"Dr. James Slaughter" <jslaughter@criswell.edu> wrote:

:|The origin of all human rights is God, as acknowledged by the Founding
:|Fathers.

Our founding document of liberty, the Declaration of Independence, pointed
to God as the source of our rights. Among the "truths" that were regarded
by our founding fathers as "self-evident" was the proposition that certain
rights were "unalienable" because their source was neither government nor
popular acceptance, but the endowment of the "Creator." What God gives, no
human can take away. As the young Alexander Hamilton insisted on the eve of
the American Revolution: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be
rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.... They are written, as
with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the
divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."2 Nor
is this an anachronistic view. President George W. Bush put it this way in
2002: "We need common sense judges who understand our rights were derived
from God."3

If only it were that simple! If only it were true that a God, in whom
everyone believed, had come down from the heavens and given the entire
world an unambiguous list of the rights with which He endowed us. How much
easier it would be to defend these sacred rights from alienation by mere
mortals. Alas, the claim that rights were written down by the hand of the
divinity is one of those founding myths to which we desperately cling,
along with the giving of the Tablets to Moses on Sinai, the dictation of
the Koran to Muhammad, and the discovery of the Gold Plates by Joseph
Smith.

To the extent the divine source and unalienability of our rights are
purported to be factual, history has proved our founding fathers plainly
wrong: Every right has in fact been alienated by governments since the
beginning of time. Within a generation of the establishment of our nation,
the founding fathers rescinded virtually every right they had previously
declared unalienable. John Adams, one of the drafters of the Declaration of
Independence, alienated the right to speak freely and express dissenting
views when, as president, he enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts against
his political opponents-with Hamilton's strong support.4 (Perhaps
Hamilton's God had not given "sacred rights" to Jeffersonians!) Another of
the drafters, Thomas Jefferson, alienated the most basic of rights-to the
equal protection of the laws, based on the "truth" that "all men are
created equal"-when he helped to write (and strengthen) Virginia's "Slave
Code," just a few years after drafting the Declaration of Independence. The
revised Code denied Negro slaves the right to liberty and to the pursuit of
happiness by punishing attempted escape with"outlawry" or death. Jefferson
personally suspected that "the blacks ... are inferior to the whites in the
endowments of body and mind." In other words, they were endowed by their
creator not with equality but with inferiority.

There is no right that has not been suspended or trampled during times of
crisis and war, even by our greatest presidents. Washington was a strong
supporter of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Lincoln suspended the writ of
habeas corpus. Wilson authorized the "Palmer raids," in which his attorney
general seized, arrested, and imprisoned thousands of suspected radicals in
violation of their rights. Roosevelt ordered the detention of more than
100,000 Americans of Japanese descent without even a semblance of due
process. He also convened a military tribunal to try-without a jury-an
American citizen caught spying for Germany in the United States. And
Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, despite their personal dislike of Senator
Joseph McCarthy, alienated the rights of political dissent during the Cold
War by enforcing the persecution of Communists, former Communists, and
those suspected of leftist sympathies.

These precedents and others have been cited by President George W. Bush,
his attorney general, and some judges to justify-the alienation of some of
our most important rights (perhaps Bush's God did not bestow these rights
on American citizens suspected of terrorism or foreigners detained at
Guantanamo, Cuba). The difference is that in the past, the alienations were
temporary, lasting only as long as the war or emergency. But the "war"
against terrorism is, by its nature, unending. There will be no formal
surrender by our current enemies. There will be no peace treaty, parades,
or victory days. Whatever alienations of our fundamental rights are
authorized by the courts today will endure for generations. Alienation may
well become the norm.

NOTES:
2. Quoted in Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004), p.
60.
3. Alessandra Stanley, "Understanding the President and His God," New York
Times, April 29, 2004, p. El.
4. See David McGowan, "Ethos in Law and History: Alexander Hamilton, The
Federalist, and the Supreme Court," 85 Minnesota Law Review 755 (2001), pp.
778-779 (noting Hamilton's support, as demonstrated by his reaction to the
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, which opposed the Alien and Sedition
Acts; among other things, Hamilton recommended using military force to
"persuade" Virginia that the Alien and Sedition Acts were appropriate).
SOURCE: Rights From Wrongs, A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. Alan
Dershowitz, Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Boom Group, N.Y. (2004)
pp. 2-3

"Dr. James Slaughter" <jslaughter@criswell.edu> wrote:

:|The origin of all human rights is God, as acknowledged by the
:|Founding Fathers.

Which founding fathers?

What were their qualifications that we should consider any such
comments by them to carry any weight?

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 21:20:45 -0600, Dr. James Slaughter
wrote
(in article <Xns95DDD924CBBCCjesys@151.164.30.42>):

The origin of all human rights is God, as acknowledged by the Founding
Fathers.

Hm,m,m - you sure 'bout that?