To what extent does man have a natural or God-given right
to self-preservation and protection of his property? This question
has been bandied about for thousands of years, and that issue, not guns (which
are an instrument of self-preservation), is at the heart of the Second
Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The
United States is the only nation in the annals of mankind to be established on
the basis of a political and social philosophy centered on natural, or
God-given, rights. Among these are self-preservation and
property. Property rights are the bedrock of the American political
system; without that foundation, there is no freedom. The Founders
held that property rights encompass not just physical property, but also one's
life, labor, speech, and livelihood, as individuals own their own lives;
therefore, they must own the products of those lives, which can be traded in
free exchange with others. Further, as there is a natural right of
self-preservation, man has the right and duty to defend himself against
transgressors, including the state, who would deny, abrogate, or unlawfully
seize his property.
However,
over the past 150 years, the statists, including the current iteration of the
American left, have marched in lockstep to what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
espoused in their Communist Manifesto: "The Theory of
Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private
property." They contended that one's labor or livelihood (and
by extension, one's life) is not private property and is thus subordinate to
the common good as determined by the state. Therefore, the
individual has no God-given and unconstrained right of self-defense, as that
right can be utilized to counter or oppose the common good.
Opposing
views regarding the purpose of the state and individual property rights
(including self-preservation) have been bandied about for 2,500
years. The Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) called for a
communist social order in which property is held in common (the state) and that
human nature can and should be molded and transformed to benefit the
state. Thus, an individual, being subservient to the state, cannot
exercise any form of self-preservation except that acceptable to the state.
On
the other hand, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) argued that if property is held in
common and man cannot, therefore, exercise his right of self-preservation, then
there exists the potential for animosity and anger; further, man possess a
human nature that cannot be molded or transformed to some ideal of a perfect
state. The laws of nature and the rule of law demand that government
should govern for the good of the people, not for the good of those in
power.
While
the conflict between communism and democracy has been the centerpiece of the
history of the past 100 years, the underlying philosophical battle over the
role of property rights and self-preservation was waged in 17th-century Britain
between Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704).
Thomas
Hobbes published his seminal work Leviathan in
1651. In it, he described man's essential nature as one of
aggression, avarice, destruction, and near constant war. An
all-powerful sovereign (or government) is paramount in order to protect against
and repel this base human nature. Hobbes believed that this
sovereign would by necessity have nearly limitless power to seize or restrict
any and all property (including one's speech, labor, and livelihood) for the
good of society. He acknowledged the right of self-defense, but he
thought there can be no agreement on what constituted legitimate self-defense,
so the state and the rule of law must determine what constitutes legitimate
self-defense.
John
Locke published his Second Treatise of Government in
1690. In contrast to Hobbes, Locke, regarding an individual's
natural right to his property which encompasses one's life, labor, and speech,
wrote:
[T]hough
the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself
and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in
himself the great foundation of property; and that which made up the great part
of what he applied to the support or comfort of his being ... was perfectly his
own and did not belong in common to others.
Therefore,
on the issue of the natural right of self-preservation, Locke wrote that men
are intended to live as freely as possible without interference from anyone or
anything else. There is a right of self-preservation, which
obligates man to defend himself from those, including the government, who seek
to infringe upon his natural liberties.
[H]e
who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war
with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom
that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a
design to take away everything else, that freedom [Self-Preservation]
being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society
would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth
must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be
looked on as in a state of war. [Emphasis added.]
The
Founders were greatly influenced by the writings of Aristotle and Locke among
others. In drafting the Constitution, they assumed that the
recognition of the God-given right of self-preservation is self-evident and not
in need of enumeration – as the nation's current favorite founder, Alexander
Hamilton wrote, in Federalist 28 (published six months before the introduction
of the Bill of Rights) (emphasis added):
If
the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no
recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of
self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government[.]
However,
the men who proposed the Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the
Constitution were insistent that this inalienable right of the individual be
recognized in clear and unambiguous language: "the right of the people to
keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Thus, the
Founders recognized that the natural right of self-preservation includes the
possession and use of virtually any implement of self-defense.
The
Founders were steeped in the history of mankind and recognized that among the
first steps taken by all despotic governments throughout the ages was the
usurpation by the state of the natural right of
self-preservation. This was accomplished first and foremost by the
seizure and outlawing of any weapons the citizenry might be able to use for that
purpose – a process often, and with disastrous results, repeated throughout the
twentieth century in nations such as Russia, Germany, Italy, China, and
Cambodia, among many others.
In
the 2,500 years since Plato and Aristotle first debated the nature of rights
and man, there has been a clear dichotomy on the question of
self-preservation. Those who deem the state paramount and, thus, the
source of the rights of man believe that any right of self-preservation can and
must be limited as the state sees fit. On the other hand, those who
deem certain rights, including self-preservation, natural or God-given believe
that the state not only cannot limit or deny this right, but must guarantee
it. There is no middle ground.
This
is the tension now afoot in the United States as the American left, the heirs
to the legacy of Plato, Hobbes, and Marx, are determined to eviscerate the
right of self-preservation. It is not a coincidence that over the
past 50 years, the left is the source of all gun legislation, regulation, and
furor – using handy catchphrases such as "commonsense gun
control," all the while denying their ultimate objective.
The
Founders' recognition of the God-given right of self-preservation and the
unambiguous language of the Second Amendment require that any limitation
on the right to bear arms be done by the constitutional amendment process – not
the Courts or Congress or the president, either collectively or as separate
branches of government. That, or this nation is no more than a
façade of the constitutional republic founded on the basis that men "are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" and "[t]hat
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men[.]"
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/the_natural_right_of_selfpreservation_and_the_second_amendment.html