Origin of Man vs. Origin of Rights

When speaking of rights you will often hear me talk about how rights are inherent to you, given to you by your creator. But it actually goes much deeper than that.

Regardless of your spiritual faith (or lack thereof) certain rights are inherent to you - period.

In my agnostic faith I've observed many religious sects/denominations/etc and they all have a different take on the Creator and the origin of man. Sometimes this passionate religious debate throws a cloud over the discussion of basic human rights.

So in talking of the origin of rights let us leave all forms of spirituality out of the equation for the moment.

Now let us suppose one simple truth that will project us on course when discussing rights. That simple truth is that you are born a free & clear sovereign human being. You are not born into slavery, you are not born into servitude. You are not born into a certain place on a caste system, real or imagined.

All men are created equal.

Your country does not own you, your government does not own you. Bankers do not own you, corporations do not own you.

You own you.

That is why all rights are property based. In other words all rights derive from the ownership of property.

In fact - in the original draft of the constitution the founders wrote "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Property" and not the "pursuit of happiness" that it ended up to be. The founders were very much aware of rights and liberties and their origins.

Why can I not come into your house and take your television from you without your permission? Not because it is against the law or because I might get caught and go to jail. The deeper reason (and the reason laws against theft were created) is because it is your property, and I do not have a right to your property.

Now remember, you own you. Another person does not have the right to strike you, rape you, or kill you because you hold the rights to your body.

On a side note, while I am not an advocate of prostitution I do believe it should be legalized because no person, or group of people has the right to instruct you what you can and can not do with your body. You cannot legislate morality.

Neither am I a supporter of most illegal drugs, but I am against any law that prohibits what you can consume into your body. You own your body and it is your right to do with it as you see fit - even to your own detriment. While the use of most illegal substances is not good for you, what is even more harmful is the idea that another person or group of people can dictate what you do with the most sacred of all your property - yourself!

Lets move on to other rights. Why should no government ever try to control your religious belief? Because they do not own your mind. You are free to think and believe as you wish. Why should no government ever try to control what you are allowed to speak of? Because you own your thoughts, your ideas, your words.

You see we begin to comprehend rights with a lot more clarity when we realize that rights are property based - and more importantly when we actively practice self-ownership.

Now that we have a better understanding of rights and self ownership, lets take a look at just a few examples.

The income tax is unconstitutional, and without going into the debate of whether it was properly ratified or not lets examine a tax on income from the perspective of rights and self ownership.

Who owns your body? You do, of course. You also own what you do with your body, you therefore own the fruits of your labor. Taxing fruits of your labor violates your rights because it implies that the government owns a part of you. This makes you a willing participant in your own slavery. If you work for someone else, you are willingly choosing that your employer reap the products of your labor while you retain the fruits of your labor. A portion of the fruits of your labor being taken away without your consent is in fact a violation of your rights as we understand them.

This is not to mention of course that none of the personal income tax collected actually goes towards public services - that is all acquired from other, legitimate taxing. Every single penny goes to pay off the interest on the money the government borrows from the private central bank known as the federal reserve. As a country, we do not even have control of our own money supply - but more on that in a different blog.

During the Bush presidency there was some talk of reestablishing the draft. Under Obama there is a big push to implement a mandatory national service program.

So why is this wrong? The very idea that the government owns you and can - at any time - pick you up and move you and force you into an activity that you do not desire to be engaged in completely contradicts everything we know about self ownership.

Some will say it may be needed in time of national crisis or if we are being attacked. To this I'll remind you of WWII when kids as young as 14 were lying to the recruiters about their age so they could go defend their country and fight Nazi Germany. My rebuttal is this: In times of just war there will never be any shortage of volunteers.

Unfortunately we haven't fought a just war in quite some time.

Now lets venture into a slightly more taboo topic. Under the principals of rights and self ownership - should you be allowed to grow marijuana on a piece of property that you own, harvest it yourself and smoke it? The answer is absolutely yes!

You own your land, you own the fruits of your labor (and as far as I know, no one owns plants - regardless of what Monsanto will have you believe), and you own your body.

I personally don't smoke marijuana, I have tried it a few times and I just never took a liking to it and so I didn't continue to use it. But when someone makes the decision that they wish to engage in such activities - it is their decision to make.

All too often in the modern world we have come to think of good vs. bad in terms of what we have been taught and shown to us through our public education and mainstream media. At times I will get into quite heated debates with people who strongly disagree with a certain action and I will simply ask, "Why?" to which their reply is almost always, "because its the law!"

Are we not capable of any further critical thinking? Regardless of propaganda that feeds us false facts on a whole variety of issues, have we as a human race lost our ability to make our own judgments? Have we become so swept up in this system of voluntary servitude that we have forgotten to think for ourselves?

