Natural Rights

 In the Daily Signal there is a piece detailing what a US Senator thinks of Natural Rights. Namely:

During a nominations hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, the former Democrat vice presidential candidate said, “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator … that’s what the Iranian government believes. … So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” 

 Now I have written a short book on Natural Rights, a field of study going back centuries. This Senators if clueless.

As I stated:

Our argument is simple. The term Nature is an artifact of the past but it can now take on a reality in fact. Consider the statement; humans walk upright. The comparable statement is that; it is in the Nature of a human to walk upright. But as we know today, scientifically, the genetic structure of human genes results in processes, functions, and structures that make human walk upright. Namely the Nature of a human is to walk upright is the same as the genetic predispositions of humans to walk upright. Genetic structure and functioning are then the basis of the term Nature. We argue they are the sole basis.

It is in the Nature of a rose to have thorns. The genetic makeup of the rose is such that it has the persistent propensity to have thorns. Thus, Nature and Genetics are isomorphic and isometric. We often see various individuals opine on such things as justice and rights. The current milieu in these areas focuses on right and justice in the context of a society, not individuals. Moreover, we see the society broken down into identity group, identity politics if you will, where collectives of individuals who possess certain belief sets congregate to promote their specific interests in those belief sets, their assumed identities.

The two terms are our focus herein. Rights inure to an individual and place a demand on the society in which they exist. Justice on the other hand inures to the society and places a demand on the individuals in the society. In a sense they can be complementary and on the other hand they can be conflicting. We then take another step and examine the construct of Natural Rights and then its alternative Social Justice. Natural Rights we will argue is something emanating fromthe 14th century Franciscan Friars and in a way their women colleagues in the Franciscan orders,

the Poor Clares, and their battles with the rather arrogant Pope John XXII, in Avignon. From this battle emerged the rights of individuals. In contrast the construct of Social Justice emanates from the 19th century ideas of a state's responsibility to care for its citizens. Thus, we have two rather seriously conflicting principles; the rights of individuals, as stated in the US Bill of Rights, and the Social Justice movement which is the benchmark of 21st century Progressive politics.

 Thus Natural Rights is "natural" to the human, NOT granted by any Government. The literature on this is extensive. How do we have so uneducated a political class. This Virginian in my opinion disgraces the work of Jefferson, not to mention Paine.