Talk:Natural law
Transcript
0:38 when Thomas More had his last 0:40 opportunity to address something for 0:43 posterity and knew that his effort would 0:47 be futile he was defending himself in 0:49 his trial for treason so he's the 0:52 defendant and the lawyer the alleged and 0:55 proven act of treason was silence the 0:59 refusal to assert affirmative ly and in 1:02 writing that the king was the head of the church on earth he made the 1:07 following argument to the jury now he knew the jury had been handpicked by the 1:10 Kings judges and the Kings judges had 1:13 been handpicked by the king he knew that 1:15 he was going to lose this he knew he was 1:16 going to be found guilty he knew he 1:17 would be executed and the execution 1:20 method was beheading
Flat and round
1:21 "some men say the earth is round and some men say it is flat but if it is flat could the king's command make it round and if it is round could an act of parliament make it flat"
1:36 now when he was making that argument he 1:40 of course was not only appealing to the 1:41 jurors common sense
of course the king couldn't make a flat earth round and of course the Parliament couldn't make a round earth flat
he was appealing to their understanding of the laws of nature that restrain even the government at the time Henry the eighth who was about to have him beheaded
in the 2:01 Parliament which was the facilitator in 2:03 his beheading so his choice between 2:06 remuda at his trial and being convicted 2:09 or taking a stand for something as 2:11 affirmative as the limitations 2:14 the government he exercised that choice 2:16 by giving this now classic statement of 2:19 the natural law fast-forward to the 2:23 present day when Moore said that this 2:26 was not a novel argument he is not the 2:28 originator of the argument of the 2:31 natural law the modern day it's eight 2:33 hundred years ago but the modern day 2:34 originator is st. Thomas Aquinas still 2:37 the best explainer of the natural law 2:41 but John Locke picked up on this and 2:43 Thomas Jefferson picked up on it when he 2:44 wrote the Declaration of Independence 2:46 and James Madison picked up on it when 2:48 he was the Scrivener for the 2:51 Constitution 2:52 Jefferson's version of Moore's phrase is this
endowed
2:55 we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights and among these is life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
3:05 so if our if Jefferson's correct if this 3:08 isn't just some musing and by the way
Declaration of Independence
3:10 the Declaration of Independence is a is 3:12 a statute enacted by the Congress if you 3:16 go to the first book of the US Code and 3:19 go to the first page you'll see there 3:21 the Declaration of Independence probably 3:25 the most violated statute by the 3:27 government that we have even though it's 3:29 the first and the oldest but it 3:31 articulates the view that our rights 3:33 come from our humanity what are these 3:36 rights that come from our humanity and 3:39 if they come from our humanity how can 3:41 the government trample them well the
free choices
3:44 concept of natural rights articulated by Aquinas is this that there are areas of 3:49 human behavior for which we do not need 3:53 a government permission slip in order to 3:56 make free choices in those areas so 3:59 things like the freedom to develop your 4:01 personality I told her wryly he should 4:05 be grateful for that freedom 4:08 the freedom to develop your personality 4:10 the right to think as you wish the right 4:13 to say what you think the right push
Rights
4:15 your thoughts the right to worship or not to worship the right to assemble in groups the rights are refused to 4:22 assemble in groups the right to petition the government for a redress of your differences the right to defend yourself 4:29 I must tell you the right to defend
4:33 yourself the right to keep and bear arms 4:35 does not protect your right to shoot 4:38 deer it protects your right to shoot at 4:42 the government when it is taken over by 4:44 tyrants these are 4:53 the quintessential American right I'm 4:56 going down the bill of rights the 4:59 quintessential American right the right 5:03 to be left alone today called 5:07 the rights of privacy codified in the 5:10 Fourth Amendment we all know what has 5:12 happened to privacy let's see how many
Phone
5:15 of us have these in your pocket keep it on I want the NSA and the President to hear everything I'm telling you now I started 5:31 by saying I started by saying keep it on 5:37 here's the sad thing it doesn't have to 5:40 be on for them to listen to us when I 5:43 used to say this about BlackBerry's and 5:45 iPhones a couple of years ago people 5:47 would say oh there he goes again he's 5:49 office meds he's hanging out with Lew 5:50 Rockwell too much but today we all know 5:55 this is true today we know that our 5:59 popularly elected government has such 6:01 profound disregard for our natural 6:04 rights that it tramples them to extremes
George Orwell
6:06 beyond which even George Orwell could have imagined in 1984 without getting into the NSA a topic another topic for another time if Aquinas was right and if Jefferson was right and these rights come from our humanity and not from the government things like thought and 6:25 speech and privacy and travel how can 6:28 the government trample them well the 6:32 theory of our government is that we have 6:34 surrendered some of our rights to the 6:37 government so that the government will 6:39 protect the rights that we have not
consent of the governed
6:41 surrendered that's the idea of the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed does anyone in this room know anyone now living who consented to the government well the answer is no it's it's inconceivable that anybody still living was around when the Constitution was enacted and consented to it so right off the bat the idea that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed is is like government itself a fiction
