Unalienable Rights

                The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the simple belief that God has given us certain unalienable rights.  The Declaration of Independence set forth three very important unalienable rights:  life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  No human being, legislature, Congress, or vote of the people has the power to take these rights away.  The reason government is instituted in the first place is to protect our unalienable rights, particularly our rights of life, liberty, and property. 

                Ezra Taft Benson, late President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and former Secretary of Agriculture during the Eisenhower administration, spoke often of the role of government and stated:  “Rights are either God-given as part of the Divine Plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan.  Reason, necessity, tradition and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights.  If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.  I, for one, shall never accept that premise” (“The Proper Role of Government”).  

                Frederick Bastiat wrote, “Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws.  On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place” (The Law, 1850).  

                Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author and did most of his writing just before and immediately after the French Revolution of February 1848 and during the period of time that France was going socialist.  The Law  was published 165 years ago as a pamphlet in June, 1850; its truths have passed the test of time, and its values are eternal.  His writings deserve to be studied because many socialist/communist ideas are currently sweeping America. 

                The government is in place to protect our unalienable rights instead of infringing upon them.  The ideas for this blog and the above quotes are from this site, which states: 

                “Destruction of individual rights in the name of security and welfare is a breach of the government’s contract with `the people’, yet this happens regularly by our current Federal Government.  In George Washington’s day as President there 350 employees of the Federal Government serving about 3 million people, with one person serving 8,600 people (one person serves 107 people today).  By today’s standards Washington should have added 27,650 more federal employees to his 350.  These figures are atrocious, as are the 650+ official Federal Government Agencies in existence.”

                We have approximately 318,900,000 people living in America today and 2,721,000 federal non-uniform employees in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.  This number does not include any military members.  There are also many more government employees in the fifty states plus other government units.  The job of all these employees is to protect our unalienable rights.  We should be holding them accountable instead of allowing, encouraging and supporting the taking away of our rights.