Posted on 02/22/2003 10:39:59 AM PST by forest
When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson took a little editorial liberty with the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Consequently, if we modern Americans are to fully understand our own personal rights and liberties, this requires a little explanation.
Back in the days of the Founding Fathers, every family was said to have two well studied books in their library. The most important best seller around 1775, of course, was "The Bible." The second best seller in the Colonies was "Blackstone's Commentaries on The Law," then a new three volume set on English common law.
For the Founding Fathers, "Blackstone's Commentaries" was the law book of the day. Of course, the writings of John Locke and others were freely quoted too. But, they were theory. "Blackstone's" was an accurately written description of our Common Law. Since then, "Blackstone's Commentaries" has been used for over two-hundred years in every English speaking law school in the world. Even today, a well read copy of "Blackstone's" can be found in any American law library.
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin all studied "Blackstone's" at length, as did all of the Founders. That is very obvious in their writings. They quote and paraphrase the text extensively.
So, it is no surprise that the phrase written by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence originated in Chapter One of Book One of Blackstone's, titled "Absolute Rights of Individuals." Blackstone describes the absolute rights of individuals as being our right to life, liberty and property. Jefferson took the editorial liberty of changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness," knowing full well that all Colonial Americans would understand exactly what was meant.
It is us, today's Americans, who seem to have a problem with that meaning. We Americans have lost the concept of true freedom because we no longer know exactly what our rights are. In today's United States, the word "rights" has been corrupted so completely that few Americans any longer know the difference between the terms procedural rights and civil rights, and our unalienable rights and liberties. However, the basics can be learned in less than a minute, so let's examine a little of Blackstone's original text.
Sir William Blackstone defines our absolute rights as "those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it." These rights have also been called natural rights by some.
Blackstone then breaks these rights down into three basic categories:
LIFE -- The Right of Personal Security: "This right consists of a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health and his reputation." Herein can also be found your right of self defense.
LIBERTY -- The Right of Personal Liberty: "This consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, of moving one's person to whatever place one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by course of law." We find this right protected, to a limited extent, within the body of our Constitution, and further guaranteed within the Bill of Rights.
PROPERTY -- The Right of Private Property: "This is the third absolute right, and consists in the free use, enjoyment and disposal by a man of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land."
Our Founding Fathers called these absolute rights "unalienable" -- incapable of being given up, taken away, or transferred to another. In Jefferson's first draft of The Declaration of Independence, the word was conventionally spelled inalienable.
However, the newspaper editor among them, Benjamin Franklin, thought unalienable sounded stronger. And, as they say, the rest is history.
Thus, the protection of Life, Liberty and Property -- our natural, absolute and unalienable rights -- became the underlying reason our country was formed.
There is, of course, a caveat here: As members of society, we are also required to respect these rights in all others. Therefore, the most important reason we empower governments to make and enforce laws is to insure that everyone respects the rights of others.
Towards this end, the body of our Constitution was carefully crafted by the Founding Fathers to allow the central government only certain enumerated powers. Although it may not seem like it today -- with our hundreds of thousands of pages of imposing laws, rules and regulations -- the powers of the federal government were designed to be few, and the freedoms of citizens were intended to be many.
Because of the lack of vigilance on the part of the American public, this ratio of government powers to personal freedom has recently reversed. We can probably recoup many of our unalienable rights again. But folks, it's going to take some effort from all of us. Bureaucrats are not about to relinquish their control over us without a lot of kicking and screaming.
Endless empty assertions, never a source.
Their statements stand unrefuted.
Naturally.
In other words, God's Law and the People's Law.
-PJ
"It has been frequently held by this court that the grant of citizenship is not inconsistent with the right of Congress to continue to exercise this authority by legislation deemed adequate to that end." -- United States Supreme Court, BRADER V. JAMES, 246 U.S. 88 (1918)
Open borders and legalized crack? Hardly.
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