"Freedom" of the Left

[rupol2000]

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the Star-Spangled Banner, in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

[Ringtone]

As I pointed out yesterday when the topic of freedom was brought up and the left was accused of not promoting freedom, I'll again try to demonstrate the facts.

The 27 countries in the world with the most freedom

Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization, measures freedom in terms of civil liberties and political rights for an annual report.

www.businessinsider.com

It can't be just a coincidence that the top ten countries on 'freedoms' are the most leftist countries in the world. While America as it moves more toward the right, has slid to 58th. in the world.

Can we learn from Reagan's words? Isn't he really just saying that the American way is so tilted toward upholding income inequality and lack of equality across America's race inequality, that the blame must be put on the poor rather than the system.

The way of the USA may not survive or be saved much longer. Trump's coup attempt failed the first time but the angry people who participated failed to achieve their goal.

Lack of affordable health care alone could bring the system down.

Trump doesn't tell his supporters who are still poor that they are lazy and that's why they suffer. What is the real reason?

The political left's idea of freedom is collecttivistic, entailing the redistribution of wealth and social conformity.

 

[Donald H]

The political left's idea of freedom is collecttivistic, entailing the redistribution of wealth and social conformity.

The distribution of wealth? Yes!
Social conformity? Yes!

When an American works for a billioniare's corporation, the billionaire no longer owns all of his money. The working American owns some of it!

That's how the term, 'other people's money' applies to the billionaire's money.

 

[rupol2000]

The distribution of wealth? Yes!

The idea of inrightness: take away from the worthy and give to the unworthy. Take from the righteous and give to the criminal, and so on.

 

[Ringtone]

The essence of real liberty is the Lockean, Anglo-American tradition of natural law, the classical liberalism predicated on the sociopolitical implications of Judeo-Christianity's ethical system of thought. All other notions are tyrannical.

The following excerpt from an article I wrote summarizes the matter:

The Declaration of Independence is the sociopolitical expression of Lockean natural law 101. Except for the list of specific grievances and the Thomistic construct of inalienable rights itself, every single idea of political philosophy in that document drafted by Jefferson is Locke’s. Every single one of them! But, tragically, comparatively few American students know who Locke is today precisely because the Deweyan public education system doesn’t want them to study his ideas. His Christian philosophy of government is anathema to Dewey’s cultural naturalism of the Darwinian paradigm and his democratic collectivism.​

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Locke’s political theory consists of his social contract theory and theory of labor, the bulk of which is expounded in his Two Treatises of Civil Government (1689), arguably the most outstanding work of political theory in history. But then again, Locke regarded himself as nothing more than God’s attentive mouthpiece. As virtually all of the ontological and epistemological justifications for his arguments are predicated on biblical imperatives, the Treatises are steeped in scriptural citations. Locke acknowledges Aquinas’ epiphany regarding the standard of human rights befitting the dignity of the Imago Dei, but he argues his thesis from Christ’s summation of Mosaic law:​

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Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:37–40, KJV).​

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Locke held that any other foundation for liberty than the above, commonly referred to as the Christian iteration of the Golden Rule, is either faulty or incomplete. He also averred from the above that government is not only the servant of God but that of the people. While the people are obliged to obey the law of the land (Romans 13:1–7), the government is equally obliged to observe the terms of the social contract established by the people. The people are to reverently serve only one master, and that Master is not the state. Thusly, the sociopolitical implications of Christ’s imperatives immediately follow and are parallelly twofold.​

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(1) God is the Source and Guarantor of human rights, and because He endows them, they’re inalienable. These rights cannot be granted, taken away, or transferred to another by the state. The state can only illegitimately suppress their outward expressions in violation of the social contract, thereby creating a state of war between it and the people. In the face of gross governmental criminality (tyranny), it’s the duty of the people to overthrow the government in the name of God—for His sake and the sake of His creatures. Why? Because such a state evinces the audacity to establish a cult of injustice in defiance of God’s authority. (2) The citizens of the body politic are obliged to observe the inherent rights of their fellow citizens (neighbors) and may lawfully use force, up to and including deadly force, if necessary, against social renegades (criminals).​

