Rights of 'mericans

     In nations worldwide, past and present, rights of the citizenry have been dispensations from the ruling class. It wasn't until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that modern social contract theory began to set the stage for the idea that rights are not handouts from government but are inherent in individuals and individual interactions with one another.
     With the founding of the United States of America, a different view on rights was codified in our Declaration of Indepence and our Constitution. Instead of "rights to" things, our American concept of rights is that of "rights from" things, namely government interference in our lives. So, how is it that we've strayed so far from that intial American path in just over 200 years?
     "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed." Rights flow from the people to the government, not from the government to the people. This is explicit. At the time, this was also revolutionary, unprecedented and treasonous. Uttering such thoughts, let alone writing them down, could result in imprisonment and death. The Founders - both men and women - were extraordinarly brave.
     "A new Rasmussen poll shows that just 17 per cent of Americans believe that the U.S. government has the consent of the governed, an all time low." (http://www.infowars.com/pollster-americans-are-pre-revolutionary/) It is dismaying, to say the least, that our most fundament, core belief as a people has so eroded that fewer than 20 percent of us believe our government functions with our consent. What does this mean? It means that the government does not function with our consent; it functions contrary to our consent. We are - or at least we view ourselves as - vassals of the state.
     Getting back to our rights...
     When the constitution was written, some Framers and states were concerned that the document outlined the functions of the state, but it did not enumerate the rights of the people. Ergo, the Bill of Rights was written, describing the rights of the people. Read them. (http://www.constitution.org/billofr_.htm) You will notice that none reads, you have the right to this or that. Instead, they read, you have the right to be free of interference from the government in various aspects of your daily life. For Americans, our rights are not rights to things, to dispensations from a benevolent dicatator. No. Our rights are to be free to live our lives, free from government interference, free to succeed or fail within our capabilities and desires, free to help our fellow man without the goverment telling us how, when or in what quantities.
     Politicians, both foreign and domestic, speak time and again about the compassion of the American people. Yes, we are compassionate, and we, more than any other people on Earth, know the value of the social contract. We know, because we agreed to ours of our own volition, not because it was forced upon us by a tyrant on a throne. Because of that deeply held value, that knowledge that we are dependent upon and beholden to our fellow man, we give. We give to charities, to family, to individuals, more than any other people on Earth. How long can that last, when we have government more and more involved in our lives, and always taking more and more from us? (http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/24/america-philanthropy-income-oped-cx_ee_1226eaves.html)
     The social contract we executed among ourselves as citizens is being usurped by a forced, unnatural relationship with our fellow citizens. The central government now decides who gives what, to whom and in what quantities. Consequently, a belief that the government will take care of those in need seems to absolve individuals from helping those in our communities, close to our homes, and each time Washington "helps" someone or some group, it gets its cut, effectively diluting the help originally intended for our fellow citizens. It also comes with a variety of strings.
     What kind of charity or welfare is this?
     When individuals give time or treasure to hold up their end of the social contract, it is with hope and compassion, rarely is it with qualifiers. Government redistribution always has strings and always affords a far flung bureaucrat his cut of the pie. It makes one wonder, is the most good done in the most efficient way? At best, it is an inefficient system that makes some feeble effort to help. At worst, it is a clever money laundering scheme that makes career politicians and bureaucrats wealthy, engrains dependency on government, and may violate our personal, individual moral beliefs (e.g., public funding of abortion providers using tax dollars from all Americans, including those opposed to abortion on moral or religious grounds). No wonder we feel that we no longer control our government, when so many of us live in fear that the government's so-thought beneficence and magnanimity may run out if we do not accept the strings tied to its charity? How are we, as a people, free, living under that constant threat?
     Americans need to reclaim our rightful place as sovereigns over our government and as individual sovereigns over our individual lives and reject the notion that today's government would have us accept, that we are dependent upon the largess of the state - that we cannot survive on our own merits and on the freely shared merits of our countrymen. The time is now.