7:17 the fiction is that we have consented to the surrender of our rights. The reality is that our rights have been stolen from us because the government monopolized the source
it's a 7:28 sad and terrible reality but it is 7:31 reality in theory in theory when the Constitution was enacted and there's a typo in the Constitution again in trouble for saying this the third word is wrong says we the people of course the Constitution was not an act upon the people it was enacted by the states but 7:53 that was never corrected nevertheless
limited to 16
7:55 what surrendered to the federal government was limited to 16 discrete unique separate stated articulated powers in the Constitution and then the ninth amendment says just because we've listed a bunch of rights in the first eight dozen the others there are many others it would be impossible for us to list them all and the Tenth Amendment says just because we've given some power to the federal government we the states doesn't mean that we kept the rest of it for ourselves we have that's the concept
8:32 of limited government the government 8:35 must stop when it wants to touch our 8:38 natural rights and the lists of natural 8:40 rights whatever you think our natural 8:43 rights are give me the list I'll add 30 8:44 or 40 to them because these are the 8:47 things we all yearn as human beings to 8:50 do free from interference by the 8:53 government if they belong to us as human
fingers belong to me
8:56 beings like my fingers belong to me then they cannot be taken away by majority vote they cannot be taken away by legislation they cannot be taken away by the command of the of the Zek you t'v 9:24 they can only be taken away if I give them up myself I can give them up myself by right robbing a bank I robbed a bank I violate the natural rights of the depositors of the bank I can then be rosecuted and have my freedom of movement taken away so I have surrendered my natural rights when I gambled that I could get away with that loot from the bank
sign a contract
9:42
I could also sign a contract in which I give away some of my natural rights and I've done that with my bosses at Fox theoretically I'm supposed to say only what they want me to say in return they sent me a check every week you know the checks keep coming even though obviously you don't always say everything they want me to say
Individuals and persons
10:07 so you can voluntarily surrender your own natural rights for whatever good you ... choose to surrender them for but you can't surrender somebody else's natural rights because natural rights are owned by individuals by persons not collectively not by groups not by the government but by individuals
10:30 that is at least the theory of the Declaration of Independence and the theory of the Constitution and was at least the theory of the framers the founding generation of the United States of America regrettably it is no longer
Alien and Sedition Acts
10:45 the theory today and this assault on natural rights began immediately in the presidency of John Adams the government suddenly had this bizarre fear of the French I know that sounds in Congress 10:59 today but their country was afraid of 11:02 the French so they enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts which basically said if you want to become a citizen here come if you own an acre of land you can become a citizen immediately except if you're French you have to wait 14 years by the way if you criticize the president the government the Congress or the courts you can go to jail for two years
how 11:28 could the same generation that wrote 11:30 Congress shall make no law abridging the 11:32 freedom of speech in some cases the very 11:34 same human beings who wrote that in fact 11:37 abridge the freedom of speech because 11:39 because the world looks very different 11:41 when you're on the outside trying to 11:43 acquire power than when you have power 11:46 and you've forgotten about those 11:48 promises you made to get there in this 11:51 room after I finish is the Thomas 11:56 Jefferson of our day 11:58 we'll never forgot his promises 12:09 sadly sadly an exception because today 12:12 the government tramples natural rights 12:14 today the government to which none of us 12:17 is consented claims it has the authority 12:20 by majority vote to assault those 12:23 liberties that are a part of our 12:25 humanity you don't have to believe in a 12:28 traditional truline God as I do and 12:31 accept this you don't have to believe in 12:33 any God in order to accept this if you 12:36 believe that humanity is the highest and 12:38 best virtuous good on the planet then 12:43 you believe that humanity each human 12:45 being is the source of his or her own 12:47 rights if you believe as Jefferson and 12:49 Aquinas and I that we are creatures of 12:52 an all-knowing all-loving God who made 12:55 us in His image and likeness and as he 12:57 is perfectly free we are perfectly free 13:00 and our rights come directly from him in 13:03 either way the rights are ours and not 13:09 the government's to be taken away the
Ellis island notes
Ellis Island Immigration Station’s Great Hall questions asked:
1 Your manifest number (from your ship)
2 What is your full name?
3 How old are you?
4 Are you male or female?
5 Are you married, single, widowed, or divorced?
6 What is your occupation?
7 Are you able to read and write? (yes or no)
8 What country are you from?
9 What is your race? (note: no question was asked about religion)
10 What was your last permanent place of residence? (city and country)t was your last permanent place of residence? (city and country)
