Bill of Rights explained: Government is NOT the source of your rights

[Music] welcome Liberty lovers friends of individual rights and fans of limited government my name is Tim snowball and I'm a simple rights attorney with Pacifica Legal Foundation a Pacific Legal Foundation we work every day to protect and defend your natural rights like the right to private property the right to earn an honest living and the right to speak your mind I'm here to share some thoughts on two very important questions first where do our rights come from second what does this mean for the proper role of government in our lives now the most important thing for you to understand from the get-go is that historically the United States is a totally unique country a lot of people might take it for granted now but for most of human history government was nothing more than might makes right now what I mean by that is power power was the name of the game when it come to came to what government could or could not do whether by royal title the Divine Right of Kings possessions like land or money or even whoever just had the biggest army those would power did whatever they wanted while the rest of us had to sit back and take it everything changed with the United States the Declaration of Independence was written mostly by a gentleman you may have heard of named Thomas Jefferson now while the founders intended for Jefferson to prepare a simple statement of the former British colonies basis for separation from the British Empire a breakup letter so to speak Jefferson went a step further and made the biggest political game changer in all of Western history for the first time in history a people not only declared their ability to be independent from the power of a tyrannical government but also declared that their natural rights were not the possession of government and they were not dependent upon what the government said did or wanted much the colonies were declaring their independence from Great Britain Jefferson was declaring the rights of every human being as existing independent from all governments period for him these rights exist not according to which group you categorize yourself as privileges the government can take dispense modify at will instead these truths are self-evident because they belong to each of us either as gifts from God or from our very nature as rational human beings Jefferson's Declaration was visionary when he borrowed ideas liberally from one of the great granddaddy's of all classical liberalism the English philosopher John Locke Locke smash-hit on natural rights the second treatise on government lays out the case that power must be in the hands of the people not some divine ruler this was such a hot take at the time that Locke refused to even put his name on the book until his deathbed it was with Locke's writings in mind that Jefferson describes two broad categories of our natural rights as including life liberty and the pursuit of happiness so what's the implication well for Jefferson it means that all men are created equal but this equality is not one of outcome in which money or other goods are forcibly taken by some and given to others and some twisted take on the Robin Hood story unless of course it's Kevin Costner who I love but one in which no individual enjoys any right space advantage over their neighbors due to heredity and all are equal before the law but let's be clear here the right to life means the right to live your own life as you best see fit the right to Liberty doesn't include the right to tell your neighbors how they should live their lives but the freedom to decide how best to live your own life and the right to pursue happiness is not a right to total happiness which nobody can give you especially not elected officials or bureaucrats instead it is the right to pursue happiness free from government interference now the fancy philosophic term for this concept of Rights is negative rights negative rights describe our right to be left alone free from interference by the government or the jerk down the street simply put they list what others can't do to you not what government or society must do for you and who do we have to thank for this radical departure from the founders ideas for the country none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt perhaps the most damaging president we have ever had according to Roosevelt and the other progressives our rights include an entire list of benefit societies obligated to provide for us whether we like it or not these rights include the right to a job the right to high wages the right to a home the right to medical care the right to good health the right to protection from fear the rights of protection from fear over age sickness accident unemployment the right to an education and many many more clearly such a system of cradle-to-grave entitlement is not only economically unsustainable it's also politically dangerous the natural rights identified in the declaration are no more or less than the right to live your own life as you see fit as long as you don't violate the rights of your neighbors to do the same but if FDR correct and our rights are no more than privileges that can be modified or taken away at will then government ceases to be limited in any meaningful way this is not what Jefferson and the other founders had in mind the source and operation of our natural rights is laid down in the Declaration has major implications for what constitutes good and legitimate government as Jefferson writes the entire purpose of government is to protect our preexisting natural rights governments are not founded in order to create new rights and arbitrarily dispense benefits upon preferred groups but instead to secure rights that existed before governments were ever even created naturally get it Jefferson writes that when and if an established government fails to protect the natural rights of the people which remember is the only legitimate function of government then the people have the right to establish a new government that actually does what is supposed to do the United States was the first country ever founded upon ideas ideas about human equality people as the source of political power and natural rights these ideas were and continue to be nothing short of revolutionary but I don't need to tell you that our government has often fallen short of those ideals in practice now slavery may be the biggest and most egregious affront to liberty and human equality in our long history but sadly it's only one of a long list of such transgressions but that makes remembering these ideals all the more important my work at PLF is all about trying to make our government live up to the promise of the Declaration and of the Constitution that is what I fight for every day thus the Declaration of Independence is not a perfect reflection of 18th 19th or perhaps even 20th century American society instead it's an ideal that Americans of all types have strived for in the past and should continue to strive for in the future far from being outdated historical relics the truths contained in the Declaration of Independence are to paraphrase President Lincoln just as applicable now as when it was first written a Liberty lovers I'm here outside the real Justice League headquarters I want to thank you so much for watching the video I really appreciate it if you liked it if you hated it there's anything you'd like to see in the future please leave us a comment below for now keep fighting

Channel: Pacific Legal Foundation

Views: 11,450

Rating: 4.8700852 out of 5

Keywords: constitution, bill of rights, natural rights, john locke, government, federalism, republic, constitutional theory, revolutionary war, philosophy, thomas jefferson

Id: hsIwEEBOm-c

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2018