American Marxism and Unalienable Rights
American Marxists have recently launched a new campaign in their ongoing war on America and its founding. Their latest salvo is the proposition that so-called “Christian Nationalism” is an existential threat to the nation. They define Christian Nationalism as: “an ideology that asserts all civic life in the U.S. should be organized according to a particularly conservative and ethnocentric expression of Christianity.”
The American Marxists absurdly claim that those who supposedly adhere to this ideology believe in:
- strict moral traditionalism,
- the retention of social hierarchies,
- authoritarian control exercised by the “right” people; and,
- White supremacy and strict ethno-racial boundaries.
In reality, this drumbeat of Christian Nationalism is yet another means of accusing 45% of Americans who identify as evangelicals and Catholics and may vote for Donald Trump as being “racists and deplorables.” A deliberate tactic intended to further incite racial and tribal animosity among the electorate in a crucially important election year.
But more importantly, and in keeping with Marxism’s hostility toward religion, and Christianity and Judaism in particular, this blatant defamation is also a veiled tactic to further undermine and eventually eradicate the foundational American tenet that unalienable rights come from God and cannot be abrogated by the state.
Over the centuries, those who deem that the state is paramount and, thus, the source of all human rights, believe that granting or limiting these rights is the sole discretion of the state based on what the state defines as the greater good. On the other hand, those who deem that certain rights are God-given, and thus unalienable, believe the state cannot limit or deny these rights but must guarantee them. There is no middle ground.
The United States is the only nation in the annals of mankind to be established on the basis of a political and social philosophy centered on natural, or God-given, rights. Among these are life, liberty, self-preservation, and property. Property rights are the bedrock of the American political system; without that foundation, there are no freedoms.
The Founders held that property rights encompass not just physical property but also one’s life, labor, speech, and livelihood. As individuals own their own lives; therefore, they must own the products of that life. Further, as there is a natural right of self-preservation, man has the right and duty to defend himself against transgressors, including the state, who would deny, abolish, or unlawfully seize his property.
A philosophical battle over the role of natural rights and the state that influenced America’s Founders was waged in 17th Century Britain between Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704).
Thomas Hobbes published his seminal work Leviathan in 1651. In it he described man’s essential nature as one of aggression, avarice, destruction, and near-constant war. Therefore, an all-powerful sovereign (or government) was paramount in order to protect against and repel this base human nature.
Hobbes believed this sovereign would by necessity have nearly limitless power to seize or restrict any rights or property ownership (including one’s labor, and livelihood) for the good of society. He acknowledged the right of self-preservation but thought there could be no agreement on what constituted legitimate self-preservation; therefore, he concluded it is solely a matter for the state to determine.
John Locke published his Second Treatise of Government in 1690. He wrote the following about mankind’s God-given unalienable right to liberty and property (which encompassed one’s life, labor, and speech):
…though the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself the great foundation of property; and that which made up the great part of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being… was perfectly his own and did not belong in common to others.
Therefore, on the issue of liberty and property rights, Locke wrote that men are intended to live as freely as possible without interference from anyone or anything else. He argued that the state should protect the unalienable rights of individuals and must govern with the consent of its subjects. Further, the unalienable right of self-preservation obligates man to defend himself from those, including the government, who seek to infringe upon his natural liberties.
The writings of John Locke greatly influenced the Founders. In the Declaration of Independence, they enumerated the God-given and thus unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (ownership of property) as being self-evident.
However, the unalienable right of self-preservation was not enumerated in either the Declaration or the Constitution. The men who proposed the Bill of Rights as the first ten Amendments to the Constitution were insistent that the natural right of self-preservation be recognized in clear and unambiguous language in the Second Amendment: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Founders were steeped in the history of mankind and recognized that among the first steps taken by all despotic governments throughout the ages was the usurpation by the state of their citizenry’s natural rights.
Over the past 150 years the proponents of Marxism, including the current iteration of American Marxists, have taken the position that the state is not obligated to recognize natural human rights as all are anathema to the common good. Thus, marching in lockstep to what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels espoused in their Communist Manifesto -- “The Theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
Marx and Engels contended that one’s physical property, labor, or livelihood (and by extension one’s life) is unalterably subordinate to the common good or the state. Further, the individual has no God-given right of self-defense, as that right can be utilized to counter or oppose the state.
Not only is it a core Marxist position that rights do not come from God but believing they do is a danger to society, and as such must be uprooted and those who believe in such heresy “re-educated.”
The founding of the United States was the culmination of a two-millennia evolution of the philosophical and political belief that there are natural or God-given rights that cannot be abrogated by the state. Yet, this nation for the first time in its 248-year history is staring into the abyss that is the inevitable nullification of these rights by the American Marxists who have succeeded in dominating the bulk of America’s institutions and controlling the Democrat Party. Therefore, it is not hyperbole to say that the 2024 election may well be the most consequential in American history.
Post a Comment