Glen Beck is Wrong!

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
1

Usually I like most of Glen Beck’s viewpoints but this one today really got to me. (I didn’t see the whole segment, so I might have misinterpreted it.)

Apparently Glen Beck thinks our rights come from God. As a corollary, eliminating God from the equation gives the government full control over our rights. Well, Glen is wrong. Our rights do NOT come from God, and yes, the government has full control of our rights (unless the citizens prevent that.)

I argue that rights are purely human concepts. There are rights that we agree are inalienable, but they don’t come from God. They come from our mutual agreement that they are inalienable. Rights are a product of civilization. They are agreements between people, period. They are implemented by governments.

As an example, suppose your boat capsizes in the middle of the ocean and you’re floating, surrounded by sharks. (An old example, admittedly.) Where is your right to life? Chances are you’re simply going to die, supposed right to life be damned. The sharks don’t give a damn about your rights; they’re hungry.

If rights are inalienable, then cavemen (assuming you believe in cavemen) would have rights. Did they have rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Did they know they had rights? What good did those rights do for them? None. As for healthcare, they probably simply died if they got an infection or broke a leg.

So if God (assuming you believe in God) did not give us rights, why do we think he did? I contend that we’re confusing rights with obligations; that’s right, God gave humanity OBLIGATIONS.

That’s right. He endowed us with obligations, not rights. The Founding Fathers interpreted our obligations to include protecting the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of others. We fulfill those obligations by agreeing upon rights, and preventing governments from interfering with those rights. The Constitution was created to prevent the U.S. Government from interfering with the rights of individuals. We also have an obligation to continue to control our government, which we have done a very poor job of. That is a point on which I agree with Glen Beck.

Do better next time, Glen.

2

  1. A theological argument cannot be proved for or against: it can be useful for those who accept the premises and is useless for those that do not.

  2. The theological argument has been useful for those who accept its premises and have argued for liberty from it.

  3. Your argument, I have a hard time finding the usefulness of. Except for the standpoint of those who might want to use it to say, Just as God gave us obligations to do the things you mention, he gave us an obligation to provide (for example) health care to those who don’t pay for it and won’t even agree to pay on a time payment plan.

Or an obligation to pay 2/3 or more of our income in taxes so that those who aren’t producing goods or services that anyone wants to pay much for, or possibly aren’t working at all, can receive money to buy all kinds of goods and services such as having a cell phone, satellite TV, etc.

Or they can insist on there being basically any “obligation.”

This is because your argument, at least as presented, is not specific as to what God said and did not say. Therefore anything can be attributed.

Whereas the traditional theological argument can point out Thou shalt not kill, and infer that man has a God-given right not to have people murder him; and Thou shalt not steal, and infer that man has a God-given right to not have his property stolen from him. But there is no Scripture for a health care “right” or a “right” to have others taxed so as to support you financially.

Lastly, your theory that it’s not that I have any right to not be murdered, but only that you have an obligation not to murder me is either novel or fringe. There are reasons for people in general not viewing it this way.

3

Not that I care, but when most commentators( even conservatives or libertarians ) talk about god, it means your god, nature, or lack of. Whatever your personal god happens to be.

4

[quote]denv23 wrote:
Not that I care, but when most commentators( even conservatives or libertarians ) talk about god, it means your god, nature, or lack of. Whatever your personal god happens to be.[/quote]

This.

The whole point of “inalienable” rights (aka Natural Law) is that it specifically takes MORE than a mutual agreement to make them valid, because one party might change their mind at any given time. Just because you are surrounded by people who hate you doesn’t make it just for them to kill you without reason.

6

Ironically, boasting that some fate is too low for your human lineage probably does more to provoke God than grease the wheels of fate.

You say that certain rights are inalienable, and then you make the counterargument, that these rights can be removed and discarded like a foil wrapper by whatever decides to eat you. The concept of a true human right is positively confounding when it’s hard to come up with original misfortunes, yeah? No wonder people take them for granted.

I’ll only suggest, as this semantic argument trudges on, that you lot make an effort to distinguish whether you are discussing legal rights or natural ones, even when they overlap. Glenn Beck, for example, may well believe that God indirectly authorized the Bill of Rights, implementing the founders as holy ghostwriters. This is one reason why he looks so dizzy.

7

I agree with what Yorik is saying, although I don’t believe that the government also has a right to dictate what our rights are. They should be decided upon by the population as to how we should act towards one another, period. Unfortunately, quite a few people take those rights now for granted. Some even abuse our rights outright.

I’m not trying to push some conspiracy bullshit, but the government knows how the people think and like to abuse the position of power that was bestowed upon them by us. No God or government should have a right to impose what their own belief of a human right is.

