Category: Rights and Duties

Political Violence: Some Underlying Issues and Questions, Part I

Opponents or Enemies? In response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday (9/10/25), numerous well-meaning individuals such as former president George W. Bush and current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have said that our opponents on the Left are not political enemies, but fellow citizens. Setting aside the question of how many of these ‘citizens’ are illegal aliens, I have serious reservations with respect to the conciliatory remarks of Bush, Johnson, et al. We should of course all calm down and not make things worse with incendiary words and gestures. But more important than reining in emotions is using our intellects to penetrate to the truth of the matter.

A strong case can be made that our political opponents on the Left are indeed enemies. This is because they pose an existential threat to us. An existential threat is not primarily one to our physical lives, but to our way of life which encompasses our beliefs, values, religious and non-religious traditions, in a word: our culture.  To live a healthy life in political dhimmitude cuts against the American cultural grain, to put it mildly.  “Give me liberty or give me death!” (Patrick Henry) “Better dead than red.” (1950s slogan)  Better dead than under Sharia. (So say I.) An  American in the normative sense values life, liberty, and property.  Not just that, but at least that. And of course the liberty in question is not an untrammeled liberty unrestrained by duties, responsibilities, prudential considerations, and the like.  The classical liberalism of the Founders is part of a broader conservatism. Or so say I.  A normative American as I am using the term  is one who subscribes to the basic positions articulated in the founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the amendments thereto, in particular, the Bill of Rights, which are better described as additions rather than as amendments to the great document. There is a lot to be said here, but  brevity, the soul of wit, is also the soul of blog, as some wit lately observed.

Consider our rights.  Where do they come from? Not from government.  That is the essential point. Call it the negative thesis about the origin of rights. Tim Kaine, HRC’s running mate in 2016, believes otherwise:

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes,” he said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia (sic) law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. They do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” (Quoted here.)

Tim Kaine is my political enemy.  There is nothing troubling about the statement that our rights do not derive from  governments or the positive laws, the laws posited by legislatures.  On the contrary, it would be troubling in excelsis were our rights subject to the whims of men.  That way lies tyranny. Never forget, the people in government are like the rest of us, finite, fallible, and far from wholly virtuous; indeed many of them are far worse than many of us, both morally and intellectually.

We should also be clear that even if one were to hold  that God is the source of natural rights, that would not commit one to theocracy, Islamic or otherwise.  But I won’t waste any more words on the sheer stupidity of Kaine’s outburst. That would be the dialectical equivalent of beating up a cripple or rolling a drunk. It it hard to believe that this guy has a J. D. from Harvard.

Now suppose that Kaine and I both accepted the negative thesis, but differed on the question whether rights come from God or are simply given with (inscribed in) human nature.  The question could be put like this: If one accepts that there are natural rights, must one also accept the existence of God as the source of those rights, or could one coherently and reasonably accept that there are natural rights and be an atheist, i.e., one who rejects the existence of God? People might reasonably debate this question while accepting the fundamental negative thesis about the origin of rights.  The debaters would then be political opponents, as I am using the term, but not political enemies.  If Kaine were merely my opponent in this debate he would not pose an existential threat, a threat to my way of life. As it is, however, he and others of his ilk are such a threat and are therefore my enemies.

Since they are my political enemies, I want to see them politically dead. That is, I want them to have no political power.  That is not to say that I want them physically dead. But of course, if an enemy is physically dead, then he is also politically dead.

We now come to a vexing question. Suppose our enemies fail to defeat us politically within the existing constitutional  framework as they manifestly did fail in 2024, and this despite all their dirty tricks, e.g. the Russia collusion hoax, etc.  Most of our enemies sincerely believe  that it is right, proper, noble, and for the ultimate benefit of humanity that they rule.   Failing to defeat us within the existing constitutionally-based system, would they not feel justified in resorting to extra-political means to attain their ends? One such extra-political means is assassination.

We don’t yet know, but it is a good bet that Kirk’s assassin was not a lone crazy man but part of a well-orchestrated plot.  Suppose that is the case, and that you sincerely believe that Trump is Hitler, MAGA members are maggots, and so on. Suppose further that you are a hard-core secularist who believes that there is only one world, this physical world, no God, no soul, no post-mortem rewards and punishments, none of that religious claptrap.  Could you not see your way clear to embracing politics by assassination?  Assassination would then be politics by other means. The conceptual distance between the political and the extra-political would then be lessened if not obliterated.  

