New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 55
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously used a curious phrase to describe man’s fundamentally inalienable rights: “among these, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What many do not know is that Jefferson was riffing off and augmenting a similar formulation from John Locke, who argued that we have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. Locke further argued that our right to property is meaningful in that the free use of our property is a means to enable our pursuit of happiness, thus explaining the meaning in Jefferson’s phrase. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks down these inalienable rights and why they matter so much, especially in fighting against Woke Marxism. Join him to learn why they are at the center of everything we must protect and the primary target for any tyrant who would rule over us.
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3 comments
I was looking up something recently in a video Stossel did on eminent domain, and I found that that Jefferson apparently did NOT mean property and did in fact mean “pursuit of happiness”. In fact, According to this document (I put the link in the place of the website) on page 8 of the PDF (Listed as 694 on the actual document), it points out that the Founding Fathers believe that property is subsurvient to the state and the “Common Good”.
I might take the approach of looking for the spiritual analogs of these human propositions:
Spiritual beings can exist independent of the body, and it has been found that they do best if treated for what they are: capable of existing without a body. In its natural state, then, these “human rights” become basic capabilities.
Life becomes existence. Liberty becomes freedom from slavery or entrapment (yes, a spiritual being can be trapped!). And the pursuit of happiness becomes the ability to participate in games. Games are created by pretending there are barriers which much be overcome to achieve some goal. Playing games of one’s own choosing results in happiness.
In a world without bodies, the game of biology falls away, and higher games become more readily available. I think the founders realized this and wanted to mention it specifically in the Declaration. The game of biology is perhaps one of the least fun, most entrapping games that we have yet devised. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad, but it does mean that people stuck in biological bodies need a way of being reminding of what they really are.
Though many of us see the Declaration and Constitution as marvelous results of an intense intellectual process, I think we need to continue to be aware of the spiritual component. What those men set up on Earth, as it turns out, was an environment where people could discover their true spiritual nature and have the freedom, space and time to develop that nature into something truly useful.
to your point about christians being dogmatic
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” Jesus (Matthew 23:15)