WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.080 Today, we're on our third of seven in the series on Freedom Principles. 2 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:08.920 In this broadcast, we look at the Fifth Citizen Mandate and Absolute Truth. 3 00:00:08.920 --> 00:00:10.400 That is next. 4 00:00:26.400 --> 00:00:28.080 Hey, welcome back to The Barry Ferrell Show. 5 00:00:28.080 --> 00:00:29.980 I hope you're doing great. 6 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:35.300 There are seven citizen mandates that lay the foundation upon which freedom is built. 7 00:00:35.300 --> 00:00:39.680 These mandates could certainly be called contract terms and conditions, but that doesn't quite 8 00:00:39.680 --> 00:00:43.940 capture the force of keeping the government in its place. 9 00:00:43.940 --> 00:00:48.300 I'm calling them citizen mandates to resurrect the concept that the government is supposed 10 00:00:48.300 --> 00:00:52.940 to operate with some humility as the servant of the people. 11 00:00:52.940 --> 00:00:57.620 In an era where obtuse mandates come from the government and oftentimes are arbitrarily 12 00:00:57.620 --> 00:01:03.780 hurled upon us, we are well-served to reawaken our rights as a U.S. citizen. 13 00:01:03.780 --> 00:01:08.120 The U.S. Constitution starts with, we the people, then it lays out the contract terms 14 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:09.940 in each article. 15 00:01:09.940 --> 00:01:13.740 That document is a derivative of having thought through what the government of the people, 16 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:16.460 by the people, for the people should look like. 17 00:01:16.460 --> 00:01:18.420 Now, it was not perfect. 18 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:23.580 Self-interest prevented the Declaration's first drafts to succeed. 19 00:01:23.580 --> 00:01:27.220 Those first drafts would have abolished slavery out the gate. 20 00:01:27.220 --> 00:01:31.480 As a result, the U.S. Constitution embodied a compromise that did not comply with natural 21 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:36.020 law or natural rights, and it took a civil war and amendments to our Constitution to 22 00:01:36.020 --> 00:01:37.020 remedy. 23 00:01:37.020 --> 00:01:41.340 Yet, to build the three freedom pillars of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 24 00:01:41.340 --> 00:01:44.500 of happiness, we must have a sturdy foundation. 25 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:49.580 And the foundation for freedom is the seven citizen mandates. 26 00:01:49.580 --> 00:01:51.620 So far, we've looked at these four. 27 00:01:51.620 --> 00:01:53.220 Government shall be limited. 28 00:01:53.220 --> 00:01:56.400 Number two, government shall submit to the rule of law. 29 00:01:56.400 --> 00:02:00.400 Number three, government shall apply all laws equally. 30 00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:05.600 Number four, government shall protect the rights of the individual. 31 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:08.880 So have you ever wondered where the word draconian came from? 32 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:10.800 It came from a guy's name. 33 00:02:10.800 --> 00:02:15.520 In 7 B.C., ancient Greece was at a breaking point, and I kind of get your frame of reference, 34 00:02:15.520 --> 00:02:17.360 this is way before Socrates. 35 00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:20.880 Athens had some really bad harvests and people were starving. 36 00:02:20.880 --> 00:02:24.680 The working class was so in debt it was about to start a civil war. 37 00:02:24.680 --> 00:02:30.040 Almost everything was being settled violently and all kinds of crime down at the basic shop 38 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:33.240 and farmer's market, basically lawless. 39 00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:39.120 So in the year 620 B.C., the people of Athens hired a legal scholar named Draco to codify 40 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:43.840 a system of laws in an effort to make peace and restore order to Athens. 41 00:02:43.840 --> 00:02:48.720 Draco's code was harsh, cruel, and overly severe, thus the word draconian. 42 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:53.360 And the new set of laws did virtually nothing to solve the social problems in Athens. 43 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:57.040 Draco's laws allowed the elites to remain in full control of the courts, so that gave 44 00:02:57.040 --> 00:03:00.760 a small minority of the Athenian citizens the power to interpret the laws however they 45 00:03:00.760 --> 00:03:04.320 wanted to in their own interests and change the rules whenever they wanted. 