unborn and about the value of human life in general, the use of Biblical arguments in the discussion of abortion’s legality is often well-intentioned, but misguided.

You see, laws in this country are not based on religion. In fact, our Founding Fathers specifically planned to create a nation where religious freedom was protected. In order to do that, one must have a secular country based on logical principles, not a theocracy. 

History has shown that government based upon religion inevitably persecutes those who disagree with the religion in power. Many, if not most, of those who came to America and founded this nation came to escape religious persecution. They knew firsthand the dangers of living in a church state. They wanted to ensure freedom for all, so they set up a secular government and laid out basic principles to limit the government’s power and prevent oppression of the people. Their principles were based on the concept of inalienable rights – rights that are innate in every human being and which government cannot grant or take away. These rights include the right to life, liberty, ownership of property, religion, a fair trial, and many others – all developed from basic logical principles. And, in this country, laws are to be made by the people, but only in accordance with these principles so that no one's rights will be violated.

Of course, these logical principles are quite consistent with a Biblical worldview – and not by accident. The concept of inalienable rights, for example, comes from the view that mankind is the product of a Creator who has endowed them with these rights. Religious freedom is also consistent with the Bible. After all, even God Himself does not force Himself upon anyone, but gives all people the free choice to choose Him or not. But one cannot enforce every doctrine from the Bible in a secular society. There are things that are wrong, according to the Bible, which cannot be made law. How would one, for example, make lust or coveting illegal? And while the Bible commands us to remember the Sabbath day, one cannot enforce this on all people within a society without violating their freedom of religion. Thus, not everything that is wrong should be illegal.

How does one decide, then, what should and should not be legal in a secular society? The answer lies in applying these basic logical principles and in protecting the human rights of all the people. Thus, murder should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because such a behavior violates the inalienable right to live of the victim and because allowing such behavior is bad for society. Similarly, theft should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because theft violates the right to own property of the victim, and because theft is bad for society.

If we hope to make abortion illegal we must use these same basic principles and develop a secular argument for the rights of the unborn. It is this secular argument we MUST be making if we are to succeed. Many of us who are pro-life are Christians and have religious reasons to believe that abortion is morally wrong according to the Bible. However, that does not mean that abortion should be illegal in a secular society. We have to make the right argument if we are going to produce change.

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So here is a secular argument that abortion should be illegal.

To begin our argument we must first show that the unborn are living human beings. After all, only humans have human rights. To do that, we use science.  

Science uses criteria such as growth, responsiveness to the environment, movement, and metabolism (using food for energy) in order to distinguish life from non-life. Living things, including a single-celled human zygote, show these characteristics and non-living things do not.

So, it’s quite obvious from science that the unborn are living things. What kind of living thing depends on what the parents are. Obviously, the offspring of human parents is human. This is confirmed by the presence of distinctly human DNA and a human pattern of development. Thus, it is clear from science that the product of human sperm and egg is alive and human.

Of course, even sperm and egg cells show characteristics of being alive and they have human DNA, but they are not separate organisms. A sperm or egg cell is simply a piece of an adult human’s body that is essentially broken off and on its own (just like a skin cell can be removed from the body and stay alive for a little while). So sperm and eggs are alive, but not capable by themselves of being anything more than a piece of the body they came from. But once a sperm and egg meet, a radical event takes place that forms a completely new entity. This new cell, a zygote, has a complete and unique set of human DNA that lays out the entire plan for its whole body.

Individual cells that are part of a larger body work to grow and preserve the larger body and are not important in themselves. All that matters is that the body survives, even at the expense of some of the cells. Thus, each cell works for the goal of supporting the body, not preserving itself. Once a zygote is formed, however, this new individual now works as a separate unit toward the goal of growing, preserving, and developing himself. He no longer functions as a part of another body, but forms a new body all his own. The zygote is in fact a new individual, different from both parents, that is already either male or female and which follows the distinct pattern of human development. It just takes time for him or her to grow. But all the information for building the adult body is there from the beginning. The development of the organs and organ systems is just a matter of time, but the instructions are already in place in the zygote, as is the ability to function as a separate entity. This is all well-understood science and can be found in any introductory biology textbook.

So, it is very clear from science that a zygote is a separate, living human individual. The argument that a human zygote is not alive or is not human has already been thoroughly debunked by science.

