With all the idiots that are getting voted into office, it seems to me that many people out there need a basic lesson on the fundamental rights of man, and today you are going to get one.

There used to be a saying that "Every man should hold onto his billfold while the legislature is in session." This is as true today as the day in which it was spoken; however, we have a worse situation in this day and age. Now "every man loses more rights every time the legislature is in session."

But what are these things we call rights and where do they come from? What is their source? Basically there are three sources of rights, depending upon the form of government: Democracies, Monarchies, or Theocracies.

If people believe that there inheres in monarchs a claim to rule over their subjects by divine appointment, then they call the claim "jus divinum." That is the king derives his authority to make and establish rights from a source wholly separate from man in the same manner we acknowledge biblical revelation to come from a source not human. In other words kings who rule as did the Caesar's, rule by what we would call divine authority. Of course, their divine authority inheres in themselves -- not necessarily in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I say that because they may claim their authority from what they perceive as a god such as the god Baal we read so much of in Scripture.

Secondly, if people believe that humanity itself establishes or provides certain claims, either upon fellow-beings, or upon society or government, then these claims are called human rights. These rights are found in democratic forms of government in which the people themselves determine what is or is not a right, whether this is done collectively or through elected representatives.

Thirdly, if people believe that these claims inhere in the very nature on man himself, they call them inalienable rights. Inalienable denotes the condition of those things, the property in which cannot be lawfully transferred from one person to another.

For example, public highways and waterways are inalienable along with the natural rights of life, liberty, property, and speech. These are principles found in a Theocracy such as we see in the nation of Israel of Old Testament days.

The United States was established as a republic, not a democracy, and upon the principles of inalienable rights, and it was envisioned that government would protect the inalienable rights of man which were derived from God. However, our republic has metamorphosed into a democracy in which we allow our government to determine our rights. And that is why you hear so much about "human rights" and so little about "inalienable rights."

These inalienable rights, in legal language, are referred to as natural rights or natural law. That is, every man has certain inalienable rights which are his simply because he is born, and they are the right to life, liberty and property.

1. The right to life is the right of personal security which consists in a person's enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation. He has the right to marry or not to marry and the right to have children.

   When man marries a woman there are certain expectations or obligations that go along with marriage. For example, it is expected that the man provide for and protect the woman and the man expects that the woman will bear him children and raise those children. Likewise with children a father has the right to the obedience of his children and the children have the right to be provided for and protected by the father.

   We see the violation of this right in the marriage license, for the state will not recognize marriages unless a license is purchased. Therefore the state is pre-conditioning the exercise of a right, and when a right is pre-conditioned then it is no right at all -- it becomes a privilege granted by government.

2. The right of personal liberty consists in the power of locomotion, which is the power to move between two points as one feels so inclined, and to do so without any restraint unless he damages the right of another person in exercising that right. What this means is that the individual has the power to travel anywhere he wishes without qualification and interruption. He needs no approval from anyone to exercise this right.

   We see the flagrant violation in the exercise of this right in the driver's license, for the driver's license preconditions the exercise of this right. By that I mean, if you do not have the license, government will not allow you to travel -- therefore the exercise of the right has become preconditioned. However, if this right existed at birth, it cannot be pre-conditioned. Therefore, such laws violate the right of personal liberty.

3. The right of property consists in the free uninterrupted right to own, use, enjoy, and dispose of all forms of property both real and personal.

   In the case of real property, when man occupies and uses land, he feels a sense of ownership over the land and considers it his land -- his right to land. In feeling this way he must concede that other men have the same right to own and use land. From this right proceeds the right to protect his land from trespassers, and this also means he acknowledges other persons' right to protect their property.

   In the case of personal property, when man takes a piece of wood and makes a shovel handle out of it, he considers the handle as his property. He has the right to use, to sell, or to destroy this property. In having this right, he must concede that other men have the same right, to include the protection of that property.

   We see the violation of this right in taxes upon personal and real property such as the property tax, for it also conditions the exercise of a right. That is you can own, use, enjoy, and dispose of property only as long as you pay the tax. If you do not pay the tax the property will be confiscated from you and sold to another person who will pay the tax. All such laws violate the natural right of property.

Basically a right is a well-founded claim of mortal beings upon one another. A right, then, has to do with duties and obligations between human beings. According to Bouvier's Law dictionary: "Rights can only inhere in and exist between mortal beings."

Therefore, rights do not inhere in and between a government and a person. When we speak of legal rights we refer to a constitutional right, which means that whatever rights exist between men, they are protected by law. But the government or the Constitution does not create the idea of original rights, it only acknowledges them and protects them. As an example, government does not create land but acknowledges the existence of land and protects the individuals' rights in property.