46 00:03:04.320 --> 00:03:06.800 Well, that didn't end well. 47 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:11.840 So in less than 26 years, the Athenians tried to restore order for a second time by appointing 48 00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:14.600 a well-known local citizen named Solon. 49 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:18.280 Now Solon first declared full amnesty for anyone who had been jailed, enslaved, or suffered 50 00:03:18.280 --> 00:03:21.200 persecution under draconian rule. 51 00:03:21.200 --> 00:03:24.960 He then rewrote the law to make it apply equally to everyone. 52 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:31.800 Without distinction of wealth, class, or even political position, Athens flourished. 53 00:03:31.800 --> 00:03:35.400 When government treats people equally and obeys its own law, a city or a nation has 54 00:03:35.400 --> 00:03:36.800 a better shot at success. 55 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:39.320 This can be proven empirically throughout history. 56 00:03:39.320 --> 00:03:43.840 Ancient Greece, Rome, the British Empire, the Dutch Republic, and the U.S. 57 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:48.760 Both the growth and the decline of every nation can be traced to how equally they treated 58 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:53.440 the citizen and how well they obeyed their own laws. 59 00:03:53.440 --> 00:03:57.240 This is one of the hundreds of examples from history that formed the thoughts of the founders 60 00:03:57.240 --> 00:03:59.000 of the United States. 61 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:03.880 They believed, in absolute truth, that there is right and wrong. 62 00:04:03.880 --> 00:04:06.400 For example, a thief is bad and gets punished. 63 00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:09.680 A law-abiding producer is good and can live in peace. 64 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:15.280 In fact, the entire premise of the Declaration of Independence is that objective truth exists. 65 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:19.519 And that just like in nature, in matters of human freedom, you can discover it. 66 00:04:19.519 --> 00:04:23.760 And the freedom principles for a people would need to be defined in terms of natural rights, 67 00:04:23.760 --> 00:04:26.480 which is based on natural law. 68 00:04:26.480 --> 00:04:28.280 The general argument goes like this. 69 00:04:28.280 --> 00:04:32.200 Nature is bigger and larger than any one human. 70 00:04:32.200 --> 00:04:35.040 But every human is part of nature. 71 00:04:35.040 --> 00:04:36.800 Nature is rational. 72 00:04:36.800 --> 00:04:38.400 It's discoverable. 73 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:40.480 You can observe how animals mate. 74 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:43.800 How leaves fall from their branches in the fall. 75 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:46.800 And you can determine how nature works. 76 00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:50.600 Human nature contains moral and political truth and it can be known as well. 77 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:52.400 The founders agreed with the above logic. 78 00:04:52.400 --> 00:04:57.240 According to natural law, all people have inherent rights conferred not by an act of 79 00:04:57.240 --> 00:04:59.360 legislation but by God. 80 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:04.920 nature or reason. So you could have a vague belief in a Creator like Cicero 81 00:05:04.920 --> 00:05:09.440 and still support natural law like he did. Or you could be a devout Christian like 82 00:05:09.440 --> 00:05:12.560 the Apostle Paul and speak of the law of God written on everyone's heart. 83 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:16.080 Both believed in natural law. In fact, any 84 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:19.800 logical deist would argue with confidence about the absolute truth 85 00:05:19.800 --> 00:05:24.320 of natural rights and natural law. A deist of the time just had a general belief in 86 00:05:24.320 --> 00:05:27.520 a higher power but no precise belief in the God of the Bible, for example. 87 00:05:28.200 --> 00:05:31.400 There was a wide range of personal spiritual or non-spiritual belief 88 00:05:31.400 --> 00:05:34.720 that would unify around their support for natural law. 89 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:39.120 The founders were well-read. They knew that Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 90 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:41.360 322 BC, was one of the first to give 91 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:45.300 a working definition to an empirical way to assess politics. 