- Joined
- Sep 11, 2018
- Messages
- 328
- Reaction score
- 116
- Location
- Brooks, Alberta
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
TDGonDP:
The notion of individual rights was a concept born out of the the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment and the rise of humanism which began furtively in the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe but gained real political traction in the mid to late 18th Century. The source of these "natural rights" was a difficult case to make as they were supposed to reside in each human being naturally but some folks were considered to be more human and deserving of rights than others. Thus kings claimed divine rights to rule absolutely over their subjects, derived directly from God while subjects claimed natural rights of freedom in opposition to the divinely endowed rights of their absolute kings and their burdensome aristocracies. But how to match the legitimacy of divinely endowed rights? The answer was if you can't beat them, then join them. Thus the humanists of the Age of Reason and the desists of the Enlightenment turned to God as the source of their rights and claimed divine provenance for their demands to the rights they craved and thus pinned their justification to poor, overworked God's collar.
The champions of natural rights then claimed that these natural rights were universal, but that universality wasn't as all-encompassing as it is assumed to be today. These rights largely excluded non-European indigenous peoples who were either exterminated or who were forcefully compelled to struggle under the yolk of imperialism in order to make empires profitable. These natural rights did not extend to slaves or indentured workers who remained in perpetual or temporary bondage to their masters. These universal rights did not apply to those branded by society as criminals or undesirables such as debtors or freehold farmers during the Enclosure movements which periodically gripped Europe. These universal natural rights did not apply to women or children who were excluded from some or all of these rights because they were deemed to be unable to defend themselves and were thus the chattel (property) of men (men with property that is). So the universality was as much a sham as the claims by ardent humanists that God was the source of these natural and universal rights.
The notion that these natural rights were unalienable/inalienable is also born out of the divine provenance claimed by the champions of natural rights like Rousseau, Locke, Mills, Paine and many others. If these rights were bestowed upon human men of property by "God himself", then no man or corporation of men such as a state could remove them without going against God's will. To go against God's will was at best taboo and at worst highly illegal and would therefore discredit any corporation or state from exercising such power over men of means, thus allowing propertied men to legitimately rise in arms against such tyranny and remove such corporations and states from power in order to stop such abuses against God's will.
So what is the difference between an inalienable right and a regular right? God's will. This divine will as claimed by those with sufficient means to arm themselves and revolt/rebel against any corporation which attempts to remove such rights from men of means was a convenient justification which could challenge the hierarchy of aristocracy and the divine right of kings. But it was really window-dressing for one corporation of armed men (rebels/revolutionaries) to challenge another corporation of armed men (the state) to a bloody contest of wills in order to determine who won the power to exert coercive force and thus control over other weaker members of their society. Lip-stick on pigs who aspired to be George Orwell's Napoleon in the novel Animal Farm by replacing absolute monarchy with absolute oligarchy or plutocracy. Dressing up armed rebellion to make it look more legit, public relations really.
Cheers.
Evilroddy.
I have been on DP since September. This has been the best response to any of my posts. Thank you for taking the time to craft it.
It reminded me of my maternal grandfather who emmigranted from Bukovina, Ukraine in the mid 1920s. He saw the transition from the Habsburgs to the Czars to the Communists. Each time the rulers and their minions changed out, the peasants really didn't have a better life; one group of governing thugs just replaced another. When Grandpa saw an ad for settlers to come to Canada, that is where he placed his hope.
Can I copy this response and put it into Writerbeat.com?