What is the best evidence that the Founders did not mean to exclude blacks from "all men created equal"?
Read this paragraph and the following paragraph down to "...has been equally endowed by its Creator."
Showing posts with label unalienable_rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unalienable_rights. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, September 15, 2011
p. 294 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
How is the hierarchy of man's relationships to God and to other men fundamental to the idea that the "powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed"?
Saturday, September 11, 2010
p. 218 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What did Lincoln say that enraged the South the most and how, precisely, did Alexander Stephens say the exact same thing?
Saturday, August 21, 2010
p.183-185 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
How is no-fault divorce analogous to Southern nullification? "But a compact to form a government, like a marriage, although entered voluntarily, does not leave the contracting parties free thereafter to do as they please." What is the 'positive good' theory of slavery that Calhoun supported?
Calhoun did not believe the Union was a contract that states could enter and leave as they please, but he saw nullification and possible succession (failing nullification) as the proper route.
The marriage analogy is similar to Douglas' popular sovereignty argument that Buchanan rejected. Buchanan believed in the 'positive good' of slavery, and that if all the states did not recognize slavery as a 'positive good' then that would justify succession.
Buchannan believed the South could justify resistance on the basis of the natural law of self preservation, but he could "see no justification for resistance to slavery." p. 185. Under slavery, the positive law denied the slave the right to defend himself against the theft of his property in the fruit of his labor and the violence to his person that might be committed with impunity by his master. But the sovereign rights to life, liberty, and property are inseparable from one's being." p. 184
Calhoun did not believe the Union was a contract that states could enter and leave as they please, but he saw nullification and possible succession (failing nullification) as the proper route.
The marriage analogy is similar to Douglas' popular sovereignty argument that Buchanan rejected. Buchanan believed in the 'positive good' of slavery, and that if all the states did not recognize slavery as a 'positive good' then that would justify succession.
Buchannan believed the South could justify resistance on the basis of the natural law of self preservation, but he could "see no justification for resistance to slavery." p. 185. Under slavery, the positive law denied the slave the right to defend himself against the theft of his property in the fruit of his labor and the violence to his person that might be committed with impunity by his master. But the sovereign rights to life, liberty, and property are inseparable from one's being." p. 184
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Witness by Whittaker Chambers, from the foreward
The crisis of Communism exists to the degree in which it has failed to free the peoples that it rules from God...The crisis of the Western World exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
*p. 86-90 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
Chief Justice Rhenquist as nihilist. Jaffa says that Rehnquist uses the same argument to defend original intent as Calhoun did to defend slavery--what is the argument? How does Lincoln repudiate slavery and Rehnquist? p. 86 How did the Confederacy lose the war but win the battle of ideas?
Relevant Passages: Rehnquist's "original intent" has less in common with the intent of those who ratified the Constitution than with the intent of those who "dc-ratified" it in 1860-61. The Civil War was fought between two different conceptions of what constituted the "original intent" of the framers and ratifiers.
The heart of the Southern understanding of the Constitution consisted in the denial that any moral distinction could he drawn between the safeguards of individual liberty in the Constitution and the safeguards of slavery. By their account, all part', of the Constitution were of equal moral, no less than of equal legal, obligation.
Rehnquist's views are very different. For him, intrinsic worth as a concept has no foundation in reason. If safeguards of liberty have no such worth, then neither has liberty itself, or even life. In Rehnquist, we can observe that historical right has been transformed into unmitigated positivism or indeed into nihilism. He accounts for constitutional morality by saying that constitutional safeguards "take on a generalized moral rightness or goodness" when they "assume a general social acceptance."
Relevant Passages: Rehnquist's "original intent" has less in common with the intent of those who ratified the Constitution than with the intent of those who "dc-ratified" it in 1860-61. The Civil War was fought between two different conceptions of what constituted the "original intent" of the framers and ratifiers.
The heart of the Southern understanding of the Constitution consisted in the denial that any moral distinction could he drawn between the safeguards of individual liberty in the Constitution and the safeguards of slavery. By their account, all part', of the Constitution were of equal moral, no less than of equal legal, obligation.
Rehnquist's views are very different. For him, intrinsic worth as a concept has no foundation in reason. If safeguards of liberty have no such worth, then neither has liberty itself, or even life. In Rehnquist, we can observe that historical right has been transformed into unmitigated positivism or indeed into nihilism. He accounts for constitutional morality by saying that constitutional safeguards "take on a generalized moral rightness or goodness" when they "assume a general social acceptance."
pp. 33-34 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What are the outcomes of the Alien and Sedition Acts? What must we not "read back into" these outcomes?