PS: Glenn Beck is an idiot who doesn’t have a firm grasp on reality. Most people should be able to see that. He is simply an ultra-nationalist who really doesn’t give two shits about anyone other than himself… especially the ridiculous amount of money he’s making spreading this nonsense around.

8

So if the seven of you decide that you should have the income from the three of us, then you have the “right” to it?

What if you decide we shouldn’t be allowed to have the nice houses and cars that you don’t have, on account of that being “greedy” and you “needing” it?

I don’t see where your proposed basis of rights has any difference from mob rule.

9

Im not proposing any such thing, nor would I condone it. The problem that a lot of people have simply lost their sense of decency. The way the would works today, and for most of time, has been through capitalism, obviously. Some have tried communism and it didn’t seem to work because those in positions of power still turned to capitalism to stand above the rest. China, is an exception, they are ruled by a communist party… but really? Can it be called communism? hardly. The leaders abuse their position and keep a large majority in poverty.

My point is that people should agree on a set of common laws and rights as a whole. This, however, is an ideal that is simply impossible. People should work together to at least be respectful of others and to uphold the rights and freedoms we have… or at least we hope we have. Kind of ironic considering I scorned Glenn Beck in my last post, but I was stating a fact.

And by the way, I dont live in the U.S. so my opinions may vary from yours.

10

We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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. ~ Declaration of Independence.

11

[quote]the_gunner wrote:
Im not proposing any such thing, nor would I condone it. The problem that a lot of people have simply lost their sense of decency. The way the would works today, and for most of time, has been through capitalism, obviously. Some have tried communism and it didn’t seem to work because those in positions of power still turned to capitalism to stand above the rest. China, is an exception, they are ruled by a communist party… but really? Can it be called communism? hardly. The leaders abuse their position and keep a large majority in poverty.
[/quote]

Actually, they try to get as many people out of poverty as they can or else these poor will tear the roof off.

12

[quote]orion wrote:

[quote]the_gunner wrote:
Im not proposing any such thing, nor would I condone it. The problem that a lot of people have simply lost their sense of decency. The way the would works today, and for most of time, has been through capitalism, obviously. Some have tried communism and it didn’t seem to work because those in positions of power still turned to capitalism to stand above the rest. China, is an exception, they are ruled by a communist party… but really? Can it be called communism? hardly. The leaders abuse their position and keep a large majority in poverty.
[/quote]

Actually, they try to get as many people out of poverty as they can or else these poor will tear the roof off.

[/quote]

It’s actually the opposite. They keep people laboring long hours so they don’t have free time to be active in other ways, especially politically.
That’s why they continue to suppress the Rinminbi. They know if they let it float they would have a wealthier and, therefore, more active public.

13

The term God has changed so much over the years. In the past, God was seen as a dangerous, killing force that would destroy you if you stepped out of line. Today, he is a peaceful and loving hippie that flies on a rainbow of antiabortion leaflets.

14

Natural law is that law, which it is proper to uphold by unorganized individual violence, whether a state is present or absent, and for which, in the absence of orderly society, it is proper to punish violators by unorganized individual violence. Now, who or what gives us the right to defend/punish violators of natural law with unorganized violence?

Is it the government? No, because we have the right even in the absence of government. Is it by mutual agreement of citizens as gunner suggest? No, because even if your fellow citizens disagree, you still have the right to defend your natural rights with unorganized violence. We have these rights due to the fact that we are human. Now you can argue until you turn blue about who/what made us human, and that’s fine, but our unalienable rights exist simply because we exist.

15

[quote]yorik wrote:
Usually I like most of Glen Beck’s viewpoints but this one today really got to me. (I didn’t see the whole segment, so I might have misinterpreted it.)

Apparently Glen Beck thinks our rights come from God. As a corollary, eliminating God from the equation gives the government full control over our rights. Well, Glen is wrong. Our rights do NOT come from God, and yes, the government has full control of our rights (unless the citizens prevent that.)

I argue that rights are purely human concepts. There are rights that we agree are inalienable, but they don’t come from God. They come from our mutual agreement that they are inalienable. Rights are a product of civilization. They are agreements between people, period. They are implemented by governments.

