On Human Rights - - Are They from God?

President Obama held a news conference for his new Defense Secretary nominee.  I listened to some of that speech and then switched to the Pope’s address to “The European Parliament”.   On this day he spoke of the true nature of Human Rights, and spoke of human rights as carrying social responsabilities and not just given blanketly.  I would phrase it a little differently.  We have rights from God and these rights are not dependant on any human being granting them.  They are inherent from birth and not things you have to bargain away something precious for- but are yours by being born a human being.  These would be the right to life, and freedom and dignity and respect as a fellow human being.  I would not say that any special interest group like gays or the poor or “being a minority” gives you any special rights.  I do not believe you have to right to either freedom from religion or freedom from tobacco, or freedom from challenge, as far as that’s concerned.  A rich man has no more inherent right to self respect and dignity than does a poor man.  The book of James says this.  I am not saying that one has the “Right” to aid from the government.  But I will you have a Right to anything that God has decreed by way of a blessing for you.  If anyone, even Jesus Christ, promises you something he does not deliver on then one is forced to consider that the ministry of Jesus Christ was not of God and Jesus is a false prophet.  There are other possabilities though such as his being misquoted or a mistranslation has occurred.  You don’t have a “Right” to material things.  Rights and priveleges are different.  Priveleges are earned either by circumstance or by deeds.  Rights are inherently yours.  But to say that you have no “right” to be given material things is NOT to say that others have no responsibility as servants and stewards of God- - to minister to the poor as part of their OWN “responsabilities”.  Their failings are no reflection on you, and they don’t have the right to make pronouncement that because of this or that you have LOST your God given rights.  This sort of de-humanizing behavior the tea party engages in is not of God.

I’ve been wanting to address a couple of topics raised in that brief squall last Saturday night at the Thanksgiving gathering.  It involves this nasty notion of “The liberal agenda”.  Most likely whatever the tea party right says about liberals can most likely much more fairly be applied to themselves.  Jesus hinted about this projection principle in his words, but I would not over-generalize something just because Jesus said it.  But in this case when you talk about a “liberal agenda” the shoe is quite on the other foot.  There is this “Liberal history agenda” where the liberals are conspiring to put leftist propaganda in the school history books so that children or “those young skulls filled with mush” as Rush calls them- - will be indoctrinated to grow up to be good liberals.  The problem, and I raised this issue- - is “What if “History as we know it” has been true for a hundred years or longer.  We’ve had psychiatry and woman’s sufferage struggles dating back to the 1890’s.  We’ve had the Federal Reserve system since 1913 and the income tax for just about that long, too.  We’ve had extensive regulations concerning banks and investments and safeguards in the stock market.  We’ve had progressive income taxes, and yet YOU say that somehow these issues are too new and controversial to even INCLUDE in your kind of history books which would expunge- - in Heil Hitler fashion- - anything in our nation’s history that doesn’t instill “Fear of God” or respect for all government authorities or what have you?  Another issue my brother raised was this whole thing with Global Warming being some gigantic propaganda left wing conspiracy, like some political kabbal of scientists “with an agenda”.  It’s always an agenda.  In this case it would be to pass all sorts of carbon taxes they could not get by ordinary means because the American people would never accept them.  So these taxes have to somehow be “snuck in” under cover of Global Warming.  Wendy then addressed us with a lecture of the importance and necessity of the social safety net because a lot of people don’t have families and churches to get aid from- - and charities are often incomplete and unreliable.  So if there is a human necessity that is not getting done- - well, this is why you need Government.

We had our usual Friday egg salad sandwich from Donnie.  I contacted Glen then returned after I had eaten the sandwich.  I got coffee from Glen.  He said pay a quarter and I offered and paid thirty cents, and was amply rewarded with a very generous allotment of instant coffee.   (earlier in the day I had given Glen two uncompensated cigarettes plus this)  Nancy likes to quote the law of karma of “Give, and it will be given unto you”.   It’s still quite warm in here as it has been the two – plus days that the heater has been on.  Jeopardy is done and “Wheel of Fortune” is just finishing up.   I’m on the one stalk of raw broccoli diet- - and maybe I’ll start a religion that if you bow and face Mecca and eat your one stalk of broccoli, you’ll live cancer free.

I was curious about Israeli founder, David Ben Gurian.  He's physically older than I ever imagined and lived a whole extensive pre-Israel life.  In case you are wondering he never lived in Nazi Germany during any period of Nazi Germany and he was certainly never in any Nazi internment camp.  In fact he’s been a Zionist from a very early age- decades before anyone heard of the term.  He lived either in Palestine or else in Turkey.  Apparently his native tongue is Hebrew.  He never learned Aribec but eventually learned Turkish and English.  He once met with Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Min, who offered him sanctuary in Viet Nam but Ben Gurian turned it down.  Israelis love to say “The day Israel was established the Palestinians declared war and attacked us.  This is so false.  The Israelis had been clearing the Palestinians out of the area for months and there was what was known as the Palestinian Exodus of 1948.  The Wikkipedia confirms that their property was conthiscated and some even likened this purge of Arab Palestinians as “ethnic cleansing”.  One of Israel’s first orders of business was to pass a whole series of laws against the Palestinians.  There was never any official treaty with the UN as to the exact borders of Israel.   Basically on May 14^th of 1948 Israel just short circuited the process going around the UN altogether and declaring the birth of a nation.   Basically as I see it, if you were an Arab in the area all your life you had two choices – leave forever, or be killed.