11 What is your final destination in America? (city and state)
12 Your number on the immigration list?
13 Do you have a ticket to your final destination? (yes or no)
14 Who paid for your passage?
15 How much money do you have? (at least the equivalent of $50 dollars was needed)
16 Have you been to America before? If so when, where and how long?
17 Are you meeting a relative here in America? If so, who and their address?
18 Have you been in a prison, charity almshouse, or insane asylum?
19 Are you a polygamist? (Yes or No)
20 Are you an anarchist?
21 Are you coming to America for a job?
22 What and where will you work?
23 What is the condition of your health?
24 Are you deformed or crippled?
25 How tall are you?
26 What is your skin color?
27 What color are your eyes and hair?
28 Do you have any identifying marks? (scars, birthmarks, or tattoos)
29 Where were you born? (city and country)
due process due process
13:12 Constitution was written to prevent the government from doing that except when it does it by due process due process means if I rob the bank and they want to take away my freedom they have to give me a jury trial and the full panoply of protections that come with it
13:29 the governor can't just arrest me as the governor of New Jersey did not me he'd like to two weeks ago with a nurse who got off the air airplane at Newark Airport because she had been treating Ebola victims in western Africa before she could get on another plane to Maine they locked her out they put her in a tent in a parking lot in downtown Newark they gave her a bottle water bottle of water a granola bar and a porta potti if she had been charged with murder and had been lodged in the Essex County Jail a mile of way away she would have had better creature comforts and a more secure environment than a parking lot of 10th in downtown Newark
and I made the 14:19 argument that 14:20 the Governor of New Jersey has flipped 14:23 natural rights you see natural rights 14:25 you can summarize them in three words 14:30 four words the presumption of Liberty 14:34 the presumption of Liberty meaning we 14:38 are self-directed we make our own 14:41 choices it is not our obligation as New 14:45 Jersey claimed was the case for the 14:46 nurse to prove we are unworthy of 14:49 incarceration it is the government's 14:52 profound unique obligation to prove that 14:55 we are worthy of incarceration and it 14:57 must do so before a jury of our peers an 15:00 imperfect system but the best system 15:02 that we can come up with in fact when 15:05 the governor of New Jersey was told 15:08 there's not a federal judge in Newark 15:10 that will fail to give her a hearing and 15:12 we have no evidence that she's 15:14 contagious at the hearing you better let 15:16 her go now because if you lose in court 15:18 you know your friend that Fox News is 15:20 gonna make sure everybody knows that you 15:21 knew the law and didn't follow it anyway 15:23 so we let her go right then and there 15:25 and then his buddy the governor of Maine 15:27 tried the same thing and there they went 15:29 to a federal court who released her 15:31 because the government could not 15:33 overturn presumption of Liberty the 15:37 presumption of Liberty says the rights 15:40 that we did not surrender to the 15:43 government we retained for ourself and 15:47 they can never be taken away from us by 15:51 popular vote or majority in the 15:53 legislature or were a command by a 15:58 governor or a president now if the 16:04 government recognized the concept of 16:06 natural rights it would know that 16:10 virtually everything it has done 16:14 certainly since the Progressive Era at 16:17 the beginning of the last century and 16:19 perhaps even since the Alien and 16:21 Sedition Acts virtually everything it 16:23 has done other than to protect natural 16:26 rights has been wrong question is there
to protect the natural rights
16:29
any legitimate activity government has in a free society answer yes... to protect the natural rights of the people in that society meaning instead of assaulting my freedom my life my liberty and my property protect it that's what we have a government for and a government that believes and natural rights will limit itself to those behaviors do you know have you ever 16:56 heard of anywhere in the universe today 17:00 of a government that limits itself only 17:04 to the protection of natural rights that 17:08 of course would be our Roth party and 17:11 Jeffersonian John Locke Ian to Mystic as 17:14 in st. Thomas Aquinas ideal will this 17:18 happen tomorrow no will it happen in the 17:22 lifetime of anyone in this room maybe 17:23 within the lifetime of the youngest in 17:26 this room and that's why we're all in
forces of darkness
17:28 this room today we need to understand the force of darkness among us and that force of darkness is the very government we have elected and empowered to impose the darkness upon us the better we 17:46 understand it the more we understand it 17:50 the sooner we can be free from its 17:53 shackles I expect that when I die I will 17:58 do so peacefully in my bed surrounded by 18:02 people that love me and faithful to 18:05 first principles that will not happen to 18:08 everybody in this room some of you 18:11 particularly the young people must be 18:14 prepared to die in a government prison 18:19 and some of you particularly the young 18:22 people must be prepared to die in a 18:27 government Town Square to the sound of 18:32 government trumpets blaring 18:36 when the time comes you'll know what to 18:41 do because freedom lies in everyone's 18:47 heart but it must do more than just live 18:53 in thank you and God look