The newer argument put forth by the pro-choice bunch is that a zygote or embryo isn’t a person (which is a question of value, not science, and thus can’t be answered by science). Basically, the pro-choicers are trying to claim that not all humans are people, which is a very dangerous thing to claim.

The million-dollar question is, if not all humans are persons, then how do we know who is a person? When does personhood begin? Some say at birth. Some say at viability. Some say when the heart begins to beat. Some say when they’re self-conscious. So who gets to decide which definition of personhood is right? And what if they’re wrong? What if they’re allowing real persons to be killed? History says that’s what happens when you try to separate personhood and humanity. We’ve used other definitions of personhood in the past – definitions that excluded some members of the human race. But every time we have claimed that some human beings were not persons, we have been wrong.

At one time, our country claimed that blacks were not persons. Thus they were enslaved and mistreated as their inalienable rights were ignored and denied. The same thing has been done throughout history. Certain groups have been denied legal personhood in order to ignore their innate rights. In Nazi Germany, for example, the Jews were not legal persons, and thus the Holocaust, in which 6 million were slaughtered, was completely legal. It’s very convenient to claim that those you wish to kill or exploit are not persons. Thus, it’s a very common rationalization when one wishes to ignore the rights of others.

Every time we have claimed that some human beings were not persons, we have been wrong. Every time. And it led to horrific results. What is happening now is that we are saying that the unborn are not persons. And, not surprisingly, their rights are being ignored and they are being slaughtered.

But it’s not logical or right to claim that a human being must be born in order to be a person any more than it is to claim that a human being must be white or male or non-Jewish in order to be a person. Logically, all humans must be persons. To deny that is to use some arbitrary criteria for what constitutes a person and thus exclude some humans from that definition. Historically, that has always been wrong and has led to terrible tragedies of justice. What needs to happen is that we recognize and protect the inalienable rights of ALL human beings, born and unborn.

In claiming that the unborn are not persons, what the pro-choice side is really arguing is that we, as a society, decide who has rights. But rights don't come from society or from government. If government grants them, then government can decide, arbitrarily, to take them away from anyone they please. This country was founded on a different proposition – a radical idea that people have innate rights that are not dependent on government. That it is fundamentally wrong for anyone, even government, to violate these rights. These are known as inalienable rights – innate rights of all humans that cannot be taken away for any reason. It is on this fact – this higher law – that our case for the rights of the unborn rests. And it was this higher law on which our Constitution was built.

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The truth is, the unborn do have inalienable rights. They are human beings with the same rights as all other human beings. And those rights should be protected in a secular society just as the rights of all other humans should be. This can be demonstrated with science and logic and can convince even those who do not believe the Bible. More importantly, this is WHY abortion should be illegal – not because the Bible says it is wrong, but because abortion is a violation of basic human rights. All people should be in favor of protecting the rights of all human beings, regardless of their religion.

Linked up with Time-Warp Wife, NOBH, WLWW, and WFMW.

The Difference Between Liberalism and Conservatism

I think the real difference between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives believe in an objective and constant truth and morality. Society can be in line with it or not, but it exists, regardless of whether or not anyone believes it. One example of this objective truth is the concept of inalienable rights. These are rights that all humans have by virtue of being human. Government does not grant them and government cannot take them away. They apply to all people, everywhere, at all times throughout history. It is inherently wrong for anyone to violate these rights, regardless of what the law says. Good law is in keeping with these inherent rights while bad law violates these rights.

In the US, our government was founded on the principle that all humans have these inalienable rights and that good government exists to protect these rights. Many of these rights were spelled out in the Declaration of Independence and in the Bill of Rights. However, not all the inalienable rights were listed there (nor were these documents meant to be a comprehensive listing).

All of these inalienable rights can be worked out logically from basic principles. For example, if anyone has any rights, they must first have a right to life. Without a right to live, there can be no rights. The right to self-defense comes directly from the right to life (i.e. you have a right to protect your right to life). The right to liberty is also derived from the right to life. If someone has power over you to enslave you, they also have the power to take your life, thus you have a right to fight against being enslaved in order to protect your life. The right to liberty also entails that you have the right to choose how to live your own life and make your own choices. It also means that you have a right to the fruits of your labor (a slave works for the benefit of someone else, but a free person works for his own profit as he chooses). If you have a right to the fruits of your labor, you also have a right to own property. If you can’t own anything, then you end up working for nothing, which makes you a slave. So you see how all these principles are worked out logically from beginning principles.