Now if we assume there are inalienable rights which are ours simply because we are born, then these rights remain ours to exercise as long as we live and they cannot be taken away or diminished, unless we violate the rights of another in the exercise of our rights. Perhaps a brief example is in order. I have the right to freely swing my arms and fist anywhere I please, but that right ends just short of your nose. For if I strike your nose, I violate your right of personal security. Likewise, I have the right to travel, but not over your land without your permission.

However, what if it is claimed that we have no inalienable or natural rights from birth. Then we must conclude that man has no rights at all and talking about such rights is absurd. In addition, if rights do not exist from birth, and yet man or government insists that man does have inalienable rights, then these rights can only be construed as human rights which proceed from democracies, those preceding from government -- not God.

In this regard, it is difficult for me to refer to these latter two categories as rights. For if rights inhere in humanity as a whole or a king, and are created or determined by men, then rights can be destroyed by men. How something that can be created by man and destroyed by man can be called a right is foreign to my way of thinking. So now the question becomes, why have I given you this lecture on rights? Well I want people to know and understand that, as Christians, we should consider all our rights as being inalienable rights, that is they exist at birth and cannot be changed or diminished in any way by men or governments. We should also recognize these rights as being given by God, and since they are given by God, they can only be withdrawn or altered by God.

This country was founded upon this very principle of law, and yet our rights are being trampled under foot daily by the very government our forefathers created to protect those rights. What I am trying to tell you is that we no longer live as free men in this country, but as slaves to our master -- the government, who dictates to us what we shall and shall not do -- and thus government has become the creator of our rights and therefore our god.

When government creates, abrogates, and destroys rights, they do so by an assumption of authority they do not have. Therefore all such laws are a trespass upon the people and therefore a crime against the people. However, when we allow our government to make and enforce laws which alter, violate, or destroy the natural rights of man, then we are guilty of destroying our own God-given rights and we are guilty of denying the sovereignty of our God, the only grantor of inalienable rights.

What are Rights? Part Two

NATURAL LAW CONTRASTED
WITH LEGISLATIVE LAW

In our last broadcast I attempted to explain the source of inalienable rights as the natural law, which is the law of God which grants men rights simply because they are born. But when governments are established, they sooner or later destroy rights.

Let's go back in time to when there was no government and see how governments were formed and how they destroy rights. The problem we have with any society of people in its beginning is that some men are not content to work the land to provide an existence for themselves, and these lazy no good for nothing non-producing people band together like a pack of wolves and prey on those who are responsible and are providing for themselves and their families. In short these people are robbers, thieves, or bandits. Over time they grow in size and become well organized and establish a protection racket such as we saw in the 1920's in Chicago. I refer to this as the law of the bandits.

The bandits, like the gangsters, were organized and well armed in comparison to the people whom they plundered. Thus they established territories over which they plundered. They established a protection racket protecting the people so long as they paid tribute to the bandits. These bands of bandits later evolved into governments.

The people, being unorganized, scattered, and basically defenseless, had few alternatives. They could either pay the bandits what they demanded or face death. Thus the people became a type of slave to the bandits because before the bandits appeared they cultivated the land and kept everything they managed to grow, but now the people still cultivated their land but must give a percentage of their harvest to the bandits.

Certainly, the people were protected, at least in a sense, and they were encouraged to produce more and more, of which the bandits always got a larger share. So while the standard of living went up for the people, the people who really prospered in this system were the bandits as they accumulated the majority of the wealth and did nothing to acquire it.

This seems all too obvious, for if we were organized and if we could tax every person in the United States just one dollar per year, our organization would take in 250 million dollars per year; at $10 per person, we would collect 2 billion 500 million per year.

So anytime you organize a government, you are creating an organization of bandits who produce nothing and live off the plunder received from the people. Granted they provide services, but the bandits provided a service and it was a service that the people did not want.

As time went on, there became so many bandits that they had to reorganize and assign divisions of labor among themselves and establish how much of the plunder each was entitled to. Of course, as time marched on the bandit life was recognized as an easy life as they were not required to produce anything and simply lived off the plunder taken from the people who were producers.

But the larger the bandit population became the more complex things became and they found it necessary to establish laws: Laws on how much plundering would be taken from the people, laws determining how much each bandit received, laws to protect the people from excessive plundering from a ruthless plunderer, laws punishing a ruthless plunderer. And once they started making laws, it became a never-ending process. As a new circumstance arose a new law was needed to cope with that particular circumstance.

