Author’s Note: The following is only a theory based on reasonable
knowledge of the times discussed and much thought, but no sociological
research. As far as the author knows
this theory is unprecedented and has not been studied or tested by academia.
In spite
of being unaware of John Locke and only perhaps vaguely so of Thomas Jefferson,
most American children know at some gut level that people are born free; that a
state of liberty is the natural state for humans. Having this notion of natural freedom and
liberty as part of our fiber is an American trait, and was once uniquely
American. The United States was the
first country in recorded history to officially embrace the Enlightenment
concept of Natural Rights – the concept as stated in our Declaration of
Independence 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.” Our British brethren prior to the
Revolution were a relatively free people by European standards, but it was
generally understood in Britain that the rights enjoyed by Englishmen were given
to them by the monarch, often at the point of a sword, and held in trust by
Parliament; only a rare philosopher suggested that the rights of humans did not
come from government but are “God Given” or “Natural” – rights that belong to
humans by the nature of being human. This
philosophical anomaly was the foundation of the United State of America. *
So initially
because our Founding principles were taught, celebrated, and discussed
nationwide and then, as Revolutionary fervor waned, in subtle, subliminal ways
involving little thought, most Americans throughout our history have grown up
with the notion of Natural Rights engrained in their psyches; they knew that our
rights do not come from government, but that the purpose of government is to
protect rights that are ours at birth, that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Americans had every reason to believe these
truths; even those only vaguely familiar with our history lived in an
environment that taught them by mere contact with our society. This has been true for over two hundred years,
but to a diminishing degree and not for all Americans.
When
Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are “created
equal” he meant that the law applies to all men equally and that no man is
superior to his fellows by accident of birth; he meant that all men are born
with inalienable rights, not just an aristocratic few. It was a direct refutation of the hereditary
aristocracy that dominated Europe and of the idea that rights are a gift of
government. But did he mean to include
African slaves or even African freedmen?
It may seem obvious that he did not considering that he was a slave
holder, but the answer is not so simple – his meaning was in fact a subject of
great debate in the years of political conflict leading up to the civil
war. In spite of being a slave holder
Jefferson was opposed to the institution of chattel slavery and expressed hopes
that time would bring it to a peaceful end.
The general attitude among the Founding generation, even among most
southerners, was that it was a necessary evil that would be eliminated by
time. Two or three generations later, at
least in the south where cotton had become hugely profitable following the
invention of the cotton gin, this attitude had given way to one of
justification - the general argument being that the Negro race was naturally
inferior and meant to be subservient to whites, and that they were being
blessed with exposure to Christianity.
The narrative had changed from “necessary evil that will eventually be
eliminated” to “the way God meant for things to be perpetually”.
The great
orator and compromiser, Henry Clay, principal architect of the Missouri
Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, and also a slave holder, argued that
Jefferson indeed meant to include all
men in his famous passage – that Jefferson and most other Founders believed that
Africans as well as whites were born with inalienable rights and that those
rights being recognized and protected by the United States was an ideal for
America to strive toward even if it could not be immediately realized. Abraham Lincoln admired Clay and cited his
arguments in his debates with Stephen Douglas. The new Republican party of Lincoln still
hoped that if slavery could be contained to the existing south it would
eventually become economically disadvantageous, its supporters would lose
political clout, and the “peculiar institution” would die out. The argument in antebellum America was not about
emancipation, it was about proliferation of slavery into recently acquired
territories, about the balance of power between slave States and free States.
The
debate ended when war took its place – and during the Civil War Lincoln used
war powers to free the slaves in the rebelling States and then following the
war slavery was abolished throughout the country by the 13th
Amendment; blacks were given full citizenship and equal rights by the 14th
Amendment, and specifically granted equal suffrage with whites in their
respective States by the 15th amendment.**
The new
freedmen, all born into slavery, had no cultural history of liberty or rights;
any such history from their antecedents was stolen at the same time that those
ancestors were stolen from their homelands in Africa and thrust into a slave
culture of mixed origin, and in America there had been no liberty or rights for
black slaves – and virtually none for free blacks. It was certainly not possible immediately
following emancipation for blacks to adopt the general American notion of
inalienable rights endowed upon them at birth – it was not, and could not be,
part of their culture – only slavery had been endowed upon them at birth. So it was only natural for blacks to look at
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as the source of their freedom and the
aforementioned constitutional amendments as the source of their rights; and the
source of that proclamation and those amendments was not God or nature; it was government. Certainly there was a large percentage of
religious blacks that looked to God for comfort and spirituality, but this was
manifested primarily in faith in a sweet afterlife, not in a John Locke idea of
God Given rights. Rights were within the
realm of Caesar, or else why had God denied them their rights for so long? Under such circumstances only rare
individuals made the mental and emotional leap to realize that emancipation and
those rights guaranteed by the 14th and 15th amendments were Natural Rights
being belatedly protected by a government that had previously denied them
rather than a gift from that government.
