Hi Alfred, I was just reading your post on the difference between “unalienable” and “inalienable”. I found it quite interesting.
I was also reading an article about President Obama omitting “Creator” when quoting the Declaration (http://www.wnd.com/index.phpfa=PAGE.view&pageId=237349) when I noticed that he repeatedly uses “inalienable”. The omission of the one word and the incorrect usage of the other in numerous instances can only be intentional. He’s very consistent about it. I was curious about your thoughts on this.
Matt At the time, I responded briefly. However, here’s an expanded version of my reply:
In the context of American history, the terms “Creator” and “unalienable Rights” appear first and most famously in our “Declaration of Independence” of July 4th, A.D. 1776. There, in its second sentence, theDeclaration offers the single most radical statement of truth in at least 2,000 years of Western political thought:
“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.”
Prior to our Declaration, the nations of the western world were governed by monarchies where only one man—the king—was deemed to be sovereign. The king was sovereign because he, and he alone, was deemed to have been directly endowed by the God of the Bible (the earthly king’s “Creator”) with the “divine right of kings”. That endowment of God-given rights did not attach as a result of an election or human appointment. That endowment attached as the result of a “coronation ceremony” that took place in the highest church within the nation.
The king would wear a crown of gold and jewels which was intended to symbolize the glittering “corona” seen around the heads of the Christ and saints in medieval paintings. The crown didn’t simply represent the king’s secular or political authority; it represented his spiritual authority. Because the king, and only the king, got his rights directly from God, the king had a special spiritual status (sovereignty) that no other man living in that kingdom could match.
We can see some confirmation of these observations in the rules of chess and the design of classic chess pieces. In the classic chess piece design, the king alone has a cross on the top of his crown. That cross symbolizes that the king is directly “endowed by his Creator” with the “divine right of kings” and is therefore sovereign.
Under the rules of chess, you can “kill” (remove from the chess board of “life”) all of the other pieces. If an opponent lands on a pawn, knight, bishop, rook or queen, that piece is effectively “killed” and removed from the board. But the opponent can never “kill” the king. You can checkmate the king by putting him in circumstances where he is both threatened with “death” and unable to move to another, safer location. You can even accidentally put the king in a circumstance where he is not “in check” (being directly threatened) but can’t move without moving into “check” (death).
The king, and king alone, had the “divine right of kings”—which included an unalienable Right to Life. You could capture a chess king, but you could never, never, lawfully “kill” him.
finish the story here:
http://adask.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/god-given-unalienable-rights-individual-sovereignty/