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Allow for the following summary:​

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• The principle of inalienable human rights, Aquinas’ insight reiterated by Locke
• The principle that the state is the servant of God and the people
• The principle of the consent of the governed (or as Abraham Lincoln put it in his Gettysburg Address: “the government of the people, by the people, for the people”)
• The principle that the state solely exists at the behest of God to protect and promote the inherent rights of the people
• The inherent right of the people to keep and bear arms for self-defense against criminals and criminal regimes
• Specifically, the inherent right of revolt
• The regulatory principle of civil justice per the limited range of governmental power
• The regulatory principle of social justice per the legitimate range of human action

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What are the fundamental rights within the legitimate range of free exercise? Locke’s triadic construct of natural rights answers that question: the rights of life, liberty, and private property.​

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A deeper analysis of the range of legitimacy divulges the latter two principles listed in the bullet summary above, which are latently inherent to the Christian Golden Rule. Locke draws an inverse correlation between Christ’s positive summation of natural law and Paul’s negative exegesis of natural law (Romans 1:18–25). Positive: as long as one exercises one’s natural rights within the range of legitimacy, one’s actions cannot be criminal, so the government shouldn’t infringe on them. That goes to the principle of limited government, i.e., the regulatory principle of civil justice between the state and the people. Negative: human beings know what the legitimate range of free exercise is. Everybody knows that it’s wrong to murder, oppress or rob, precisely because they would not wish that others murder, oppress or rob them. That goes to the regulatory principle of social justice in criminal law between the people of the social contract. The corollary in civil law holds that the range of the free exercise of one’s rights ends where those of others begin.​

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Does any of the above sound familiar?​

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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, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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. —Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence, 1776 ​

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As for the pursuit of Happiness, that was a phrase of art commonly voiced by the British and American proponents of Lockean natural law in the 17th and 18th Centuries. The expression doesn’t originate with Jefferson at all, as so many mistakenly believe:​

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The necessity of pursuing happiness is the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary compliance with our desire, set upon any particular, and then appearing preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, or be inconsistent with, our real happiness: and therefore, till we are as much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter, and the nature of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases [emphasis added]. —John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689 ​

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The phrase pertains to Locke’s construct of private property as premised on his theory of labor, which entails the sentiment in the above excerpt from his Essay and is clarified by him in his Treatises.22​

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Locke held that the discovery of “true and solid happiness” is realized by the process of an intellectually careful examination of things in the pursuit of it. This process is “the foundation of liberty” because it frees one from enslavement to the base desires of false or “imaginary” happiness. Throwing off the fleshly inclinations of immediate gratification is the path of spiritual wisdom toward “our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow.” Here Locke is echoing Christ: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32, KJV).​

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In the Treatises, Locke asserts the natural right of the ownership of one's labor and the natural right of human beings to acquire the ownership of nature’s common property by exerting their labor on it to create and build and produce. What the people create and build and produce are the fruits of their labor, which they may sell or trade. Unfettered by the state, the people are free to apply their skills to improve the resources of nature's bounty as their consciences lead them under God. In their daily pursuit of happiness, God provides for their material, intellectual and spiritual needs proportionally to their efforts and their fidelity to the truth.​

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Thus, we have the overarching theme of Locke’s theory of natural law: the inherent right of individuals to peacefully pursue their self-interests within the framework of the social contract of consent, free of undue governmental interference.​

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On the Internet, one may encounter the opinions of persons who have read just enough of Locke to be dangerous.​

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About a year ago, I read that Jefferson supposedly changed Locke’s referent property to the pursuit of Happiness because the latter had a more eloquent ring to it. Well, to be sure, that’s true, but the flourish of eloquence is still Locke’s, not Jefferson’s. Moreover, in the parlance of Lockean theory, property and the pursuit of Happiness are synonymous referents vis-à-vis the fruits of one’s conscientious labor as unto God.​