92 00:05:45.300 --> 00:05:48.400 Now, to be fair, Jewish law had, way before, 93 00:05:48.400 --> 00:05:51.720 previously laid out some cogent arguments for innocent until proven 94 00:05:51.720 --> 00:05:52.240 guilty, 95 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:56.520 checks and balances, due process, and much more. But that was part of the Torah 96 00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:00.280 or the first books of the Old Testament, a religious sacred book. 97 00:06:00.280 --> 00:06:04.120 There wasn't a separate branch of academic thought devoted 98 00:06:04.120 --> 00:06:07.360 to the science of politics until Aristotle. 99 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:11.160 Aristotle believed the political truth that can be discovered by observation 100 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:15.840 and he called it political science. Augustine, who lived 101 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:19.600 much later, from 354 to 430 AD, this was 102 00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:23.040 after the New Testament was canonized, and he was one of the most 103 00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:26.760 influential Christian writers of the Middle Ages. And in his political science 104 00:06:26.760 --> 00:06:29.760 discussion, he laid out the framework for government to be limited. 105 00:06:29.760 --> 00:06:33.560 And the reason for that was due to nature. Naturally, 106 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:37.200 rulers tend, based on observation, toward control 107 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:40.960 and corruption. In other words, the nature of man when he is in power 108 00:06:40.960 --> 00:06:44.160 was rarely benevolent. His argument 109 00:06:44.160 --> 00:06:48.000 was really influential upon the founders of the US. He argued that rulers would 110 00:06:48.000 --> 00:06:48.720 need a check 111 00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:52.080 upon their power. This was also based on natural 112 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:55.400 law. There were other thinkers that disagreed, 113 00:06:55.400 --> 00:06:58.880 like Machiavelli. He lived from 1429 to 1527. 114 00:06:58.880 --> 00:07:02.640 But the founders thought that he was missing the mark, and people like him 115 00:07:02.640 --> 00:07:03.440 were missing the mark. 116 00:07:03.440 --> 00:07:06.520 He's famous for promoting the concept that the 117 00:07:06.520 --> 00:07:10.240 end justifies the means. The ends justify the means. In other words, 118 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:13.640 governments can do evil things 119 00:07:13.640 --> 00:07:17.600 as long as their outcome goal is justified. 120 00:07:17.960 --> 00:07:22.360 Well, who gets to determine that? And how much of an evil thing can they do? 121 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:26.480 He argued for a heavy-handed ruler to keep all the little people in check. 122 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:29.720 Later regimes like Lenin's, Hitler's, 123 00:07:29.720 --> 00:07:33.160 and Stalin's borrowed from Machiavellian political theory. 124 00:07:33.160 --> 00:07:37.720 The founders of the US said, no thanks to that whole philosophical lineup. 125 00:07:37.720 --> 00:07:41.440 The founders rather liked the way that John Locke 126 00:07:41.440 --> 00:07:46.200 simplified the concept of natural law. The laws of nature and nature's God are 127 00:07:46.200 --> 00:07:47.200 self-evident. 128 00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:50.960 In other words, any honest person with observational and analytical skills, 129 00:07:50.960 --> 00:07:52.920 especially if he has a belief in a creator, 130 00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:57.120 will come to the same conclusion by logic. The founders also liked the 131 00:07:57.120 --> 00:07:58.920 reality that it was non-sectarian. 132 00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:02.080 We didn't want a church state. Those don't work out. 133 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:05.240 We were trying to start a nation based on universally, 134 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:09.000 or at least almost universally, accepted, absolute 135 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:12.120 truth. So, you could be a Jew, 136 00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:16.560 a Christian, a Protestant, a Catholic, a Deist, or an agnostic, and you could all 137 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:17.120 agree 138 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:22.200 on natural rights. Even today there are distinct doctrinal differences between a 139 00:08:22.200 --> 00:08:23.480 Catholic and a Protestant. 