The idea of inalienable rights also holds within it an innate limitation on behavior because of the rights of others. If I have a right to own property, then it must be wrong for someone else to steal my property. If they can steal it rightfully, then I have worked as a slave for them. But if it is wrong for someone to steal my property, then it must also be wrong for me to steal their property. My behavior must be limited by the rights of others around me. Thus, my liberty to do as I choose is inherently limited to those actions which do not violate the rights of others.

It is on these principles that all our laws about crime are based. Murder is wrong because it is a violation of the inalienable right to life. Theft is wrong because it is a violation of the inalienable right to own property. Of course, we have laws in this country that make murder and theft illegal, but that’s not what makes them wrong. They would be wrong even if the law allowed these behaviors. And it would be inherently wrong for the law to allow such violations of human rights. The law doesn’t decide right and wrong. Right and wrong are based on objective principles. It is our duty, as citizens, to discern what inalienable rights exist and to protect them with good laws.

Liberals tend to see things differently. They tend to see morality as changing and based on what society agrees is right or wrong. Since, in our country, society sets the laws, they see the law as determining right and wrong (or determining what is and isn’t a right). So if the society votes that it’s a right to have healthcare, then it becomes a right. Or if society votes that the unborn aren’t humans, then they aren’t. It’s a totally different view of reality and morality. And it’s totally opposed to the view that there is an objective truth and morality. One side must be right and the other side must be wrong.

Conservative positions are all worked out logically from the viewpoint of objective morality and these basic principles we believe in. For example, while the idea of government mandated universal healthcare sounds good and fair on the surface, it isn’t really. You see, no one has a right to any commodity (i.e. anything that costs money). If you look at the list of rights in the Bill of Rights, none of them costs money. You have a right to life, liberty, a fair trial, free speech, etc. But none of those require anyone to give you something that costs them money. If people have a right to healthcare (or housing or food or any other commodity), then someone is required to provide it to them (whether they can pay or not). This means that someone must work for it, but then be forced to give it to someone else for free. That makes that person a slave. People have a right to work in order to provide themselves with food or housing or healthcare. But they don’t have a right to force others to provide those things to them for free (thus enslaving those people). Oh, and by the way, having government pay for it just means you have a middle man that extorts the money from the people (the taxpayers, anyway) and then gives it to others. It’s still a case of enslaving people by forcing them to provide things to others for free.

The rest of our conservative principles are worked out in much the same way. You have to be able to think logically to understand conservatism. In contrast, liberal views are based primarily on emotion and on telling the people what they want to hear. They sound good on the surface, but either aren’t practical or are really a violation of human rights when you get right down to it.

So, on the one hand you have a group that bases its views on absolute morality and basic principles that are then applied logically while the other side is based on emotion and what feels and sounds good. That’s the primary difference between conservatives and liberals.

Demolishing Pro-Choice Arguments

The pro-abortion crowd can be a little slippery with their arguments. They decided long before they looked at the evidence that they wanted abortion to be okay so it could be made legal. It was just a matter of rationalizing their idea to get people to agree with them. In order to do this, they have employed a number of tactics designed to explain away an unborn child’s right to life and justify abortion.

They started out by denying that the unborn child was alive. "We don't know when life begins," they said. Then science made it very clear when life begins. At fertilization a new individual with a unique set of DNA is formed. That is simple fact. Check any introductory biology text. A fetus grows and develops. Non-living things do not do that. There is no question that the unborn are alive from the moment of conception. 

So they updated their argument and said that maybe it was alive, but it wasn't human. It's just a fish or a frog...or maybe just a lump of tissue. Well, science had something to say about that too. The unborn child has human DNA and follows the unique human development sequence. Ultrasounds show that it is definitely a developing individual, not simply an overgrowth of tissue. The unborn child can be shown to be genetically distinct from the mother. No question, science says it is a separate human being. 