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Others who are aware of its Lockean origin have suggested that in Jefferson’s mind, the phrase of art pertained to the happiness of enlightened virtue in the classical sense, which isn’t an unreasonable conjecture given the Epicurean leanings of Jefferson’s Deism. Be that as it may, Locke, Newton, and Bacon were Jefferson’s chief intellectual heroes. He was steeped in their works. We know this from the Jeffersonian canon of notes, essays, and correspondences. Jefferson favorably discussed private property from the Lockean perspective per the virtuously productive use of God’s resources for the betterment of oneself and others.23 Hence, we know that Jefferson commended Locke’s concept of happiness as well.​

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Others insist that Locke himself invoked the “enlightened” happiness of some classical tradition. Piffle. That’s the dogmatism of sheer ignorance based on the reading of Locke’s Essay without reading or faithfully regarding Locke’s Treatises. It’s also the ignorance of the humanist inclination. Locke had no use for classical ethics as such. Furthermore, as a biblically informed empiricist, essentially, a Christian realist, he wasn’t an idealist or a rationalist of any stripe. He regarded the meanderings of the latter two to be particularly presumptuous and heretical. It’s he who most famously refuted René Descartes (1596 – 1650), the progenitor of modern rationalism. Worse, this notion is based on a haphazard reading of Locke’s Essay itself, as it’s in that very work that Locke disputes Descartes’ epistemology.24​

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Rationalism is the human mind adrift in deep, murky waters, cut off from the light of God’s word regarding the very things the Cartesian method allegedly equips one’s mind to decipher. Locke predicted that it would lead men to invent all manner of pseudoscience. History has vindicated Locke’s prediction.​

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Locke regarded classical ethics only insofar as they reflected the civic virtues of Christian republicanism. His concept of happiness is strictly based on Christianity’s theological imperative regarding the ethical and practical stewardship of God’s resources. It’s the pursuit of that end that brings the true happiness of a job “well done” by the “good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:14–34; see also Luke 19:11–27). Locke’s theoretical narrative in the Treatises manifestly reflects the Parable of the Talents. To a man, the Founders agreed with Locke that private property in the material sense is the practical foundation of liberty, as the entity that controls a man’s estate controls his life, if not his heart.25 Hence, the above contention is false, and whatever was actually in Jefferson’s mind is ultimately irrelevant. Others, including the common man who read Locke, understood Jefferson’s use of the phrase to be a referent to Locke’s construct of private property in both the theological and material sense, and Jefferson was cognizant of that.​

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Another line of “scholarship” alleges that because Lockean individualism differs from the ecumenical individualism of the Puritan tradition, Locke adopted the presuppositions of humanism. Once again, this is not so much the revisionism of activism as the revisionism of ignorance, in this case, regarding the history of Christian thought within the Body of Christ. In his adulthood, Locke merely came to disavow the strictly Calvinist view of predestination. The Arminian view struck him to be more biblically comprehensive because it asserts the simultaneity of the elective will of divinity and the free will of humanity. Ideological liberty axiomatically entails the freedom of association, which is the bane of the invariably collectivist inclinations of humanism.​

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I don’t want to leave the reader with the impression that today’s scholarship on Lockean theory is wholly unreliable. The trash on the Internet is written by progressives who unwittingly transpose their humanist worldview instead of carefully regarding Locke’s ideas within the context of his entire corpus. They’d be devastated if they were to ever actually read Locke’s works in toto. They’d discover they’d commended a body of thought produced by a man who passionately opposed everything they stand for. Internet sites devoted to Lockean theory managed and featuring articles written by conservatives and libertarians are infinitely better informed. Even some liberal scholars have written some excellent articles and books on the theory of natural law and its history.​

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However, informed liberals do tend to criticize the Sage’s ideas. They deplore his overly pessimistic view of human nature. They wring their hands over the divisive tone of his emphasis on the freedom of association. They take umbrage at the self-centered cupidity of his libertarianism. In other words, they spew the same ol’ sour grapes at what others know to be reality, liberty, and the desire to keep the fruits of one’s labor. But then again, they’re the anointed, the enlightened dispensers of the equal outcomes of governmental coercion who would otherwise be deprived of the obsequious gratitude of others, which is their due.​