As an example, suppose your boat capsizes in the middle of the ocean and you’re floating, surrounded by sharks. (An old example, admittedly.) Where is your right to life? Chances are you’re simply going to die, supposed right to life be damned. The sharks don’t give a damn about your rights; they’re hungry. [/quote]
Bad example. You have the unalienable right to defend your life by taking the sharks life. Whether or not your successful is another story. [quote]

If rights are inalienable, then cavemen (assuming you believe in cavemen) would have rights. Did they have rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Did they know they had rights? What good did those rights do for them? None. As for healthcare, they probably simply died if they got an infection or broke a leg.[/quote]
Again, a poor example. Cavemen had the unalienable right to defend their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness with unorganized individual violence. Whether or not they were successful… This clearly demonstratets why healthcare is not a right as obama would like you to believe. [quote]

So if God (assuming you believe in God) did not give us rights, why do we think he did? I contend that we’re confusing rights with obligations; that’s right, God gave humanity OBLIGATIONS.

That’s right. He endowed us with obligations, not rights. The Founding Fathers interpreted our obligations to include protecting the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of others. We fulfill those obligations by agreeing upon rights, and preventing governments from interfering with those rights. The Constitution was created to prevent the U.S. Government from interfering with the rights of individuals. We also have an obligation to continue to control our government, which we have done a very poor job of. That is a point on which I agree with Glen Beck.

Do better next time, Glen.[/quote]

Do better next time, yorik

16

Yorik you really are clueless. The idea of the founding fathers was that if we have unalienable rights that were gratned to us by god, then it would logically follow that only god and no one else would have the right to take them away from us.

If what you say is true, that our rights come from government then it follows that our rights are the property of the government. Therefore it is the right of the government to bestow or remove our rights as it sees fit.

What the founding fathers were saying is that we have rights that are beyond any mere mortal to take away from us. That some things are beyond the realm of man to decide for other men. That if a government of man thinks, acts or behaves as if it has the right to take those rights away from us then that government is acting as if it is god. The founding fathers believed that government is not god, while you obviously think it is.

Yorik it is sad that 2000 years after Jesus taught the radical philosophy that god and government are seperate, there are people like you who still don’t get it.

Mark 12:17 And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at Him.

17

The amazement might not be at what you may be suggesting, that it was a radical idea the the government was not God or was separate from God.

Rather, the situation presented to Jesus was a clever trap in a way not apparent to the modern reader.

The Jewish religious leaders had taught that basically everything in Israel belonged to God, and if Jesus advocated paying God’s property to the Romans, that would have been a “gotcha.” It was a major topic of religious debate of the day, with no solution, I was informed some time back.

So it would have been expected that if Jesus said pay the taxes to Caesar, the religious leaders would have had a weapon against him.

But if on the other hand he said not to pay the taxes as the wealth belonged to God, then that would have been a “gotcha” where the Romans would have had grounds of deeming him an insurrectionist.

His solution, which included asking whose face was shown on the coin, namely Caesar’s, amazed the crowd because it satisfied both religious lines of reasoning and the demands of the Romans, and reportedly such a line of reasoning had not been provided by any Jewish scholar to that date.

/endsidetrack

18

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
So if the seven of you decide that you should have the income from the three of us, then you have the “right” to it?

What if you decide we shouldn’t be allowed to have the nice houses and cars that you don’t have, on account of that being “greedy” and you “needing” it?

I don’t see where your proposed basis of rights has any difference from mob rule.[/quote]

That’s how pure democracy works. Fortunately the U.S. is a Constitutional Republic with actual laws. The trouble is that laws enabling your scenario can be written if the populace doesn’t participate and prevent it.

19

Dammit. Leave it to Bill Roberts to find the fatal flaw. Actually, I included God in my “theory” to make it palatable to the God-ists while keeping the premise that rights are purely a worldly concept. The real flaw is that we would all have to agree to the obligations, and we’re back in the worldly view of rights. OK, maybe that doesn’t work.

There’s another side to this philosophical coin. If rights are purely human constructs, do you have no rights until granted so? Or do you have all rights until they are taken away?

For that matter, what is the impact of having a “right”? Does that mean things must be provided to you? Are rights inherently free? Or does it mean things cannot be taken away from you?

I remember one of Robert Heinlein’s more didactic books (don’t remember which one) in which he hypothesizes that every right has an accompanying obligation. There’s something appealing to that idea.

This is hard. No wonder the Congress can’t figure it out. Time to dig out the philosophy books. Maybe the Federalist Papers too.

20

I’d say that if there were no other humans other than oneself, but only the various other lifeforms on Earth, then the concept of rights would be nearly meaningless, as there would be no one capable of infringing them or respecting any conceived rights.

Where there could be meaning is one could have a personal decision as to whether, for example, one had the right to kill monkeys for food, etc.

But in the absence of a religious basis, this would be based on opinion only (of course, a person could argue a religious view to be opinion-only as well, but it generally does not seem so to the person holding it.)