So, the next argument was that maybe it's a live human, but it's not a person. This is a trickier argument because science cannot answer this one. This is a metaphysical question of value, not scientific fact. To use this trick, they had to differentiate between humans and persons in some way. They use various criteria for the all-important difference, but none of them hold up to scrutiny. The most common argument is that a fetus isn't a person because it isn't self-conscious. Well, we don't really know that, but even if it is true, the same could be said of newborns. There is nothing that happens at birth that changes a baby’s state of consciousness (or anything else, for that matter). On top of that, there are others we consider persons who also lack self-consciousness - those who are in a coma or a vegetative state, for example. Even healthy children and adults are unconscious during sleep or while under anesthesia. Are these not persons when they lack consciousness? Are they not entitled to the protection of the law? Obviously, this argument has fatal flaws. 

Actually, there are just 4 differences between an unborn child and other human beings:

• Size


• Location


• Stage of Development


• Degree of Dependency

None of these form a logical basis for denying personhood. You cannot use any of these criteria to define personhood without serious ethical ramifications because you would be denying personhood to many individuals, not just the unborn. 

The last argument, and the one which is perhaps the most sinister, is that an unborn child is indeed a living human person, but that it has no right to live off of its mother. The mother's right to bodily autonomy, they say, is absolute and no child has the right to use his mother's body for shelter or sustenance. They view the child as a parasite, feeding from the mother, and this gives her every right to kill him in their opinion. What a twisted view!

The thing is, a woman's body is designed to bear children and the existence of a child within her womb is not at all like a parasite taking from its host. Further, a woman has a responsibility to her child. A mother cannot refuse to feed her child after he is born. She cannot leave a newborn out in the cold to die. The child has an inalienable right to live. When you create a child, you have the unavoidable responsibility for taking care of that life. Outside the womb, this means you must feed and shelter that child. It means the same thing before birth. The difference is, before birth the options are more limited as to where that care can take place. The unborn child needs the protection of the mother's womb just as babies who have been born need clothing and milk. A mother cannot refuse to meet the needs in the latter case, so why should she be allowed to neglect the needs in the former case? The child's rights have not changed. The mother's responsibility has not changed. Birth changes only the location of the baby - not his status as a human being and not his right to live.

Linked up with NOBH, WFMW, Growing Home, Seeds of Faith, WLWW, Time-Warp Wife, and Teaching What is Good. 

What it Means to Be Conservative - Part 5: The Right to Bear Arms

Here we go. The long awaited fifth part of the What it Means to Be Conservative Series is finally here. If you've missed the others, check out the earlier installments.

Part 1: Limited Government and Free Enterprise
Part 2: Anti-Elitism
Part 3: Wealth Creation
Part 4: Natural Law

In Part 5, I'll be talking about a very important part of the conservative viewpoint: the right to bear arms.

Now, when we conservatives refer to the right to bear arms, we mean an inalienable right - a right that all people have by virtue of their existence and that cannot be rightfully taken away or given up. This right to bear arms is right up there with the rights to life and liberty. In fact, the right to bear arms is derived from the rights to life and liberty.

How so, you ask? Think of it this way. If you have rights to life and liberty, you must also have a right to protect your life and liberty from those who would threaten to kill or enslave you or else your rights mean nothing. If you have no way of protecting yourself, your rights to life and to liberty may be trampled on with impunity. Thus, there must be a right to defend yourself. Even our laws recognize this right. If someone threatens your life and you kill them while defending yourself, you go free. You can't be punished for murder when you act in self-defense.

The right to bear arms is an extension of the right to self-defense. You aren't required to use only your bare hands to defend yourself against those who are attacking you. You may use various implements in protecting your life and liberty - whether knives, guns, baseball bats, or whatever. And if you desire to own a particular object that makes defending yourself easier, you have the right to obtain and keep such an object. This is the right to bear arms.

However, while guns are very useful for protecting oneself, this is only one aspect of the right to bear arms. This argument alone is sufficient to show that we have such an inalienable right, but it doesn't show the full reason that this right exists or that our Founding Fathers specifically included this right in the Bill of Rights.

Plenty of people (on both sides of the gun-rights issue) speak of the right to bear arms as if it's all about the right to go hunting or the right to defend yourself against muggers. While hunting and defense against criminals are valid and very important uses of guns, this is not the reason that this particular right is one of the first rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights. You see, if the right to own guns is merely about having a rifle to go hunting with, then those who don't hunt...well, they don't need guns and maybe the government should keep them from having guns (or so some would argue). Similarly, some try to argue that cops may need guns, but private citizens do not since they can rely on law enforcement. There are flaws in both arguments, but even pointing out that people sometimes need to protect themselves because law enforcement is not present doesn't get at the real issue.