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Locke’s construct of private property is also the springboard for his famous argument against the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. Monarchism runs counter to the principles of autonomous labor and the vested acquisition of nature’s common resources. It’s the stuff of confiscatory taxation without representation. Yes, Lockean political theory is the origin of the proverbial catchphrase of America’s revolutionary patriots as well. Moreover, citing the divine warning conveyed by Samuel to the Israelites, Locke argued that God’s perfect will for government is a theocratic republic—led not by an absolute monarch, unless that monarch is Christ—but by inspired prophets, godly judges, and pastoral administrators.​

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(By the way, Locke’s theory of labor is the predominant influence on the body of British and American patent and copyright law to this day.)​

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Finally, Locke championed religious tolerance. He’s the progenitor of the original principle of separation between religion and state, or, in his words, between “the Church and the Magistrate”26 for the times of the Gentiles. He wrote an influential series of letters on religious tolerance in the years of 1689, ’90, and ’9227 in which he bottomed his apologia on Christ’s edict: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17, KJV). That daisy utterly flummoxed the Pharisees, who had no idea they were trying to outsmart God Himself. I know readers of the Bible are familiar with the gist of that encounter, but I always get a chuckle out of that zinger and enjoy recounting its effect.​

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But, of course, Locke’s principle of separation is not what the Supreme Court imposed on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in Everson v. The Board of Education (1947).28 Locke simply argued that the government had no business invading the private sphere of religious affiliation and moral decision.​

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That’s God’s sphere!​

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The above is strictly a matter between God and the people. Expressly, the government must be prohibited from establishing an official state church or national religion. That’s all. It’s not rocket science. Ironically, the Court did just the opposite of what it claimed. In effect, it established the public education system as the government’s “church” and anointed humanism as the system’s “religious doctrine.” That's precisely what the Court did; make no mistake about it. The Court’s imbecilic version of the principle of separation is essentially that of the former Soviet Union, the constitution of which states in Article 13:​

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In order to ensure genuine freedom of conscience for the working people, the church is separated from the State, and the school from the church: and freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda is recognized for all citizens.29​

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The emboldened emphasis in the above is mine. Note that the government school was separated from the church, and private schools weren’t permitted in the Soviet Union. The “religious doctrine” of the state school was the dialectical materialism of Marxist atheism, so the guarantee regarding the “freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda” (i.e., the freedom of religion in realspeak, as opposed to the Orwellian doublespeak of the Soviet Constitution) was a flat-out lie.​

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But Locke made an exception to his rule. He supported a religious test for office.​

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Say it isn’t so, Johnny!​

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Though he opposed the government interfering with the private affairs of their religious/moral convictions and practices, he held that persons of nonbiblical faiths and atheists should be barred from holding public office. He observed that all other religious faiths were authoritatively collectivistic and that atheists had no ontological justification for the limited government of liberty. Also, given that God’s existence was self-evident, Locke regarded atheists as mentally deranged—rank reprobates. He rightly held that the above persons weren’t ideologically fit to uphold the liberty of a republican form of government. The only exception to that rule would be the Deists and classical pagans of republicanism. Their understanding of natural law was fundamentally akin to or precisely that of Christianity. Persons of nonbiblical faiths and atheists do indeed tend to be leftists, progressives, collectivists, socialists, fascists, communists, statists. . . .​

 

[rupol2000]

Anglo-American tradition

 

[rupol2000]

Anglo-American tradition

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the Star-Spangled Banner, in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

 

[Ringtone]

Now I know what a total fool you are. The Anglo-American tradition of natural law, i.e., Lockean classical liberalism, in contemporary political parlance, is the American conservative-libertarianism of individual liberty and responsibility, you silly ass.

 

[rupol2000]

Now I know what a total fool you are. The Anglo-American tradition of natural law, i.e., Lockean classical liberalism, in contemporary political parlance, is the American conservative-libertarianism of individual liberty and responsibility, you silly ass.

go to hell you moron. America is a copy of Austria-Hungary, there was even the United States.

 

[rupol2000]

 

[Ringtone]

go to hell you moron. America is a copy of Austria-Hungary, there was even the United States.

 

[rupol2000]

 

[rupol2000]

The only question here is whether this influence is direct or reverse. The system is the same there - a free federation