Of course, some of the people were not as productive as others because of land availability, water availability, or simply because they were not as efficient managers as their neighbor. As a result a class structure began to take shape and those who were not productive lost their lands and became beggars and thieves, or else they starved to death.

The bandits were not happy with the thieves stealing from the people because it reduced the plunder they received in the form of taxes, and so more laws were made to protect the people from these new thieves on the block. So while government itself began as a thief and existed as a thief, government will not allow any competition.

This brings us to modern-day governments such as our own, and hopefully you have already been able to see some parallels in the bandit story and our own government.

When the United States was created, the founders recognized a need for certain functions for the benefit of all, such as a postal service and the defense of the nation, and thus they created a constitution to limit the amount of plunder that the federal government could extract by limiting the powers of the federal government and limiting its ability to plunder through taxation.

So, originally the federal government was given no power to tax the individual -- only the states -- and then based upon apportionment according to the population of the state. The only other way the federal government could raise revenues was by excise taxes, such as those placed upon imports and exports. It should be noted that the federal government lived on the revenues from these taxes for a long, long time. However, the 16th Amendment gave the federal government the power to directly tax individuals, and thus the people became slaves to the federal government.

Granted, before this the people were slaves of the state they lived in, but if they did not like their slave state they were free to move to another state where there was less slavery and more freedoms. And that is one reason the West was seen as the salvation of the working man -- no government, no taxes -- no slavery.

So what then is the purpose of government? From the individual's point of view government only had one function and that was to protect the life, liberty, and property, of the individual; to protect the country from invasion; to establish roads, and a postal system. Pretty limited functions and if our governments, both federal and state, were returned to this low level of responsibility, taxes would decrease, in my estimation, by 90%.

But our government has evolved into a government of bandits providing social services, and once that transition was made then government became larger and larger as the people all wanted to partake of the benefits derived from all kinds of social legislation. Once the people became as pigs feeding from the trough of government, they became as bandits living off the plunder of the working people.

Of course, this creates a cycle that never ends, more social legislation means more taxes, then more bandits are needed to oversee this social legislation which means more taxes, the social programs are expanded and more people become eligible for services and more taxes are needed. The system became so sophisticated that it entrapped the people into becoming partakers of the plunder, and all this is done under the guise of "tax and spend" laws. It was a man named Harry Hopkins, an aide to President Roosevelt, who stated, "tax and tax, spend and spend, the people are to damn dumb to understand."

Of course those receiving the plunder are as happy as pigs in a slop pail, but the producers of the country were running into hard times as their taxes went up, and up, and up and they are not able to feed in the slop pail. So to appease those being plundered, new socialistic programs were passed in which the government subsidizes production of certain things. Now producers and farmers are happy because they are receiving federal funds, in some case even for not farming their land. But of course this just starts another never-ending cycle of more subsidy programs and more taxes.

All this time the bandits have been free from being plundered because as plunders there is no need to plunder themselves. But as time marched on, the government needed more and more money and decided it has so many bandits it is now going to plunder from the bandits. Now a lot of bandits were not very happy with this law but it was either pay up or lose their position as a bandit, and so they paid up.

The first government employees were not taxed. And why? Well it was because government extracted taxes from the producers of the country to pay for the expenses of government, which included employees. So all government employees were initially paid from monies collected from tax revenues, and as receivers of a tax they were not subject to taxation.

Now when the government decided to require its employees to pay taxes, it meant that government still had to collect a tax from producers, it still paid employees with the tax collected from the producers, but now the receiver of the tax, the government employee, is going to use tax revenues to pay a tax. This is nothing more than an additional tax on the producers, only the tax is collected from a different source -- the government employee.

So rather than increasing taxes on producers who were complaining bitterly, the government simply decided to tax its own employees. But is a government employee really being taxed? Obviously not because the tax on wages of government employees is another tax on monies previously collected from the producers. Only the source of collection has been altered -- from the producer to the government employee.

What this amounts to is that the producers are paying double taxation. They pay the first tax directly to government. The second time they pay the tax is when the government employee's wages are taxed. Remember now, when wages of government employees are taxed, it is not a tax on the government employee, it is another tax on the income of the producer collected at another source.

In this regard, no government employee -- federal, state, county, or city -- should ever be required to pay income taxes because it amounts to nothing more than a tax on a tax, and to my knowledge there is no law taxing a tax. And I am sure that all, or perhaps I should say most, government employees will not recognize that they are not being taxed, but they will agree that they should not be taxed.