Do Our Rights Come from God, Constitution, Supreme Court

The only writing The Hard Left hates as much as the Bible is Our Declaration of Independence

Do Our Rights Come from God, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, or Congress?

By Publius Huldah
Sunday, October 31, 2010

The future of our Posterity depends on a proper understanding of the Source of our Rights. I will explain four views; show you which one is True, and why the other three are False and lead inexorably to the destruction of any country which embraces them.

1. Let us begin with what is True: Our Declaration of Independence says our Rights come from God. Our rights thus pre-date & pre-exist the U.S. Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

So these, then, are the foundational principles of our Constitutional Republic:

Our Rights are unalienable and come from God;

The purpose of civil government is to protect our God-given Rights;
Civil government is legitimate only when it operates with our consent; &
Since the US Constitution is the formal expression of the Will of the People, the federal government operates with our consent only when it obeys the Constitution.

Because the Declaration of Independence identifies The Creator as Grantor of Rights, we look to The Bible - or the Natural Law - to see what those rights are. The Bible - or the Natural Law - reveals many rights, such as the rights to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness; to inherit, earn, and keep property; the right of self-defense; the right and duty to demand that the civil authorities obey the Law; the right to speak; the right to live our lives free from interference from civil government; the rights of parents to raise their children free from interference from civil government; the right to worship God; etc.

The distinguishing characteristics of all God-given or Natural Rights 1 are:

Each one may be held and enjoyed at NO expense or loss to any other person; and

We can look them up for ourselves! They are not subject to someone else’s interpretations.

2. But many conservatives mistakenly believe that our rights come from the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution. So they speak of “our constitutional rightsâ€