Tag Archives: rights

Woke ‘Rights’ Are All Based On Coercion, by Georgi Boorman

A “right” exercised at the point of a gun is not a right. From Georgi Boorman at thefederalist.com:

Supreme Court

The litany of woke entitlements alleged by the left infringe on existing rights, restricting the freedoms of some in order to benefit others.

When the political left finds a meme they really think sells, they go all-in. Such is the case with “forced birth” or “forced motherhood” in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and stated a Constitutional right to abortion does not exist. I wrote recently about how “forced birth” is a nonsensical description of pregnancies resulting (as is almost always the case) from consensual sex. Babies are a natural consequence of sex and procreation is the primary reason sex exists in the first place.

“Forced birth” or “forced motherhood” are projections of the left’s own brutality and reliance on force onto their political and cultural opposition. Abortion is force. Abortion kills; it is a brutal denial of this tiny, developing human’s right to life, the most fundamental of all rights. For the woman’s “right” to be exercised, another life must end.

This wretched truth differs from the left’s construction of other “rights” only in degree, not in kind. They predicate many of their “fundamental rights” on the coercion of others, and if a so-called “right” is based on coercion, it is not fundamental, merely an entitlement guaranteed by a bully state.

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Free Society Dwindles As Permission Requirements Grow, by J.D. Tuccille

We’re reaching the point of tyranny where only that which is permitted is not forbidden. From J.D. Tuccille at reason.com:

Many things once done as a matter of right are now privileges to be dispensed or withheld by those in power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a bonanza for government officials, allowing them to extend authority that they then exercise with relatively little oversight or restraint in ways that would have been inconceivable in the past. It has accelerated the transformation of previously free societies into permission-based states, where things once done as a matter of right are now considered privileges to be dispensed or withheld by those in power. Case in point: the Biden administration reportedly discussed making travel within the United States conditional on vaccination status but is holding back out of fear that the public has yet to be sufficiently softened-up for such an intrusive restriction.

“While more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment,” the Associated Press reported last week after discussions with administration insiders. “That’s not to say they won’t be implemented in the future, as public opinion continues to shift toward requiring vaccinations as a means to restore normalcy.”

The AP emphasizes that “White House officials say Biden wanted to initially operate with restraint to ensure that Americans were ready for the strong-arming from the federal government.” The piece is unusually blunt in the glimpse it offers of an administration that embraces coercive measures to achieve its goals but is trying to co-opt businesses and localities as its proxies until Americans are more ready to do as they’re told.

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Rights Versus Wishes, by Walter E. Williams

Every good or service the government gives someone is taken from someone else, which means the recipient and the victim of theft do not have the same “rights.” From Walter E. Williams at lewrockwell.com:

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: “I believe that health care is a right of all people.” He’s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are “rights” to decent housing, decent food, a decent job and prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let’s begin by asking ourselves: What is a right?

In the standard usage of the term, a “right” is something that exists simultaneously among people. In the case of our U.S. Constitutional decree, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness imposes no obligation upon another other than the duty of noninterference.

As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess simultaneously. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. Again, that right imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference.

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Gimme Some Truth: John Lennon Tells It Like It Is, by John Whitehead

Some harsh truths about “our” government. From John Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.”—John Lennon (1969)

Long before Bette Midler was roundly condemned for tweeting “Women, are the n-word of the world,” John Lennon—never one to pull his punches—proclaimed in song “Woman Is the Nigger of the World.”

Unlike Midler and the rest of the politically correct world, which refuses to say, let alone print, the word “nigger” lest they be accused of racism, Lennon didn’t just use the “n” word—he wrote a whole song about it and included it on his 1972 album Some Time In New York City.

Titled “Woman Is the Nigger of the World,” the song—with lyrics inspired and co-written by Yoko Ono—has Lennon’s brand of truth-telling stamped all over it:

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is, think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it, do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be a slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down we pretend that she is above us
Woman is the nigger of the world, yes she is
If you don’t believe me take a look to the one you’re with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Ah yeah, better scream about it.

Blackballed by most radio stations, the controversial song was widely condemned as racist and anti-woman.

The song was neither.

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Our Right to Ourselves, by Eric Peters

Eric Peters examines the concept of rights. From Peters on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

This business of varying rights – based on what’s between your legs (or where you put what’s between your legs or what gets put into what’s between your legs) or the color of your skin or some other characteristic… it’s like exchanging Pesos for dollars – but vicious because it devalues human beings.

Gay rights, women’s rights.

Rights for people “of color” (the translucent ones had better shut up and sit down).

Rights for the “differently abled.”

Rights defined by the “community” – the collective – you’re (supposedly) a member of.

These aren’t rights. They are grievances. A demand – based on group identification – that a need must be serviced. For example, the “transgendered” asserting their “right” to access the bathroom of their choosing. Notice that this supposed “right” imposes an obligation on others to provide a material benefit. This is a clue that the “right” being asserted is in fact a wrong.

A good way to make sense of rights – real ones – is to view them from an economic perspective. As a species of property.

As a function of ownership.

We can start with a proposition that’s pretty self-evident: We each own ourselves exclusively. Our physical bodies are our property. Who else can lay claim to ourselves? (Possibly, God – if such a being exists. But whether he does – or does not – the point is that other people aren’t god. And other people don’t become gods by becoming government officials.)

To continue reading: Our Right to Ourselves

He Said That? 10/26/14

From Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 1 (1835), which with Volume 2 (1840) are the best and most incisive works ever written on the American experiment:

After the general idea of virtue, I know no higher principle than that of right; or rather these two ideas are united in one. The idea of right is simply that of virtue introduced into the political world. It was the idea of right that enabled men to define anarchy and tyranny, and that taught them how to be independent without arrogance and to obey without servility. The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who gives the command. There are no great men without virtue; and there are no great nations—it may almost be added, there would be no society—without respect for right; for what is a union of rational and intelligent beings who are held together only by the bond of force?

Good question.