Paul Ryan, Natural Law, and Personal Liberty

If there's one thing the Left hates about Paul Ryan (and let's be honest, it isn't one thing, it's every thing) it's Ryan's belief that our Rights come from Natural Law and from God.  "God" is Liberal Kryptonite of course, but you don't have to be religious to know that Ryan is right.  I'm not particularly religious myself, but it seems obvious to me that basic Human Rights... y'know like Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness... are Rights that come standard with every Human Being right off the assembly line.  Whether that means they come from God, I don't know and can't say.

Here's what I do know and will say...

They do NOT come from Government.  We don't all wake up on our first birthday, march down to the the Government Rights Office, and receive our Government issued rights in a moving ceremony complete with medals, a marching band, and a cymbal-crashing monkey in a bejeweled vest. We had them the moment we were born.

Think about it this way. What if you and two other people got into a boat and sailed across the ocean until you found an unihabited island to live on. You'd grown disgusted with Government over the years and you and your two friends have decided to live off the land with no rules or regulations governing your behavior.  You want to live without Government.

Does living without Government mean that you suddenly lose all of your basic human rights?  Did you suddenly forfeit your right to your life and liberty because you chose to live without Government? Of course not.  Whether you live under a "Government" or not, your two friends do not have the right to take your life or your Liberty. The only thing that's changed is that you may have to fight to protect your rights yourself.  No one from Government is coming to back you up.

See what I did there?  Government does not grant you any rights.  All Government can do is protect those rights from other individuals or groups who would attempt to take them away.

We all know these things and yet there are an awful lot of very smart Lefties in the media who either do not to understand this basic fact of the Human Experience or are pretending not to understand it for Partisan advantage in a tight Election.

Here's Norman Lear arguing that Paul Ryan is a bad guy becaue he wants to use the idea of Natural Law and Religion to deny human rights to African-Americans and Gays. His proof?  Well during the Civil Rights struggle, apparently, folks in the South used Religion to deny African-Americans their basic human rights.

Norman... sweetie... they didn't use Religon... they used Government. That's why they're called "Jim Crow Laws" and not "Jim Crow Psalms."

And then there's Melissa Harris-Parry whose job as an MSNBC contributor is to maintain a contstant state of incandescent outrage on behalf of Progressives. But even as she raced to the airwaves in the wake of the Paul Ryan VP announcement to denounce Ryan's views on Human Rights and Natural Law, she forgot one really important thing. She forgot to, y'know, actually disagree with him.

“The thing I really have against him is actually how he and Gov. Romney have misused the Declaration of Independence... When they say ‘God and nature give us our rights, not government,’ that is a lovely thing to say as a wealthy white man. When you sit in a body like mine as an African-American woman, you know that God and nature have in fact made us — inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but we could not have them until there was a Civil War that allowed the federal government to impose those nature and God-given rights would actually be respected by our government."

For those of you who have trouble translating Liberal to English, she said "Our rights come from God but sometimes we need Government to protect those rights" which is exactly what Paul Ryan hs been saying in every single stump speech for the last two weeks.

But thanks for Playing Melisa.

So why is Paul Ryan saying these things if they are truths that are, you might say, self-evident?  He's saying them because the Republican Party's goal this election season is to remind Americans that Government can only be of the people, by the people, and for the people if it is limited Government.  That there are things that Government must do, and there are things that Government must NOT do is something we can all agree on. The argument starts when we begin to talk about those things that Government can do, but probably shouldn't... like telling people what size Coke they can drink.

See that's the thing about protecting basic Human Rights. Government doesn't always have to fight a Civil War to protect our rights, sometimes all they have to do, is nothing.