SLUH Review 1.1

ET COGNOSCETIS VERITATEM ET VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS

SLUH REVIEW Vol. 1 Issue 1

A journal of Faith, thought, and civics

Why We Began

September 14, 2009

Think about it. What if Congress passed a law mandating that the only music anyone under the age of 21 could listen to was Mozart? Congress did so in response to overwhelming scientific data that not only are American students performing more and more poorly on standardized tests but also that students who listen to Mozart test significantly better than those who don’t. Congress determined that it would be in the interest of promoting the general welfare by making the populace smarter.

Would you give up your music?

Our founding statement is this: We will examine how our Faith and our American Heritage might interact with local and global political, economic, and social forces to produce viable strategies for building a society where freedom and justice flourish under God. To accomplish this goal, we will publish a journal that provides a comprehensive analytic forum to digest information and thought in pursuit of Truth. St. Louis U. High is in need of this forum because, until now, the school had no student-run, mass medium to look outside of itself and deal in the realm of the mind. Our focus will remain solely academic to produce material that is thoughtful and well-researched. Our hope is to stimulate members of the SLUH community to care more deeply about the world we inhabit and to approach the flux of ideas grounded in values and sharpened by an adept ability to reason and persuade. As it is our aim to address values, worldviews, and philosophies, we will take the stance of a persuasive argument on opinion and commentary. We do not wish to report on news but rather to review the ideas and implications surrounding relevant events and circumstances from the student-oriented, SLUH perspective.

-Luke Chellis, Senior Editor -Logan Hayward, Junior Editor -Joseph Esswein, Sophomore Editor

No, I expect the youth in this country (a minority) would be in unanimous uproar. The argument would rightfully be that everyone has the right to freedom of expression. Everyone should be able to choose their music for themselves, no matter what favors Congress thinks it is doing for you.

Thus is the meaning of human rights.

After the Constitutional Convention of 1787, many Americans including such prominent figures such as Thomas Jefferson and George Mason thought the preservation of rights was so important that they refused to ratify the Constitution without the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. But look carefully and you will find no mention of the freedom of musical choice or even freedom of expression outlined in the Bill of Rights. Because the Constitution does not explicitly promise this right means this right doesn’t exist?

Congress has the power to mandate Mozart?

The Right to Healthcare -Luke Chellis

Also concerned about loss of liberties, Alexander Hamilton warned in Federalist Paper No. 84, “(B)ills of rights ... are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous.” Hamilton feared that a Bill of Rights would trick people into believing that the only rights they had were those specifically listed, arguing that a Bill of Rights would "contain various exceptions to powers not granted; and, on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more (powers) than were granted. ... (it) would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible

Does every human being have the right to healthcare? The answer is easy—yes. Some might say: What? Wouldn’t this fundamentally change the relationship between the individual citizen and the state? No, the problem is that in America, that relationship has already morphed to the point where Americans have forgotten their rights and have indeed forgotten what the concept of ‘right’ even means. As a working definition, a right is simply an option reserved.

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pretense for claiming that power.” Nowhere in the Constitution is the right to listen to rap music guaranteed.

Just a little thought, along with a few examples, would demonstrate that statement as pure nonsense. ml

No legislation can “make healthcare a right” because no legislator is God. Congress can, however, make healthcare “a responsibility for all Americans,” the same way they can make listening to Mozart a responsibility. By doing so, they ipso facto violate your right to healthcare. The details of the legislation do not matter a bit—no one can ever give you what you already have; they can only take it away.

Hamilton asks, “For why declare that things shall not be done (by Congress) which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given (to Congress) by which restrictions may be imposed?” Why forbid Congress from enacting music laws when the Constitution gives Congress no power to abridge that right in the first place?

If your right to healthcare is secured, then you can pursue whatever doctors, methodology, and treatments you need to keep yourself healthy. If healthcare is “a responsibility” according to the proposed legislation, then not only will every American have to buy insurance but every American will have to buy insurance plans that meet the government’s standards of “acceptable insurance.” But the problem is that just as Mozart is not everyone’s standard of acceptable music, Congress’s “acceptable insurance” cannot ever meet everyone’s healthcare needs. But losing the right to healthcare is worse than the right to rock and roll. Spending money subsidizing things that are at best unnecessary, like vision coverage for someone who has perfect eyesight, to at worst immoral, like abortion and sex-change operation benefits, can only make it more costly and difficult if not impossible to obtain the care you need.

Human rights, which are God-given or natural, are infinite. Every moment in time presents new options, new choices. Because God has given each of us free will, we reserve all of our freely obtained options. The only options, the only rights, forbidden to me are those which directly inhibit your rights. When the Bill of Rights was written, why would the Founders add an Amendment protecting musical choice when personal, electronic media players didn’t exist? Instead, they added the Ninth Amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Just because a right is not identified in the Constitution does not mean Congress can infringe upon it and does not mean that it’s Congress’s to give. Congress doesn’t give us rights; God gives us rights.

So what are our rights? Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—it’s a short list, these rights. Wrong. Men have “unalienable Rights, (and) among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s impossible to list all of our rights.

We not only have the right to free speech, we have the right to put whatever music we want on our Ipods. But just as no one is expected to give us our own radio show, no one is expected to give us their music. In the same way, we also have the right to healthcare—for now.

As Children of God, we have “unalienable rights.” It is immoral and evil for our rights to be disparaged, even by government. An accurate understanding of human rights tells us “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Governments exist to secure our rights, not to provide them. The right to healthcare is a basic right which all humans have, most similar to the right to food. After all, everyone needs food to live.

The Soviet Union had bread-lines, should we?

This fundamental right, however, is being threatened in an unprecedented way. Don’t let political pundits get away with telling you the President’s healthcare legislation “for the first time would make health care a right and a responsibility for all Americans.”

The Rational Basis for Economic Liberty -Logan Hayward It is common in many political philosophies to treat individual rights as expendable. This prejudice against the smallest minority, the individual,

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090715/D99EO8BO0.ht

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inevitably leads to the claim that individuals themselves are expendable. Let me move from general to specific. Individual rights cover a wide range of things--freedom of speech, worship, and self-defense, to name a few. These are called negative liberties--they are things with which the federal government may not interfere. But there is a class of negative liberties which are frequently abused: economic liberties, such as the right to start businesses, the right of a corporation to fire or maintain its employees, the right of a taxpayer to pay for only what the federal government legally can do. I would make an educated guess that when most Americans think of rights today, they think of a significant number of bogus "rights" which government must provide for them. In fact, the Constitution recognizes very few such "positive" liberties, that is, things the federal government must provide for the country at large. Those who wish for a large federal government might make the claim that the General Welfare clause of the Constitution, stipulating that Congress can enact laws to "provide for...the general welfare", allows Congress to promulgate mandatory health care and any other of the alphabet soup of vast government bureaucracies. Well, if one takes that view of the Constitution, Congress can enact almost anything to provide for the general welfare. Congress could abuse citizens' negative economic liberties.

Congress could say that sequestering a generic group of people during war-time in camps is in line with the "general welfare". The federal government actually did this with Americans of Japanese heritage during World War II! I do not want to live in a country in which the government can abuse my good in order to ensure some nebulous common good. Do those who treat the Constitution as sillyputty, by extending its words to cover everything, really think that some of the bravest defenders of liberty to walk the face of the Earth, the Founding Fathers, would write the Constitution so that the government could have nearly limitless powers?

not thereby be interfering with any others' rights.

Granted, they are denying others the ability to use that land, but I deny others' the ability to use my body, which is legally my property, as a punching bag all the time (as I hope you do)! No one has the right to harm my fundamental property: my own body. No one has the right to use the land of a private citizen without that latter citizens' consent.

So the first economic right is the right to take possession of God's good earth, so long as it is not another human's land! Flowing from this first right is the right to stay in possession of that land (rather obviously). This second right may be abridged by state and local governments if it is inhabited by a criminal, but the federal government could only take possession in an emergency situation--with lives at stake. The federal government cannot and should not take possession of an individual's or group of individuals' land in order to satisfy some nebulous "general welfare".

So what follows from these 2 rights of property?

Well, if individuals could only keep land, and not do anything with it, then there can be no production of wealth. Socialists, consciously or not, frequently ignore the fact that wealth can be produced--some "mercantilists" believe that, since there is a finite amount of property in the world, there is a finite amount of wealth. If wealth is something that has worth to someone other than the person who initially holds it, I can turn almost anything into wealth. If I could combine my fingernail shavings into abstract art, and a neighbor is willing to purchase and has the ability to purchase it, then I have created wealth (even if I might not have created good art). Thus, the 3rd economic right is the right to produce wealth. This right destroys the need for socialism: if there are poor people, many can become wealthy simply by creating wealth.

There is no need for the government to re-distribute wealth (of course, for those who can't produce wealth, there is always charity, freely established by others). So I have land, I have a guarantee that the government can't mess with that land (unless I've been harming others' rights) and now I have the fruits of my labor, namely, wealth. I must be able to use that wealth! I can sell it (implying the right of others to buy it), invest it, or keep it. When I do the first 2 things, I can aid other people in their creation of wealth. If a neighbor wants to buy some of my wealth, yet he lacks the means to purchase it, he can work his land (or work for others who pay him) more diligently, thus producing more wealth. If I

Of course, those who want to control other people's lives and property will exaggerate domestic crises to abuse people's economic liberties, but those abuses are not within the focus of this article. In order to articulate my above claim about domestic crises, I must articulate further why people have a right to economic liberties, and what these liberties are. People have the right to take property which before had belonged to no man because they would

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invest wealth in a corporation, the corporation will have more wealth to buy more things, and to produce more wealth. Keeping my wealth can help me create more wealth--if I keep my garden rake, I can grow tomatoes and sell them. Before, the tomatoes were mere seeds, which don't fetch much on the market. But I can create something more valuable from them.

accepts it as a God-given right, there is no private slavery, no public slavery, and a small, limited government. If one dismisses it as foolish and outdated thinking, then there can and will be nearly unlimited tyranny and slavery. Which do you prefer?

Whether by selling or investing wealth, I can spread wealth without being forced by a government to do so. Socialists make a fundamental mistake when they say "Spread the wealth" because "the" qualifies wealth as a static quantity, that is, one which quantity doesn't change. Why is there a need to "Spread the wealth" if one can make more wealth for himself and, indirectly or directly, for others? I can spread and create wealth without the government taking "the" wealth (i.e. taxpayers' wealth) and distributing it through the hands of even more politicians. This expose of the illegitimacy of forcefully redistributing wealth to other ordinary citizens leads me to the 7th/8th (buying/selling are rights which depend upon each other) right: the right to keep as much wealth as one wants besides that which is necessary to provide for security. Now, this is a tricky right--different people define security as different things, but I think that a good working definition is "protection of an individual from assault and capture on him/herself and whatever property rightfully belongs to him/her". Security is, I believe, the only positive liberty which the federal government should concern itself with. I don't have much problem with states providing roads and towns providing libraries--that's why this last is such a tricky right: most people would believe that states and localities may infringe upon it. In any event, the genius of Calvin Coolidge can apply to the federal government's use and abuse of this right: "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."

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The aforementioned are rights which the federal government should not and/or legally cannot infringe upon. You might say that my bases for these rights are completely arbitrary; that I merely invented them because they sound nice. I base them on the doctrine that a human being can do whatever he or she wants so long as he doesn't infringe upon the rights of others (of course, that doesn't mean that we should do whatever we want, so long as we don't infringe). That doctrine is a postulate. If one

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