The real issue is that we the people must have the right to bear arms because without this right, we will not remain free. An unarmed people is not only at the mercy of violent criminals, but of their own government as well.

Remember that the Founding Fathers, when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, had just thrown off the oppressive government of England by force and instituted their own government. They knew that without arms - without guns in the hands of the colonists - they would never have been able to stand up to the tyrannical government that was violating their inalienable rights. The colonists were able to not only fight against the well-trained and well-equipped British military, but win - precisely because they had the arms to do so. With that in mind, they wrote the Second Amendment in order to ensure that future generations of Americans would not have to live in fear of their government.

Notice the language of the Second Amendment:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Notice that it doesn't say "The need for a person to be able to kill deer..." or "The need to protect onself from criminals..." is the reason for this right. It says that having arms in the hands of the people is necessary in order for the people to remain free. They knew that the people must hold the threat of forcible removal of their government in order to prevent government from taking their freedoms. Without actual firepower in the hands of the people, the political power will not remain with the people either.

And, of course, history bears this out. Every government that has disarmed its citizens has soon become tyrannical - taking absolute power and killing large numbers of its own people. The history of disarmament is a bloody and gruesome one. The Founding Fathers knew that the same horrible attrocities could happen here as well and thus they gave us the Second Amendment to ensure that the people always hold the power.

So, on that note, here is 5th part of the video series with Bill Whittle, which points out many of the same points I just made. He makes some other good arguments as well. For example, he makes a very good point that if you take away the Second Amendment, you will also destroy the First Amendment because if someone decides that "real people can't be trusted with dangerous guns, it's just a matter of time until they decide that they can't be trusted with dangerous ideas either." He also makes the same point I have elsewhere, that guns are equalizers that enable the weak to protect themselves from the physically strong. Watch the video and comment below.

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Here are all the parts of this series on What it Means to Be Conservative:

Part 1: Limited Government and Free Enterprise
Part 2: Anti-Elitism
Part 3: Wealth Creation
Part 4: Natural Law
Part 5: The Right to Bear Arms
Part 6: Legal Immigration
Part 7: American Exeptionalism

What it Means to Be Conservative - Part 4: Natural Law

So far in this series, we have looked at several aspects of conservative views. I discussed why conservatives believe in limited government and free enterprise, why we abhor elitism, and how we know that wealth can be created through human creativity and work. In this fourth part of the series, we will look at a topic I have already written about: Natural Law.

Natural law is law that is higher and more basic than government. Unlike political law, which is arbitrary and made by humans, natural law proceeds from the nature of things and is thus older than government and cannot rightfully be overturned or violated by any political laws.

One of the major concepts of natural law is the concept of inalienable rights - rights that people have by virtue of their existence that cannot be given up or taken away by anyone (even government). These inalienable rights are granted by God, the Creator. However, even those who do not believe in God can agree that humans have these basic rights.

I have written a 5 part series on inalienable rights so I won't repeat all of that here, but you can read those posts to learn more about inalienable rights:

• What are Inalienable Rights?
• The Source of Inalienable Rights
• Liberty in Society and Government
• Government by Consent of the Governed
• Some Common Misconceptions

This concept of natural law explains why conservatives consider some political laws good while others are considered bad. Liberals like to pretend that we conservatives are inconsistent, liking government involvement in some areas and hating it in others without any rhyme or reason (other than our religious beliefs, perhaps). However, there is a consistent and logical basis for the positions we hold (although not all who hold these positions know the logical basis, unfortunately). Political laws that are consistent with natural law and that protect the inalienable rights of the people are good laws. Political laws that are inconsistent with natural law, whether by violating inalienable rights or placing undue restrictions on the liberty of the people, are bad laws. It's really as simple as that.

So, here is the 4th part of the video series. In it, Bill Whittle explains natural law and how it forms the basis for our American laws. He also explains how bad laws (i.e. those inconsistent with natural law) have led to the current economic problems. The one area on which I would disagree with this video (and it's probably more a disagreement with his wording than his actual viewpoint) is where he says that the Bill of Rights "protects freedoms given to us at birth." The truth is, those freedoms and rights are bestowed on us by our Creator, which means they begin at our creation - the very beginning of our existence. Since each human being begins to exist at fertilization, these rights are ours even before birth. Other than that issue, I find this video very informative and useful.

