Tag Archives: culture

A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications

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I have a new pamphlet out, A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications; a link to the Kindle version of it (the only version, currently) has been added to the sidebar at right.

I touched on rights and duties and their duality in my book A Conservative’s Manifesto, but only tangentially to a larger discussion of Conservative principles.  However, an understanding of individual rights and individual duties, especially their nature as individual endowments rather than as attributes of groups of men or as grants from some men acting in a “government’s” name, forms a critical part of Conservative thought.  Now, with us Americans broadly divided on what our rights and duties really are, or even whether the government should have them instead of us, is the time to expand on that peripheral discussion and to address the matter directly.

My central thesis is this: our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties, as endowments from and by our Creator, and as duals of each other, are a part of the fabric of our existence—both as individual rights and duties and in the capacity of those duals.  Further, just as importantly, our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties are in each of us as individuals; they are not in groups of us, they are not in the whole of us as a nation.  Each one of us is possessed of them entirely in ourselves.

This, of course, has implications for the role our government, and especially for the roles of “civil law” and “civil rights,” in our lives.

I hope you enjoy the pamphlet.

Anti-Religion Mendacity

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Pinellas Park, FL, has a bible that sits on a dais in its city council chambers.  This bothers Randy Heine a very great deal.

The Bible must go.  It doesn’t belong in a government meeting.  Every time I speak, it makes me feel awkward.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has taken up the cause.

Not only is the city council sending a message of endorsement for Christianity over other religions and nonreligion [a letter of theirs to the city council asserts], but display of this King James Bible sends a message of endorsement of one particular Christian sect over all others.

Of course it does no such thing, no more than the ubiquitous references to God in our government documents and on our currency and…does any such thing, nor does our Congress and our Supreme Court opening sessions with prayer does any such thing.

FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel complained that he has written four letters to Pinellas Park, and

They’ve just refused to even deign to answer our issues, so I think that says something about their mindset.

A mindset with which I heartily agree: gangs like FFRF aren’t worth the trouble of answering, except in court to swat down their plaints.

Also, Americans Atheists Inc is bellyaching because there’s a Ten Commandments monument outside the capitol building in Oklahoma City.  In part, their complaint asserts

While at the state Capitol, ([individual plaintiff Aimee] Breeze) is confronted by the Ten Commandments display, which she views as hurtful and exclusive and therefore avoids the area of the display while at the Capitol[.]

Nah.  There’s no push to require Breeze to believe or to think or to behave in a particular way.  There’s no endorsement of any religion.  The only exclusion going on here is Breeze’s exclusion of others’ beliefs.

In fact, the Constitution is not silent on government’s role in matters of religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….

Both of those clauses apply, not just one convenient to anti-religionists.  And they mean that, in a political arena, anti-religionists don’t get to infringe free exercise, either, morally, if not strictly legally.

Of course there’s also no pressure emanating from a Bible or a Ten Commandments monument pushing members of other religious faiths, or atheists, to believe—or not—in a particular way.  Unless there’s something emanating from the Bible or the monument because they’re real.

These anti-religionists know this full well.

Expectations of Privacy

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That we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in our personal effects as we cross foreign borders into foreign countries, and in the crossing process are subject to that country’s laws, is well understood.

Should that lack of expectation in those foreign countries matter, though, concerning our expectation of privacy as we cross our own country’s borders re-entering home from a trip abroad?

In a quasi-related expectations matter, our courts have already ruled, in a mind-reading tour de force, that we must have no such expectation when our private matters are given up to third parties.  These rulings come despite the plethora of privacy protection laws that require those third parties to safeguard our personal matters, and they come while ignoring the enormous hue and cry that ensues a third party’s perceived misuse of our personal matters, even when that (mis)use is narrowly legal—which plainly demonstrates that we do indeed have such an expectation.

One Federal District Judge, Edward Korman of the Eastern District of New York, has ruled that we have no legitimate expectation of privacy on crossing our own border pursuant to coming home.  In a case involving the search of the laptop of an American citizen and journalist (a news photographer, specifically), Korman decided that it’s jake for US border agents have the authority to search laptop computers without reasonable suspicion—just the bald fact that an American is coming home.  Korman’s ruling held, among other things, that

[plaintiff] cannot be so naive to expect that when he crosses the Syrian or Lebanese border that the contents of his computer will be immune from searches and seizures at the whim of those who work for Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah.

This application of foreign law as a reason to abrogate an American citizen’s rights domestically, is of a piece with other judges’ rulings that Sharia Law applies in American courts, even to the point of justifying spousal rape (it took an appellate court to overturn this travesty).

Compounding this…opinion…is the further fact that Korman used this excuse to dismiss the citizen/journalist’s lawsuit over the search because he had no standing, having suffered no harm: he had not privacy to invade, and so there was no foul committed.

Korman’s opinion can be seen here.

Another Battle

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…in the Progressive war on women.

Here’s it’s the Obama administration’s response to Justice Sonya Sotomayor’s injunction staying Obama’s  contraceptive mandate as it applies to the Little Sisters of the Poor and their nursing home/hospice in Colorado.  Sotomayor, in issuing her injunction, had ordered the Obama administration to respond by last Friday morning with their argument for why the injunction should be lifted.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s response boiled down to the Little Sisters have no legal claim: they aren’t harmed by authorizing contraceptives to be covered by an insurer in their name because they aren’t offering the coverage directly.  Verrilli went on:

…are not required to offer group health plans in the first place.  [They can make a] “choice” between two legal options: provide a group health plan or risk payment of the tax.

As The Wall Street Journal put it,

This case is simply a raw assertion of state power directing the religious to follow orders.  Thus ObamaCare forces women who have taken a vow of chastity and minister for the dying to implicate themselves in what they consider to be grave moral wrongs.

Wow

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Just—wow.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) sent out a paranoid email Saturday evening urging supporters to vote for Democrats so that Republicans can’t impeach President Obama.

The email, subject line “Impeachment,” was sent to Obama for America supporters, imploring them to contribute to the DNC’s 2014 efforts.  “What do these people all have in common?,” the email asked, featuring quotes from Republican Sen James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Rep Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Rep Kerry Bentivolio of Michigan, and Rep Blake Farenthold of Texas discussing the possibility of impeaching Obama for one of his numerous instances of presidential misconduct.

They’re also calling for boycotts of news and opinion outlets that don’t read from DNC-approved scripts of speak Party-approved speech.  In a separate email to “Friend,” they implored, among other things,

All they [RNC leadership] need to do is encourage their fellow Republican leaders to stop making time for interviews with outlets like these.

That email can be seen here.

More fluff pieces.  With stuff like this, is it possible to take the Democratic Party and its candidates seriously?  Unfortunately, we do have to; they’re still far too dangerous to our country.