140 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:27.200 But they are both strongly in support of the right 141 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:31.000 to life. So, here's the deal. The natural state of 142 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:34.480 humans is that they should be free and treated with equal 143 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:38.840 value. So, the law should apply equally regardless of status. That was this whole 144 00:08:38.840 --> 00:08:39.480 idea 145 00:08:39.480 --> 00:08:42.880 that came from natural law. This was not an argument for 146 00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:46.520 anarchy or complete license. It was just simply that one individual has an 147 00:08:46.520 --> 00:08:47.360 obligation 148 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:50.360 to respect the rights of another individual. Seems pretty straightforward. 149 00:08:50.360 --> 00:08:54.200 To Locke, this was absolutely true, and it was as absolutely true as 150 00:08:54.200 --> 00:08:58.760 any of the laws of nature. So, what's a law of nature? A law of nature 151 00:08:58.760 --> 00:09:02.560 is where, under stipulated conditions, there are some things that are just 152 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:05.600 universally found to be true. Gravity. 153 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:10.160 It's working. It always works in our atmosphere. 154 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:13.560 That's a law of nature. It's an absolute 155 00:09:13.560 --> 00:09:17.240 truth. When something's testable and repeatable and 156 00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:20.360 always true under the conditions, it qualifies 157 00:09:20.360 --> 00:09:25.440 as a law of nature. The second law of thermodynamics is a law of nature. 158 00:09:25.440 --> 00:09:29.520 When you've got a hot object and it's placed in contact with a cold object, 159 00:09:29.520 --> 00:09:33.280 the heat always flows from the hotter object to the colder one. 160 00:09:33.280 --> 00:09:37.360 It never goes the other way around. It never reverses itself. That's observably 161 00:09:37.360 --> 00:09:39.000 and absolutely true. 162 00:09:39.160 --> 00:09:42.800 It's a law of nature. So, John Locke argued that 163 00:09:42.800 --> 00:09:46.760 any honest observer would agree that when one individual 164 00:09:46.760 --> 00:09:50.840 gives another individual a right to life, liberty, or property, 165 00:09:50.840 --> 00:09:54.280 that it's a natural right that is supported by the proof found 166 00:09:54.280 --> 00:09:57.840 in the law of nature. So, you have a natural right if you're a human, 167 00:09:57.840 --> 00:09:58.520 period. 168 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.200 Political thought, natural law is a law of right or a law of justice. 169 00:10:04.200 --> 00:10:07.080 So it's your natural right to have life. 170 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:13.520 It's your natural right to have liberty and it's your natural right to own your own property. 171 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:15.400 Those are the laws of right. 172 00:10:15.400 --> 00:10:17.060 They are undeniable. 173 00:10:17.060 --> 00:10:21.440 An example of a law of justice is that it's just to punish a thief. 174 00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:24.440 Now why is it just to punish the thief? 175 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:28.300 Because he's violating someone's right to property. 176 00:10:28.300 --> 00:10:30.860 It's also just to punish the guy who assaults you. 177 00:10:30.860 --> 00:10:32.940 He violates your right to life. 178 00:10:32.940 --> 00:10:36.260 It's just to punish the guy who interferes with your editorial. 179 00:10:36.260 --> 00:10:38.540 He violates your right to liberty. 180 00:10:38.540 --> 00:10:39.980 These are absolute truths. 181 00:10:39.980 --> 00:10:40.980 They are observable. 182 00:10:40.980 --> 00:10:45.740 And just as all honest observers can agree with the law of gravity, all honest thinkers 183 00:10:45.740 --> 00:10:51.380 can read history, observe human behavior, and agree with the law of natural rights and 184 00:10:51.380 --> 00:10:52.820 the law of justice. 185 00:10:52.820 --> 00:11:01.020 So how do you make sure individuals respect the life, liberty, and property of other individuals? 186 00:11:01.020 --> 00:11:05.300 This is the part of the limited job of government and it's expressed through a social contract 187 00:11:05.300 --> 00:11:06.620 with government. 188 00:11:06.620 --> 00:11:12.900 The people grant the government, by contract, the right to implement the laws of justice 189 00:11:12.900 --> 00:11:16.840 and protect the laws of right. 190 00:11:16.840 --> 00:11:21.260 Government can set up structures to establish an impartial way to arbitrate disputes and 191 00:11:21.260 --> 00:11:23.020 redress grievances. 192 00:11:23.020 --> 00:11:27.380 As long as government is doing that in a fair manner, it should be obeyed. 