Bear in mind that Kirk was not assassinated because of his opinions, as some have said, but because his opinions have practical consequences, consequences that stand in the way of the Left’s agenda.  The glorious end, heaven on earth, the immanentization of the eschaton, justifies any and all means to its realization.  People who say that Kirk was assassinated for his opinions, views, beliefs are probably imagining that political discourse is a gentlemanly debate  conducted according to the dialectical equivalent of the Queensberry Rules, or that there is this marketplace of ideas in which the better ideas win.  

One more vexing question and then I’ll stop for today. Suppose the foregoing is essentially correct. What should we American conservatives do to defend ourselves.?  Seek common ground with our enemies? There is no common ground.  Give in to them? No way!  Accept political dhimmitude? No way!  Commit suicide? No. Allow them to put us to the sword? No. Divide the country into Red and Blue halves? That would weaken us vis-à-vis our geopolitical adversaries. 

They want us, and we want them, politically dead. If they resort to extra-political means to achieve their end, must we not do the same to achieve ours?

I shudder at the thought.

Rights and Needs

You can have a right to a thing whether or not you have or will have a need for it. So the best response to the leftist who asks, "Why do you need a gun?" is wrong question! Stop the pointless conversation right there. "The question is not whether I need one; the question is whether I have a right to one."

Then explain that the right to appropriate means of self-defense follows from the right to self-defense which in turn follows from the right to life.

Depending on the sort of leftist you are dealing with you could then go on to explain why you do need a gun. But the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Leftists need to be defeated not debated. 

Vote, vote early, and vote against the tyrants and the projectionist liars and language abusers of the Kamalist Left. I am assuming that you understand what is in your own long-term best self-interest. Go to GunVote.org to register.

Frédéric Bastiat on the Law

To gain historical perspective and philosophical insight as we slide into the abyss, you must read Bastiat among others. Our current situation is nothing new and what the Frenchman writes is directly relevant to our decline. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk. It's twilight time. Can we turn things around? I don't know. It may be too late. As a citizen I lament, as a philosopher I rejoice in the opportunity to learn something. Everything below is reproduced from this source.

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author.

The Law

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!

If this is true, it is a serious fact, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

What Is Law?

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

“All Men are Created Equal”

I have claimed against certain alt-rightists that the above famous declaration in the Declaration of Independence is not an empirical claim about the properties and powers of human animals whether as individuals or as groups, but a normative claim about persons as rights-possessors. For if "All men are created equal" is an empirical claim about the powers and properties of human animals, then it is manifestly false. A second reason why it is not a false empirical claim is because it is not an empirical claim at all. For if all men are created equal, and "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," then they have a meta-physical origin, and the claim in question is a metaphysical claim. 

Jacques poses a formidable challenge:

. . . let's agree it's a normative claim to the effect that all 'persons' have certain 'rights'.  What then entitles all of them to these rights?  A normative fact like that doesn't float free from all empirical facts.  There's got to be some reason why all normal human adults have these rights but chickens or pencils don't, some empirical property of these beings only that generates or confers certain rights.  Is it the shared property of being a person?  Or the shared property of being human?  Something else?  I suspect that any of the candidate properties will be either morally irrelevant, even by liberal-leftist standards, or else relevant but distributed so unequally that it will be hard to understand how it could be the basis for 'equal' rights.

For example, on some interpretations the property of being a person is binary and almost every human being has it–including people with fairly severe mental deficits that would disqualify them from the usual list of ('equal') rights.  On other interpretations, the property is very complex and comes in degrees.  If it involves rationality, some people are plainly far more rational than others.  If it involves moral judgment (or what Rawls calls 'moral personality') then that too is a matter of degree.  We can probably find lots of pairs such that one human person has this complex property only in some weak rudimentary way while the other one is a person in a much more profound and morally significant sense.  Why the same rights for both?  I realize these arguments aren't decisive, but I think they put the burden of proof on egalitarians.  Why should we think there is any suitable empirical basis for the normative claim that 'all men are equal' or that such normative claims could be true regardless of any empirical facts?

I will grant Jacques that the normative does not "float free" of the non-normative.  The normative needs ontological backing. 'Ought' needs grounding in 'is.'  But I distinguish between the empirically non-normative and the metaphysically non-normative. And so I do not grant to Jacques that the normative can only be grounded in empirical facts, facts accessible to observation via the senses and their instrumental extensions. They can be grounded in metaphysical facts.

A theist can say that the divine will is the non-normative ground of the normative.  God made man in his image and likeness; he did not make chickens in his image and likeness. That is why Joe Biden has rights but his dog doesn't.   

But what explains why rights are the same for all humans? Biden is a lowly specimen of humanity, physically feeble, mentally incompetent, and morally corrupt.  Why does he have the same rights as RFK, Jr. who is Biden's physical, mental, and moral superior? Because from the infinitely lofty point of view of God, the differences between human beings are vanishingly small. All bear within them the 'divine spark.' You heard Nancy Pelosi say it, and on this point at least, she stepped out of her normal role as dingbat and dumbbell.  An MS-13 gangbanger, George Floyd, John Fetterman, Einstein, Mother Teresa — all equal in the eyes of God. All sons and daughters of the same Father. All sinners and all with a supernatural destiny.

But suppose there is no God. Then what? Then I think Jacques' challenge is unanswerable.  Setting aside the chickens and the pencils, we humans are obviously not equal, either as individuals or as groups, in respect of empirically measurable attributes and performances.  So why should we have equal political and other rights?  Why isn't a form of chattel slavery justified that treats slaves humanely? Is the current belief in the equality and universality of rights simply a holdover from a dying Judeo-Christian worldview?  How can you kick away the theological support and continue to hold to the equality and universality of rights? Is there an alternative form of support along Rawlsian lines, say?  Can a metaphysical naturalist who rejects God and the soul have a principled basis for rejecting the Calliclean "Might makes Right"?

 

Rights and Needs

You can have a right to a thing whether or not you have or will have a need for it. So the best response to the leftist who asks, "Why do you need a gun?" is wrong question! Stop the pointless conversation right there. "The question is not whether I need one; the question is whether I have a right to one." Then explain that the right to appropriate means of self-defense follows from the right to self-defense which in turn follows from the right to life.

Depending on the sort of leftist you are dealing with you could then go on to explain why you do need a gun. But the wisest policy is not to debate leftists. Leftists need to be defeated not debated. 

2A and the Origin of Rights

Your right to defend your life with appropriate means is not conferred by the State and would not be affected by repeal of 2A. That right is no more conferred by the State than the right to life from which the right to self-defense follows.

The same holds for all of the rights specified in the Bill of Rights.

Many conservatives say that our rights "come from God." I don't deny it. But in terms of political  tactics, it is probably a mistake to affirm it. It is enough to say that our rights do not come from the State. For if you bring God into the discussion, you risk alienating those atheists who are otherwise open to persuasion. 

If I want to persuade you of something, I will get nowhere if I employ premises that you do not accept. So if my otherwise open-minded interlocutor gets the impression that the affirmation of natural rights will commit him to the existence of God, if he gets the impression that if  rights do not come from the State, then they must come from God, then we risk losing an ally in the fight against our political enemies.

We need all the allies we can get. The Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable must be broad and big-tented  to defeat the forces of nihilism.  

Tactically, it suffices to say that our rights are rooted in rerum natura, in the nature of things, and leave it to the philosophers to wrestle with the question as to what exactly this means and whether there can be natural rights without divine support.

Use it or Lose it?

Substack latest.

If you want to maintain your physical fitness, you must exercise regularly. Use it or lose it!  Not so long ago  I thought that the same principle had a political application: if you want to maintain your freedoms, you must exercise them.  Use 'em or lose 'em! But times have changed.  And when times change, the wise re-evaluate. I'll give two examples.

Dreher contra Buchanan on “All men are created equal.”

Rod Dreher quotes Patrick J. Buchanan:

“All men are created equal” is an ideological statement. Where is the scientific or historic proof for it? Are we building our utopia on a sandpile of ideology and hope?

Dreher responds:

With that, Buchanan repudiates not only the founding principle of our Constitutional order, but also a core teaching of the Christian faith, which holds that all men are created in the image of God. 

I am with Dreher on this without sharing quite the level of high dudgeon that he expresses in his piece. 

I am always surprised when people do not grasp the plain sense of the "that all Men are created equal" clause embedded in the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. It cannot be charitably interpreted as a statement of empirical fact. If it were so interpreted, it would be false. For we all know, and certainly the Founders knew, that human beings are NOT equal as a matter of empirical fact either as individuals or as groups.

Suppose a statement can be interpreted in two ways. One way it comes out plainly false; the other way it comes out either true or plausible or not obviously untrue. Then what I understand the Principle of Charity to require is that we go the second way. 

For Buchanan to demand "scientific or historic proof" shows deep misunderstanding. For again, the claim is not empirical. Is it then a normative claim as Mona Charen (quoted by Dreher) seems to suggest? It implies normative propositions, but it is not itself a normative proposition. It is a metaphysical statement. It is like the statement that God exists or that the physical universe is a divine creation. Both of the latter statements are non-empirical. No natural science can either prove them or disprove them. But neither of them are normative.  They are factual statements, though not empirically factual.  (Observe also that a factual statement need not be true. 'BV has three cats' is a factual statement, indeed it is empirically factual. It is not a normative statement, and it is a statement that can be empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. But it is false.)

Note that the Declaration's claim is not that all men are equal but that all men are created equal. In such a carefully crafted document, the word 'created' must be doing some work. What might that be?

There cannot be creatures (created items) without a Creator. That's a conceptual truth, what Kant calls an analytic proposition. So if man is created equal, then he is created by a Creator. The Creator the founders had in mind was the Christian God, and these gentlemen had, of course, read the Book of Genesis wherein we read that God made man in his image and likeness. That implies that man is not a mere animal in nature, but a spiritual being, a god-like being, possessing free will and an eternal destiny. Essential to the Judeo-Christian worldview is the notion that man is toto caelo different from the rest of the animals. He is an animal all right, but a very special one. This idea is preserved even in Heidegger who speaks of an Abgrund zwischen Mensch und Tier. The difference between man and animal is abysmal or, if you prefer, abyssal. Man alone is Da-Sein, the 'There' of Being; man alone is endowed with Seinsverstaendnis, an understanding (of) Being.  But I digress onto a Black Forest path.  

Now if all men, whether male or female, black or white, are created equal by God, and this equality is a metaphysical determination (Bestimmung in the sense of both a distinctive determination and a vocation) then we have here the metaphysical basis for the normative claim that all men ought to be treated equally, that all men ought to enjoy equally the same  unalienable rights, among them, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  (We note en passant that these are negative rights!)

All men are normatively equal because they are metaphysically equal. They are the latter because they are spiritual beings deriving from one and the same spiritual source.  Each one of us is a person just as God is a person. We are equal as persons even though we are highly unequal as animals.

Without this theological basis it is difficult to see how there could be any serious talk of equality of persons. As the alt-righties and the neo-reactionaries like to say, we are not (empirically) equal either as individuals or as groups. They are absolutely right about that.   

Dreher is also right that the theologically-grounded equality of persons is "the founding principle of our Constitutional order," and thus of our political order.  Repudiate it, as Buchanan seems to be doing, and you undermine our political order.

What then does our political order rest on if the equality of persons is denied? 

Related: Sullivan is Right: Universalism Hasn't Been Debunked

Is it Wise to Speak Out?

To focus the question: is it prudent for conservative dissidents to speak out against 'woke' madness? That depends. This will help you think it through.  I wrote below:

In the present political climate, if I exercise my right to free speech I may lose the right. Use it and lose it.  This is because vast numbers nowadays do not recognize any such right.  For these people, dissent is hate; so if your speech is dissenting speech it is hate speech, which cannot be tolerated.  Dissent is hate, and hate is violence, and violence is racism! Of course, dissent is not hate, and hate is not violence, etc. but these truths are irrelevant in an age of groupthink and mass delusion.  Truth is passé in the Age of Feeling. So if you speak your mind calmly, reasonably, and with attention to facts, but sail against the prevailing winds, you may find yourself de-platformed, 'cancelled,' and put on a watch list of dissidents, and perhaps a 'no fly' list.  After all, conservatives are 'potential terrorists.' And white conservatives are of course 'white supremacists.'

On the other hand, if you don't exercise your rights, you may as well not have them.

There are ways between the horns of this dilemma but they will vary from case to case.  

Try to become financially independent as soon as possible by a combination of hard work, frugal living, and wise saving and investing. Then the tyrants won't be able to 'cancel' your livelihood so easily.   They can, of course, still 'cancel' your life.  Would they? Well, if they have no problem stripping you of your livelihood because of the exercise of  your rights, what is likely to stop them from going all the way?

The Right to an Opinion

The right to express an opinion does not absolve one of the obligation to do one's level best to form correct opinions.  Note however that the legal (and moral) right to free speech guaranteed  to the American citizen by the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution remains even if one shirks one's moral (but not legal) obligation to do one's best to form correct opinions.