Saying it’s okay for the government to spy on you because you’re innocent and you have ‘nothing to hide’ … Is like saying it’s okay for the government to censor free speech because you have ‘nothing to say.’
Category: rights
Legalizing theft
When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what’s the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they’re legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated.
Equality under the law
Our Founders warned us that all republics have eventually fallen into tyranny — the only difference being the relative timeline of each republic’s descent … From the summer of 1787 when our Framers deliberated over their magnificent Constitution, we have recognized that the clear statement and equal application of the Law is among the most critical duties of any government. If we allow ourselves to lose this, we may as well be back in ancient Rome, subject to the whim of every petty tyrant in the taxing bureau or the zoning board. For it doesn’t matter whether the regulator’s foot is shod in a jack boot or a Roman sandal; if he can hold you down with that boot upon your neck, then we are no longer in the America that our Founding Fathers intended for us.
Loss of freedom means loss of rights
Threats to freedom of speech, writing, and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
Thank you, Christian white men
When we look back in time and accuse Christian white men of treating others unfairly, we’re holding them to standards they propagated and which we participate in because they thought it right to include us.
Conscience vs rights
In questions of law or of fact conscience is very often confounded with opinion. No man’s conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry.
Individual rights
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
The plight of the Athenians
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all — security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.
Throwing off an abusive government
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Only the rich have property rights
Those who cannot afford to sue currently have no protection of their property rights if they come in conflict with a regulation.