193 00:11:27.380 --> 00:11:31.580 But Locke argued that if government's violating their social contract by threatening life 194 00:11:31.580 --> 00:11:35.620 or interfering with the liberty or taking the property of innocent people, that government 195 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:40.100 should be swapped out for a better one that's more sensitive to protecting the natural rights 196 00:11:40.100 --> 00:11:41.100 of each person. 197 00:11:41.100 --> 00:11:43.740 Now, Locke lived in the day of kings and queens. 198 00:11:43.740 --> 00:11:45.920 His essay was written in 1690. 199 00:11:45.920 --> 00:11:50.260 He believed it was acceptable to overthrow a monarchy if they violated the right to life, 200 00:11:50.260 --> 00:11:51.940 liberty, or property. 201 00:11:51.940 --> 00:11:53.420 Locke wasn't a crazy anarchist. 202 00:11:53.420 --> 00:11:57.020 You can't overthrow a government every time you don't get your way about a traffic light's 203 00:11:57.020 --> 00:11:58.580 location. 204 00:11:58.580 --> 00:12:02.260 Citizens are obligated to accept the decision of those whom they elect. 205 00:12:02.260 --> 00:12:06.220 But the powers of the legislature are not absolute. 206 00:12:06.220 --> 00:12:11.300 The law of nature remains as the permanent standard and a principle of protection against 207 00:12:11.300 --> 00:12:13.420 arbitrary authority. 208 00:12:13.420 --> 00:12:17.460 To this day, the United States Constitution is borrowed in many countries around the world 209 00:12:17.460 --> 00:12:21.700 and the Declaration of Independence remains a great historical benchmark. 210 00:12:21.700 --> 00:12:26.980 It's the first formal assertion by a forming nation that the people of that nation have 211 00:12:26.980 --> 00:12:30.540 the right to be governed in accordance with natural law. 212 00:12:30.540 --> 00:12:32.980 These are your natural rights. 213 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:36.820 In Locke's writings, he added an interesting dynamic to the right to property. 214 00:12:36.820 --> 00:12:39.500 He essentially argued for economic freedom. 215 00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:44.500 This natural right comes from the concept that you own yourself. 216 00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:46.160 You own your own labor. 217 00:12:46.160 --> 00:12:49.920 You aren't by birth obligated to work for your dad or for the king. 218 00:12:49.920 --> 00:12:55.240 You can choose for whom you will work and you can choose what fields you will work in. 219 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:58.840 So if Locke were drawing up the contract terms with a government, he would add an economic 220 00:12:58.840 --> 00:13:02.080 freedom term to the other four that we've already discussed. 221 00:13:02.080 --> 00:13:05.880 But we're attempting to reawaken our internal freedom fortitude. 222 00:13:05.880 --> 00:13:09.740 We're discussing these issues because we want the government to return to a more humble 223 00:13:09.740 --> 00:13:13.460 view of itself and more regularly limit itself. 224 00:13:13.460 --> 00:13:17.540 So we're calling these contract terms citizen mandates. 225 00:13:17.540 --> 00:13:21.820 And in terms of citizen mandates, Locke would agree with the four previous mandates and 226 00:13:21.820 --> 00:13:23.620 add a fifth. 227 00:13:23.620 --> 00:13:25.060 Government shall be limited. 228 00:13:25.060 --> 00:13:26.940 Government shall submit to the rule of law. 229 00:13:26.940 --> 00:13:29.140 Government shall apply all laws equally. 230 00:13:29.140 --> 00:13:31.780 Government shall protect the rights of the individual. 231 00:13:31.780 --> 00:13:36.980 And government shall not interfere with your economic freedom. 232 00:13:36.980 --> 00:13:39.160 Private property is personal to you. 233 00:13:39.160 --> 00:13:41.400 You own your own labor. 234 00:13:41.400 --> 00:13:46.440 That fifth mandate is a freedom economics lover's haven. 235 00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:47.440 It's unambiguous. 236 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:50.760 And it drives the left nutso. 237 00:13:50.760 --> 00:13:55.720 What causes the liberal left so much angst is that the term natural rights were dominant 238 00:13:55.720 --> 00:13:58.560 among scholars until the late 19th century. 239 00:13:58.560 --> 00:14:04.080 That's why they want to undo all that's connected to natural rights, faith, strong nuclear family, 240 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:08.600 clarity on identity, strong moral compass, respect for one another's life, liberty and 241 00:14:08.600 --> 00:14:09.780 private property. 242 00:14:09.780 --> 00:14:14.580 The problem for the liberal left is that natural rights are logical. 243 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:17.820 And what makes it even more threatening is that you don't even have to believe in the 244 00:14:17.820 --> 00:14:20.380 God of the Bible, as I do, to agree. 245 00:14:20.380 --> 00:14:23.160 Cicero didn't even know if he believed in a creator. 