Relevant Passage: These acts were followed by the resolutions of the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in November and December of the same year, and a further resolution adopted in Kentucky in February 1799. These protests presented the already familiar argument about strict construction as a constitutional requirement of the Tenth Amendment. They also introduced, as a necessary inference from the doctrine of strict construction, a theory of civil liberty as the ground of the legitimacy of the political process. If we understand the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions as Jefferson and Madison understood them at the time, the defense of state rights and the defense of civil liberty formed part of a single argument. Looked at in the light of nearly two centuries, however, they stand at the headwaters of two divergent trends in American political and constitutional history. The defense of state rights against "numerical majoritarianism" and the "tyranny of the majority" became in time a defense of slavery and, after that, of Jim Crow. Paradoxical as it may be, in its association with "state rights," the argument against "tyranny" became the argument for "despotism," notwithstanding the fact that these two words at bottom mean the same thing. For Jefferson and Madison, however, the rights of the states, as of all legitimate civil societies, were grounded in the natural rights of individuals, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and the bills of rights of the states. The rights of the states and the condemnation of slavery were part of the same doctrine. To understand the election of 1800, we must not read back into it the opposition between state rights and civil liberties that may be said to have begun (as Lincoln saw it) in the nullification crisis of 1828 to 1833.
Relevant Passage: These acts were followed by the resolutions of the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures in November and December of the same year, and a further resolution adopted in Kentucky in February 1799. These protests presented the already familiar argument about strict construction as a constitutional requirement of the Tenth Amendment. They also introduced, as a necessary inference from the doctrine of strict construction, a theory of civil liberty as the ground of the legitimacy of the political process. If we understand the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions as Jefferson and Madison understood them at the time, the defense of state rights and the defense of civil liberty formed part of a single argument. Looked at in the light of nearly two centuries, however, they stand at the headwaters of two divergent trends in American political and constitutional history. The defense of state rights against "numerical majoritarianism" and the "tyranny of the majority" became in time a defense of slavery and, after that, of Jim Crow. Paradoxical as it may be, in its association with "state rights," the argument against "tyranny" became the argument for "despotism," notwithstanding the fact that these two words at bottom mean the same thing. For Jefferson and Madison, however, the rights of the states, as of all legitimate civil societies, were grounded in the natural rights of individuals, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and the bills of rights of the states. The rights of the states and the condemnation of slavery were part of the same doctrine. To understand the election of 1800, we must not read back into it the opposition between state rights and civil liberties that may be said to have begun (as Lincoln saw it) in the nullification crisis of 1828 to 1833.
pp. 49-50 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa
What are the natural order of wants? What is the connection between rights and wants? Why is property acquisition central to the Founders? Distinguish from libertarianism today. What is the line in the sand separating democracy from the Declaration?
Relevant Passages: It is important to understand "rights" and "wants" as two aspects of a single phenomenon.
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
To say that someone has a right to life is to say that he has a natural desire or want to preserve his life. All rightful authority is founded upon recognition of this desire or want as a right, and no authority can be rightful that does not recognize it and is not consistent with it. The right to life would be worthless, however, for someone without the liberty to acquire the means-that is to say, property-by which to defend and preserve it. And the right to acquire property would mean very little unless it resulted in secure possession. But life, liberty, and property together are not ends in themselves. In the Virginia and Massachusetts Bills of Rights, as in the Declaration, safety is the first of the ends or purposes of political life, but happiness is the end for which life, liberty, and property are wanted.
Relevant Passages: It is important to understand "rights" and "wants" as two aspects of a single phenomenon.
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
To say that someone has a right to life is to say that he has a natural desire or want to preserve his life. All rightful authority is founded upon recognition of this desire or want as a right, and no authority can be rightful that does not recognize it and is not consistent with it. The right to life would be worthless, however, for someone without the liberty to acquire the means-that is to say, property-by which to defend and preserve it. And the right to acquire property would mean very little unless it resulted in secure possession. But life, liberty, and property together are not ends in themselves. In the Virginia and Massachusetts Bills of Rights, as in the Declaration, safety is the first of the ends or purposes of political life, but happiness is the end for which life, liberty, and property are wanted.
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