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Here are all the parts of this series on What it Means to Be Conservative:

Part 1: Limited Government and Free Enterprise
Part 2: Anti-Elitism
Part 3: Wealth Creation
Part 4: Natural Law
Part 5: The Right to Bear Arms
Part 6: Legal Immigration
Part 7: American Exeptionalism

What it Means to Be Conservative - Part 2: Anti-Elitism

One of the major things that we conservatives are against is the concept of elitism, the idea that some people - those who are highly intelligent, educated, or wealthy - should be able to run the lives of others. The idea that these elites know more about how we should run our lives and should therefore make decisions for us is an idea that we find revolting and insulting. We do not and will not submit to having our lives dictated for us by those who consider themselves smarter or more qualified.

What conservatives also know is that the idea of a country run by elites is completely counter to the government that was set up by our Founding Fathers. While all other countries had elites to run things, whether a single king (monarchy) or a small group (oligarchy), the radical idea of the Founding Fathers was that the power belongs to the people. Each individual is the monarch of his own life, endowed by his Creator with the power and responsibility to make his own choices and to decide for himself how he will live. In this view, all men are equal under the law because each man or woman has this innate sovereignty. No one has been born to rule over others, nor can anyone attain the right to rule through any amount of achievement or capability. All people are inherently equal - subject only to God (their Creator), not to each other. This is the radical idea from which this country was born.

While we conservatives recognize that men are equal, we also realize that government is needed for the protection of the people. However, our government, unlike other governments, does not consist of elites making decisions for the people. Our government was set up as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The power that is wielded by government officials is lent to them by the people. The people have the power, and they have delegated some of that power to certain individuals who are selected by the people to represent them. For a more detailed discussion of this concept of delegated power, see my post on Inalienable Rights - Part 4: Government by Consent of the Governed.

Unfortunately, in this country we have allowed the concept of elitism to creep back in. Both parties are guilty of this. Too many politicians see themselves as the smart ones who must take care of the rest of us by giving us what we need and telling us how we should live our lives. Those of us who hold to the vision of our Founding Fathers want to take back our country from those who believe they have a right to rule over us.

In this second video of the series, Bill Whittle explains why elitism is morally repugnant as well as being unworkable on a practical level.

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Here are all the parts of this series on What it Means to Be Conservative:

Part 1: Limited Government and Free Enterprise
Part 2: Anti-Elitism
Part 3: Wealth Creation
Part 4: Natural Law
Part 5: The Right to Bear Arms
Part 6: Legal Immigration
Part 7: American Exeptionalism

Why Prostitution Should Not Be Legal

Note: For those concerned by the title, this post is NOT sexually explicit. It simply covers the issue of prostitution (in very general terms) from the viewpoint of inalienable rights. I do my best to remain discreet and tasteful even when discussing activities that are not.

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One of the major problems I have with some of the ideas of Libertarians is that they misunderstand inalienable rights and their application in government and society. This has led to some incorrect views on some major social issues such as recreational drugs, abortion, and prostitution. I’ll be examining some of their claims in coming posts.

In this post, I’ll examine one of the claims of the Libertarians: that prostitution (if voluntary) hurts no one and should be legal. This claim is false on both fronts. Prostitution does in fact cause harm, even when it is voluntary. It is also a violation of inalienable rights and, since government’s highest purpose is the protection of inalienable rights, it should be illegal.

First of all, prostitution violates the inalienable rights of the prostitute. This is true even if the prostitute wants to be a prostitute and wants the specific act with the specific person. As we saw in Part 1 and Part 2 of my inalienable rights series, God, as our Creator, retains rights to us. Since we are the work of His labor, we are not free to do whatever we want with our bodies. A person’s inalienable rights cannot be given up, even by the person himself, since they are really rights that God retains to His creation. For example, we cannot rightfully kill ourselves or sell ourselves into slavery, even if we wish to. Prostitution is, at its heart, a selling of the intimate self. Such a thing is not permissible, nor should it be.