246 00:14:23.160 --> 00:14:28.380 But the logic is even tighter if you do believe in a creator, a creator that creates all humans 247 00:14:28.380 --> 00:14:34.520 with equal value, regardless of origin, makes it indisputable that they would all have equal 248 00:14:34.520 --> 00:14:35.520 natural rights. 249 00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:38.880 And if you take the biblical view, it's even more powerful. 250 00:14:38.880 --> 00:14:43.720 Created in the image of God, able to create and develop and produce. 251 00:14:43.720 --> 00:14:49.120 But way before the modern left pushed critical race theory and white fragility, there were 252 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:53.040 scholars who hated the concept of natural law. 253 00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:54.960 They looked for alternative arguments. 254 00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:59.920 And it became academia's goal to debunk natural law in the late 19th. 255 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:04.200 20th centuries. So what did these haters of natural law think about the right to 256 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:06.360 life or the right to liberty or the right to property 257 00:15:06.360 --> 00:15:10.040 which became the pursuit of happiness? Well they said 258 00:15:10.040 --> 00:15:13.160 and this is amazing, they said all those rights are not 259 00:15:13.160 --> 00:15:17.360 and I quote, cognitively significant. 260 00:15:17.360 --> 00:15:21.280 Wow. So this came from the mostly German scholars 261 00:15:21.280 --> 00:15:25.480 they were mostly atheists. Natural law was too supportive of a belief in a 262 00:15:25.480 --> 00:15:26.080 creator 263 00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:29.360 and they wanted government large. They were Machiavellians 264 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:34.120 that the ends justified the means. Government would violate individual rights to 265 00:15:34.120 --> 00:15:35.720 accomplish their endgame goal. 266 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:40.280 That's why today they will use any emergency to bypass rights. 267 00:15:40.280 --> 00:15:43.920 The scholars who hated natural rights have a huge distaste 268 00:15:43.920 --> 00:15:47.680 for any citizen mandate whereby the government is hired to serve 269 00:15:47.680 --> 00:15:52.200 the citizen. And the US citizen mandate concept where government is hired to 270 00:15:52.200 --> 00:15:52.960 protect 271 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:56.400 the natural rights of individuals threatens 272 00:15:56.400 --> 00:16:00.080 their power over people. Some of these scholars were Marxists 273 00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:03.640 and to them the only rights the individual had was to the society 274 00:16:03.640 --> 00:16:08.160 at large. And maintaining society's rights for a Marxist 275 00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:11.720 required a powerful central government. Some of these people were called 276 00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:13.280 utilitarians. This is a 277 00:16:13.280 --> 00:16:17.920 utilitarian view of rights. It operates under the guise of giving everyone 278 00:16:17.920 --> 00:16:20.800 at a lower income level some of the basic rights of those at a higher income 279 00:16:20.800 --> 00:16:21.440 level 280 00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:25.360 and it seems appealing when it's all dressed up. But it's ugly 281 00:16:25.520 --> 00:16:28.960 in its implementation. This philosophical view 282 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:32.920 created the platform for stripping humans of their rights for the sake of 283 00:16:32.920 --> 00:16:33.600 the government 284 00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:37.400 and it resulted in horrible human rights violations. 285 00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:42.000 Even the left-of-center economist blames this utilitarian view and the 286 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.640 Machiavellian ends justify the means philosophy 287 00:16:44.640 --> 00:16:48.160 of government for the atrocities of the Red Terror 288 00:16:48.160 --> 00:16:51.480 in Lenin's Russia, the Great Purge by Stalin, 289 00:16:51.640 --> 00:16:55.480 the six million exterminated in the Holocaust in Hitler's Nazi Germany, 290 00:16:55.480 --> 00:17:00.080 the tens of millions slaughtered in Mao's Cultural Revolution in China, 291 00:17:00.080 --> 00:17:04.240 the killing fields of the Cambodia genocide, the genocide in Bosnia, 292 00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:07.359 Herzegovina, Rwanda, and recently in Darfur. 293 00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:11.599 These all result when government has too much 294 00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:14.960 control. And when government thinks that its 295 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:18.160 ends justify the means, the means are always 296 00:17:18.160 --> 00:17:21.640 going to end up being a violation of one or all three 297 00:17:21.640 --> 00:17:25.240 of the freedom rights. The natural rights 298 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:30.840 we earn by birth. So previous to these atrocities 299 00:17:30.840 --> 00:17:34.520 scholars like Bentham and Hume, when they were just thinking about it and trying to 300 00:17:34.520 --> 00:17:35.360 attack it, 301 00:17:35.360 --> 00:17:39.160 they were ambitiously trying to debunk natural 302 00:17:39.160 --> 00:17:42.520 rights. They were afraid, and I quote here, 303 00:17:42.520 --> 00:17:46.840 of the monstrous fiction of human 304 00:17:47.040 --> 00:17:51.360 equality, quote-unquote. Can you believe that? 305 00:17:51.360 --> 00:17:54.960 They did not believe that humans are created and they didn't believe that 306 00:17:54.960 --> 00:17:56.200 they had equal value. 307 00:17:56.200 --> 00:17:59.320 The problem with natural rights was 308 00:17:59.320 --> 00:18:03.520 not its logic. In fact, they skip past foundational flaws 309 00:18:03.520 --> 00:18:06.760 to make the case for their argument. In fact, they almost just don't make any 310 00:18:06.760 --> 00:18:10.280 sense when they try to attack natural law or natural rights on its merits. 311 00:18:10.280 --> 00:18:13.760 No, when they attack it, they reveal their issue. 312 00:18:14.280 --> 00:18:18.200 What is their issue? It gave too much power to the individual. 313 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:21.520 It gave the individual hope and instilled, 314 00:18:21.520 --> 00:18:25.040 and again I quote, this is what they were saying, 315 00:18:25.040 --> 00:18:28.280 false ideas, this is what natural rights did, 316 00:18:28.280 --> 00:18:31.560 gave false ideas and vain expectations 317 00:18:31.560 --> 00:18:36.320 into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, 318 00:18:36.320 --> 00:18:40.240 quote-unquote. They were all smug intellectuals. 319 00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:45.360 They never worked with their hands, and they never wanted to lift someone out of 320 00:18:45.360 --> 00:18:48.200 their lower economic status and give them the tools to move 321 00:18:48.200 --> 00:18:51.400 upward. They just wanted to take from those who had more 322 00:18:51.400 --> 00:18:54.480 and give to them. And they hated God, 323 00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:57.840 the whole idea of God, or even the idea of anything 324 00:18:57.840 --> 00:19:01.960 absolute. What they say in their writings is that you can't control people if they 325 00:19:01.960 --> 00:19:03.720 believe that they are born with rights, 326 00:19:03.720 --> 00:19:07.560 especially protective rights to your life, or expressive rights 327 00:19:07.640 --> 00:19:10.600 to your liberty, or aspirational rights 328 00:19:10.600 --> 00:19:15.920 to your pursuit of happiness. So pushed against the wall by empirical evidence, 329 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:20.240 where we show all the millions who die these horrible deaths when a government 330 00:19:20.240 --> 00:19:21.480 has too much power, 331 00:19:21.480 --> 00:19:24.720 even many utilitarian scholars today 332 00:19:24.720 --> 00:19:28.120 accept that if the right is a human right, it's universal 333 00:19:28.120 --> 00:19:31.800 in character. So now, even though they don't believe that person was 334 00:19:31.800 --> 00:19:34.840 created in the image of God, they agree with natural 335 00:19:34.920 --> 00:19:39.120 law in this way. They agree that all human beings everywhere 336 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:42.880 have equal access to those rights, if it's determined to be a human right. 337 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:47.040 This is without regard to merit or need. It's simply the rights you have 338 00:19:47.040 --> 00:19:51.880 because you're human. So next time you're in a discussion with someone spouting 339 00:19:51.880 --> 00:19:56.280 leftist leanings, you might ask them, which human beings 340 00:19:56.280 --> 00:20:00.000 are not fully human? And what makes us 341 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:03.800 human. Natural law says that we're all 342 00:20:03.800 --> 00:20:06.840 equally human. Most believe, including 343 00:20:06.840 --> 00:20:11.240 all the US founders, that we are equally human because we have the same Creator. 344 00:20:11.240 --> 00:20:16.120 But even if you don't believe that, you can observe that humans are distinct 345 00:20:16.120 --> 00:20:17.240 from other animals. 346 00:20:17.240 --> 00:20:21.640 Humans have reason, free will. They're not just driven by instinct and appetite. 347 00:20:21.640 --> 00:20:25.560 We're capable of making choices according to reason, and we have a legit 348 00:20:25.560 --> 00:20:27.160 basis for being treated equally. 349 00:20:27.920 --> 00:20:30.960 In the 17th and 18th centuries, Bacon and Locke made the case that 350 00:20:30.960 --> 00:20:34.320 natural law was empirically true. You could prove it. 351 00:20:34.320 --> 00:20:38.040 The argument goes like this. Before there was ever a government, 352 00:20:38.040 --> 00:20:42.240 humans existed in a state of nature. And in the state of nature, 353 00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:45.920 every human wants other humans to treat him with respect, 354 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:49.760 not harass or injure him, the right to life, 355 00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:52.800 not arbitrarily rule over him, 356 00:20:52.800 --> 00:20:56.160 the right to liberty, and not steal from him, 357 00:20:56.160 --> 00:21:01.000 the right to property. So government is given a social contract to protect these 358 00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:01.560 rights. 359 00:21:01.560 --> 00:21:05.240 But the rights themselves are wholly owned by the individual. 360 00:21:05.240 --> 00:21:09.880 And that's a conception. What makes this so compelling is it has 361 00:21:09.880 --> 00:21:13.280 no denominational dogma. The founders were working with 362 00:21:13.280 --> 00:21:17.200 undisputed rights. They were inalienable. 363 00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:22.160 They were absolutely true. Thomas Jefferson studied Locke and Monesquieu 364 00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:22.840 and Bacon. 365 00:21:23.080 --> 00:21:27.200 When he drafted the Declaration, he simply gave poetic eloquence 366 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:32.120 to the ideas of natural law. And the foundation of natural law continued. 367 00:21:32.120 --> 00:21:37.480 In de Lafayette's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789, 368 00:21:37.480 --> 00:21:41.400 he said that men are born and remain free and equal 369 00:21:41.400 --> 00:21:44.880 in rights, and that the aim of the political association 370 00:21:44.880 --> 00:21:48.160 is the preservation of the natural and 371 00:21:48.160 --> 00:21:51.480 imprescriptible rights of man. 372 00:21:51.480 --> 00:21:56.480 So natural law is true. And with natural law being proven 373 00:21:56.480 --> 00:21:59.600 by any honest observer, we have our fifth 374 00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:04.000 citizen mandate that comes from Locke. Government shall not interfere 375 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:07.880 with your economic freedom. Private property is personal to you. 376 00:22:07.880 --> 00:22:13.560 You own your own labor. This mandate not only gets us five-sevenths of the way 377 00:22:13.560 --> 00:22:15.960 through the foundation for the freedom pillars, 378 00:22:16.360 --> 00:22:19.240 it also links to the case for the third pillar of freedom. 379 00:22:19.240 --> 00:22:23.800 The natural right of private property was transformed to a bigger idea, 380 00:22:23.800 --> 00:22:27.520 the idea of the pursuit of happiness. It's a very 381 00:22:27.520 --> 00:22:30.920 aspirational pillar of freedom. We'll look at that 382 00:22:30.920 --> 00:22:34.680 in detail in our final on the series. It's unique on the earth and it built the 383 00:22:34.680 --> 00:22:36.400 concept of the American dream. 384 00:22:36.400 --> 00:22:39.840 For now, we have established the case for natural law 385 00:22:39.840 --> 00:22:44.240 and natural rights. They are absolutely and observably true. 386 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:47.520 You can empirically prove them and you have 387 00:22:47.520 --> 00:22:52.240 the natural right to your own labor. Your citizen mandate 388 00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:55.280 is clear. Government, keep your hands off 389 00:22:55.280 --> 00:22:59.360 of my economic freedom. Next week, we're gonna look at 390 00:22:59.360 --> 00:23:03.840 the Declaration of Independence and the final two citizen mandates that 391 00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:09.080 established the foundation for freedom rights. The three freedom pillars 392 00:23:09.080 --> 00:23:13.320 were not frivolously derived to your freedom. 393 00:23:13.760 --> 00:23:14.800 God bless you. 394 00:23:14.800 --> 00:23:19.280 Hi, I'm David Farah. Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast, 395 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:23.280 The Barry Farah Show, Culture Shift. Click subscribe now 396 00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:27.200 to be sure you don't miss an episode. Share this podcast with your friends on 397 00:23:27.200 --> 00:23:29.760 social media and give The Barry Farah Show 398 00:23:29.760 --> 00:23:32.720 your five-star rating. See you next time.