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." -Thomas Jefferson

Welcome To Thoughts On Liberty

After several months of a self-imposed internet blackout I have decided to get back into blogging. Discussion of such important topics cannot simply be left to silence - and as a person of great passion and conviction I could never sit idly by while in a burning building without at least pulling the fire alarm.

Now I do not wish to be just another internet blogger - for while disseminating information is vital in the process of waking people up - the internet is limited in its effectiveness to produce change.

Change - real revolutionary change - is always accompanied by action.

So what action do I call for?

The use of your rights, screaming from the rooftops and civil disobedience.

Rights are inherent to you - the individual. They are not granted to you by government. We give government privileges - while We The People have rights. This is the way our form of government was set up. In fact the founders said there are such things as unalienable rights. These are rights that no other human being - or group of human beings - are allowed to limit or restrict your use thereof. They are bestowed upon you by your creator - and as a free and sovereign human being, not born into slavery, bondage or indebtedness to anyone but your creator - they are your rights to keep.

Sadly enough, however, the phrase "Use it or loose it" when speaking of rights would most certainly seem to apply.

When a people become docile and stop exercising these rights - a right to free speech for example - tyrannical governments then find it all too easy to sell the deception that they have taken certain rights away from you. So my first call to action is simply: Use of rights.

Secondly I strongly advocate screaming from the rooftops. Never before in human history have we been so engaged in a war for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizenry. We are bombarded with propaganda every single day - barbed arrows poisoned with untruth volleyed at us from every angle. With government controlled education it us up to us to be the educators of our fellow man. Knowledge is power. And with great power comes great responsibility. Sharing truth is a responsibility that is accompanied by the knowledge of freedom, liberty, and those things inherent to us that cannot be given or taken away by another. Furthermore, when you become aware of a pattern of injustices and abuses we have a moral responsibility to not sit idly by.

Naomi Wolf - in her book Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries -
points out very adeptly that historically the most powerful weapon to affect social change is mass demonstration and protest. And by this I'm not talking about acquiring a permit, and being barricaded by police out of sight and out of mind of whichever evil you are protesting - as is so often the case in the modern American Police State. Truly exercising your voice can be as simple as having an enlightened conversation with the person next to you in line at the supermarket (something I've been known to do many-a-time) or organizing a mass demonstration that brings 'business as usual' to a complete and unwavering halt.

Lastly I encourage my fellow man to actively participate in civil disobedience. Tyranny always gains a foothold when people do not draw a line in the sand and make a stand for what they believe in and take a position for what is right. I cannot tell you where to draw your line - that is an individual decision. I - for example - believe that my right to travel freely about this earth is a right bestowed upon me by my creator. I do not think I should have to ask permission from a governmental agency to travel upon the roads I've paid taxes for in a piece of technology that I own. I believe that my right to travel should only be restricted if I have infringed upon the rights of others and driven drunk, recklessly injured someone, etc.

The original drivers license was issued to the inventor of the modern automobile, Karl Benz. It was issued as a permit of sorts by the local authorities after he petitioned them for permission to drive his automobile on public roads. He did this because of the high number of complaints from his fellow citizens about the noise and the smell. Only later did the drivers license have anything to do with proving aptitude to operate a motor vehicle, and then moved even beyond that to a way for the government to obtain all of your personal information and updated photo of you every so many years. Needless to say I strongly oppose the idea of having to be given permission by a government to drive, much less them keeping an updated photo of me (that they now take with facial recognition capabilities).

I do not, however, place the drivers license on the other side of the line of what I will not comply with because I see the wisdom in 'picking and choosing' my battles. That's not to say that I don't know patriots in their late 50s who have never held a drivers license. Some of them have went to jail on more than one occasion because of their belief in their sovereignty and they continue to peacefully refuse to comply.

You as the individual must decide what issues warrant civil disobedience. Draw your line in the sand and stick to it. Drawing the line does no good if your reaction to the line being crossed is simply to take another step backwards and draw another - then meaningless - line.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?"

While Jefferson was referring to allowing the citizens to keep and bear arms the psychology of the resistant spirit is, in my opinion, the most important element to retaining freedom and liberty.

If a majority of the populace takes a stand and - for example - refuses to participate in the REAL ID act, what will the tyrants do? They cannot jail all of us. Even if only a small percentage of Americans refused it would virtually leave their hands tied.

In my grandfathers day the American people would not put up with a sliver of what we tolerate today. Besides the sodium fluoride in our drinking water to keep us docile, chemtrails in the air and harmful vaccines...

What has happened to our generation to make us so passive? Questioning authority, believing that patriotism means challenging the establishment - not the blind following thereof - these things are what make up the American spirit! These qualities are what liberated the colonies from an unjust tyrannical rule.

The very definition of patriotism has been reversed. We are now led to believe that if we challenge the government we are unpatriotic.

Nothing could be further from the truth.