Prostitution also causes physical, emotional, and spiritual harm to both parties involved. It is not a “victimless crime.” Physically, there is great risk of transmitting sexually-transmitted diseases. Many people who wish to legalize prostitution point to countries where it has been made legal and where medical evaluation and treatment are available to lessen this factor. While the precautions taken in these countries are better than nothing, they can, at best, lessen the risk. They cannot take it away completely.

Emotionally, prostitution is also harmful to both parties. To claim otherwise shows a profound misunderstanding of the nature of sex. Contrary to popular opinion, sex is not simply a physical act. Sex was designed to be a complete merging of a man and a woman in marriage to become physically, emotionally, and spiritually connected on the deepest level. The two become one. Even when used outside the bounds of marriage, sex still connects people. It has been described as “emotional superglue.” During sexual activities, the hormone oxytocin is released from the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. Oxytocin is often referred to as the “cuddle hormone” and it produces feelings of love, satisfaction, and attachment. It is the same hormone released when a mother cuddles and nurses her child that bonds them together. Regardless of whether two people love each other or have a marriage commitment, the same hormone is released when they engage in sexual activities together. In the absence of a committed relationship, the hormone causes only mental and emotional havoc. To have complete strangers engage in such an intimate activity short circuits the way that sex and sexual relationships are designed to work. It leaves people with a disconnect that hinders their ability to really love and bond emotionally in a marriage relationship. It may also produce feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and lack of self-esteem. Prostitution is especially damaging to women, who are more emotionally vulnerable. In essence, prostitution is simply rape that has been agreed to for a price and bears the same emotional consequences.

Another thing to consider is that, if the john is married, prostitution is also a violation of the conjugal rights of his wife. A husband and wife have a covenantal relationship such that (among other things) they have exclusive rights to each other’s sexual acts. Marriage is, by nature, sexually exclusive. It is designed to be a merging of two selves to become one. It is impossible to give yourself wholly to more than one person; each person has only one self to give. In marriage, that self is given to the spouse. Married couples no longer belong only to themselves, but belong equally to each other. Thus, prostitution steals that which rightfully belongs only to the spouse. Prostitution (of either spouse) violates the marriage relationship by attempting to give part of the self (which belongs to the spouse) to another.

Since prostitution violates inalienable rights and in some cases is a violation of conjugal rights, government should protect these rights by making prostitution illegal. However, even if prostitution violated no one’s rights, society has the right to decide that certain activities will not be allowed as long as they are not thereby violating anyone’s inalienable rights (as we saw in Part 3 of the inalienable rights series). The ability to be or use a prostitute is not an inalienable right. At best, it would be an individual liberty (although, as we saw above, it is actually a violation of inalienable rights). Thus, banning prostitution does not violate any inalienable rights. Prostitution has detrimental effects on society (such as the breakup of marriages, the spreading of sexually-transmitted disease, and the devaluation of women). A society is therefore justified in making such activities illegal without having to prove that the activity directly violates someone’s rights.

Thus we see that the arguments of those who wish to legalize prostitution are flawed. Prostitution does indeed cause harm to both the prostitute and those who use her and also brings harm to society. More importantly, however, prostitution violates the inalienable rights of the prostitute and the conjugal rights of any married participant’s spouse. All of these are good and sufficient reasons for making prostitution illegal.

The response of some Libertarians (like Ron Paul) to the issue of prostitution is to “leave it to the states.” That’s the standard Libertarian response to every issue on which they don’t want to take an actual stand. But this is not the proper response. While many issues should be handled at the state level, no government at any level has the right to allow inalienable rights to be violated.

This is an extremely important point that Libertarians have failed to distinguish. They think they are returning to the fundamental concepts of the Founding Fathers, and in some cases they are, but in this case they promote a view that is totally inconsistent with the principles on which this country was founded. Inalienable rights are only inalienable if the person cannot give them up under any circumstance. This is because God holds these rights and has not granted them to mankind. Thus, as the Founding Fathers understood this concept, inalienable rights imply that a person does not have the right to participate in certain activities – those that violate anyone’s inalienable rights (even his own). Since government’s most basic purpose is to protect inalienable rights, it is the duty of all government – federal, state, and local – to make and enforce laws that make violations of inalienable rights illegal. So if prostitution is a violation of inalienable rights (and it is), then no state or federal government has the right to legalize it.

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