Andrew P. Napolitano
washingtontimes.com
January 11, 2012
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural
right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty. It is specifically
insulated from governmental interference by the Constitution and has
historically been the linchpin of resistance to tyranny. Yet the progressives in
both political parties stand ready to use the coercive power of the government
to interfere with the exercise of that right by law-abiding persons because of
the gross abuse of that right by some crazies in our midst.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that
we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, he was marrying
the nation at its birth to the ancient principles of the natural law that have
animated the Judeo-Christian tradition in the West. Those principles have
operated as a brake on all governments that recognize them by enunciating the
concept of natural rights.
As we have been created in the image and likeness of God the Father, we are
perfectly free just as He is. Thus, the natural law teaches that our freedoms
are pre-political and come from our humanity and not from the government. As our
humanity is ultimately divine in origin, the government, even by majority vote,
cannot morally take natural rights away from us. A natural right is an area of
individual human behavior — like thought, speech, worship, travel, self-defense,
privacy, ownership and use of property, consensual personal intimacy — immune
from government interference and for the exercise of which we don’t need the
government’s permission.
The essence of humanity is freedom. Government — whether voted in peacefully
or thrust upon us by force — is essentially the negation of freedom. Throughout
the history of the world, people have achieved freedom when those in power have
begrudgingly given it up. From the assassination of Julius Caesar to King John’s
forced signing of the Magna Carta, from the English Civil War to the triumph of
the allies at the end of World War II, from the fall of communism to the Arab
Spring, governments have permitted so-called nobles and everyday folk to
exercise more personal freedom as a result of their demands for it and their
fighting for it. This constitutes power permitting liberty.
The American experience was the opposite. Here, each human being is
sovereign, as the colonists were after the Revolution. Here, the delegation to
the government of some sovereignty — the personal dominion over self — by each
American permitted the government to have limited power in order to safeguard
the liberties we retained. Stated differently, Americans gave up some limited
personal freedom to the new government so it could have the authority and
resources to protect the freedoms we retained. Individuals are sovereign in
America, not the government. This constitutes liberty permitting power.
Yet we did not give up any natural rights; rather, we retained them. It is
the choice of every individual whether to give them up. Neither our neighbors
nor the government can make those choices for us, because we are all without the
moral or legal authority to interfere with anyone else’s natural rights. Since
the government derives all of its powers from the consent of the governed, and
since we each lack the power to interfere with the natural rights of another,
how could the government lawfully have that power? It doesn’t. Were this not so,
our rights would not be natural; they would be subject to the government’s
whims.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment