Understanding the existence of truisms and recognizing their origin in nature

OPINION:

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, Mankind would be no more justified In silencing that one person, Than he, if he had the power, Would be justified in silencing mankind.” — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The world is filled with self-evident truths — truisms — that philosophers, lawyers and judges know need not be proved. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Two plus two equals four. A cup of boiling-hot coffee sitting on a table in a room at 70 degrees Fahrenheit will eventually cool down.

These examples, of which there is legion, are not true because we believe they are true. They are true essentially and substantially. They are true whether we accept their truthfulness or not. Of course, recognizing a universal truth acknowledges the existence of an order of things higher than human laws, certainly higher than government.

Professor Murray Rothbard said the generation of Americans that fought the war of secession against England, the last moral war Americans waged, understood the existence of truisms and recognized their origin in nature.

The most famous of these recognitions was Thomas Jefferson’s iconic line in the Declaration of Independence that self-evident truths come not from people but from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Thus, “All Men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” is a truism.

Jefferson’s neighbor and colleague James Madison also understood this when he wrote the Bill of Rights to reflect that human rights do not come from the government but from individual humanity.

Thus, your right to be alive, to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to worship or not, to associate or not, to shake your fist in the tyrant’s face by petitioning the government, your right to defend yourself and repel tyrants using and carrying the same weapons as the government does, your right to be left alone, to own property, to travel or to stay put — these natural aspects of human existence are natural rights that come from our humanity and for the exercise of which all rational people yearn.

This is the natural rights understanding of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Madison’s Bill of Rights, to which all in government have sworn allegiance and deference.

A right is not a privilege. It is an indefeasible personal claim against the whole world. It does not require a government permission slip or preconditions except the ability to reason or the approval of family or neighbors.

A privilege is something the government doles out to suit itself or calm the masses. The government gives those who meet its qualifications the privilege to vote so it can claim a form of Jeffersonian legitimacy. Jefferson argued in the Declaration of Independence that no government is morally licit without the consent of the governed.

No one alive today has consented to the government, but most accept it. Is acceptance consent? Of course not — no more than walking on a government sidewalk is consent to the government’s lies, theft and killing. Surely, the Germans who voted against the Nazis and could not escape their grasp hardly consented to that awful form of government. Resignation is not moral acceptance.

We must distinguish between privileges that the government doles out and rights that we have by our humanity, rights so human and natural that they exist in all people, even in the absence of government.

Are our rights equal? Some are equal to one another, but one is greater than all, as none of the rights cataloged briefly above can be exercised without it. That is, of course, the right to live. This is the right most challenging to governments that have enslaved masses and gloried in fighting morally illicit wars that kill and thus destroy the right to live.

If a right is a claim against the whole world, how can a government — whether popular, totalitarian or both — extinguish it by death or slavery? The short answer is no governments, notwithstanding the public oaths their officers take upon assuming office, accept the natural origins of rights. To the government, rights are privileges.

Stated differently, governments do not take rights seriously.

Governments hate and fear the exercise of natural rights. Ludwig von Mises properly called government “the negation of liberty.” Freedom is the default position. We are born free, naturally free.

The government is an artificial creation based on a monopoly of force in a geographical area that could not exist if it did not negate our freedoms. The government denies our rights by punishing the exercise of them and by stealing property from us.

Rights are not just claims against the government, they are claims against the whole world. Rothbard’s nonaggression principle best encapsulates this, teaching that initiating all real and threatened aggression — whether by violence, coercion or deception — is morally illicit. That applies to your neighbors as well as to the police.

Of course, in Rothbard’s world, there would be no government police unless all people consented, and he wouldn’t have.

Channeling Jefferson, Mises wrote that in the long march of history, men and women have given up essential freedom for the illusion of happiness. “They hail every step toward more government interference as progress toward a more perfect world.” They are confident, he wrote, “that the governments will transform the earth into a paradise.” How right he was. How wrong people are who think they can be happy without freedom.

• To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.