All slaves especially the hundreds of habitual runaways that repeatedly
risked death and almost certain horrendous punishment to grasp at a tiny hope
for liberty must have had the burning for freedom and an instinctive resentment
of Natural Rights denied them imbedded in their souls in a deep in the gut way,
but when emancipation came they thanked God for his mercy and government for
their freedom. There could be no
understanding of “God Given Rights” or Natural Rights” in an Enlightenment
sense.
So for
some time two completely different cultural notions regarding the source of
liberty and rights existed simultaneously in the United States and these
notions were so engrained in their respective cultures that many people were
barely aware of their existence even while they lived and breathed one or the
other and passed it to the next generation.
If one
is to give credibility to the philosophy of The Enlightenment, The Declaration
of Independence, and the founding principles of the United States of America
then it must be concluded that it was the cultural notion of the black portion
of America that was in error, however understandable and inevitable that error
was under the circumstances. Whether one
considers our rights a gift from God at birth or simply ours by nature, our
liberty and rights do not come from government and cannot be taken away by
government; they are innate and inalienable.
Since
these notions regarding the origin of liberty and rights are largely
unconscious, it’s difficult to say, and no one has attempted to measure, to
what degree either continues to exist in 21st century America. We know that reinforcement of Enlightenment
thought on Natural Rights is severely lacking in our education system so
neither white nor black youth are being introduced to the concept, but in the
‘50s and ‘60s the civil rights movement made profound advances in promoting the
idea of Natural Rights among blacks. Thurgood
Marshall referred to Natural Rights in arguing Brown vs. Board of Education,
and Martin Luther King did so on many occasions including his “I Have a Dream” speech.
But we also know that people in general
are becoming more dependent on government, so while many blacks are perhaps
losing the erroneous notion of government being the source of our rights, other
people of all races are adopting it, so as the black and white cultures finally
merge, the two cultural notions about the source of rights can no longer be
defined as a white notion and a black notion, yet both continue to exist, and
the erroneous one needs to be corrected to the degree possible.
Why is
it important that Americans understand that our rights are endowed upon us by
God or by our very nature rather than by government? Because if we believe that government is the
source of our rights then we must accept that government can legitimately take
those rights away, or grant them selectively - giving rights to some citizens
but not all: white not black, rich not poor, young not old. Also if we misunderstand the source of rights
then the very definition of rights is endangered; believing that rights come
from government leads some to believe that many socially provided services such
as healthcare or education are actually inalienable rights. Such distortion of the words “rights” and
“inalienable” are not just verbal errors, they are dangerous mistakes. While the wisdom or appropriateness of such
services being provided by government is worthy of debate, or in some cases pretty
much universally accepted, labeling them as government given “rights” changes
them to something that government MUST provide, and therefore government MUST
confiscate the property of some to provide these “rights” to others, thus trampling
on real rights and eliminating proper debate about taxation via representation.
***
Whatever
the sentiments of Jefferson and the other Founders, it’s time for all Americans
to stand up and shout that every human, every man and every woman of every race,
every nationality, every religion, and every sexual orientation was born free
with inalienable rights. It really
doesn’t matter if we believe that those rights come from nature or from
nature’s God, but we must expunge the notion that they come from government.
** It should be noted that the promises of the 14th
and 15th amendments were not truly realized until nearly a century
after their ratification except during the brief span called Reconstruction
immediately following the Civil War when federal troops and northern Republican
administrators occupied the South – another example of government being the
source of rights for blacks.
*** For more discussion on Natural Rights vs. Social
Privileges see: http://thoughtofasecularconservative.blogspot.com/2011/11/natural-rights-social-rights-and-social.html
