Rescuing Human Rights from Human Beings

"La Scapagliata," by Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1500

The whole civilized world takes the notion of "human rights" for granted. Ask an American if he or she has rights and a doctor's hammer below the knee couldn't provoke such an instant and reflexive response. “Of course I have rights!” (Why would you even ask?) Probe a little bit deeper and ask one of those obnoxious "why" questions and you may possibly get "It's in the Constitution." Pursue it further and ask if it would be okay if a Constitutional amendment took away a right like the freedom of speech. You'll either get stony silence or, if this pedestrian is unusually clever (or unusually good at parroting his professors), an appeal to "humanity." People have human rights because they're human beings. It's circular, of course, but, then, didn't Plato believe that the circle was the most perfect of shapes?

Fantastic as it sounds, we're supposed to believe that this rights-by-virtue-of-humanity argument is sufficient.The only problem with it is that an individual who is the sole owner of his rights (as opposed to being “endowed” with his rights) can forever give them away if he or she so chooses – and if history is any guide, he or she often so chooses. Rights that can be given away at whim are, in reality, no rights at all. The government may as well have absolute jurisdiction if it only refuses to infringe on its citizens’ rights when it’s convenient. An even more fundamental problem with basing rights in humanity itself is our era’s postmodernism. You’re telling me there’s no such thing as absolute right and wrong, but an African tribesman still has an absolute right to food, water and condoms? The absurdity is self-evident and goes a long way in explaining why nothing akin to individual rights was ever recognized until the coming of Christianity, and has receded whenever and wherever the tides of the Gospel have ebbed.

One would think this would be obvious to anyone who bothered to take the most cursory glance at the historical record. Even ancient Greece and Rome, where conceptions of humanistic individualism reached their zenith, had no such concept as individual rights. Plato spoke of the importance of the polis as the source of a kind of communitarian right. Romans emphasized the freedom granted by a just legal system. One searches ancient laws in vain for anything resembling our modern versions of individual rights. Slavery was never prohibited anywhere in the ancient world; in fact, it served as the fundamental basis of those societies. Plato and Aristotle both believed that certain people were meant to be slaves by their very nature. The rest of the world was even worse. Most non-Western languages don't even have a word for freedom.

Only with the coming of Christianity did people begin to recognize that all of mankind is made in the imago dei – the image of God—and therefore deserving of certain rights. In the words of the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3, “there is no Gentile or Jew…barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” Christians in early Rome shocked their pagan rulers by adopting the children Romans left out in the elements to die. Over the centuries, Christianity persistently eroded the philosophical underpinnings that had allowed slavery to survive. Significantly, the first widespread movement against the slave trade began, not under the auspices of Platonists, but under a Christian queen of France, Bathilda. Charlemagne was opposed to slavery; Pope Callistus himself had been a slave. Abogard, Anselm and Wulfstan and other luminaries of the medieval church all campaigned against the existence of the institution. As Rodney Stark has written, “The theological conclusion that slavery is sinful has been unique to Christianity.”

The Protestant Reformation’s rediscovery of the believer’s direct relationship to God launched a whole new inquiry into individual rights, particularly vis a vis government. If an individual is justified by his or her faith and not by physically going through a sacrament, the logic went, then no person can force salvation on another. This led to the formal enumeration of the right of conscience, and by logical extension, the rights of speech and the press, where conscience was expressed, challenged and forged. Religious thinkers like the Protestant theologian Hugo Grotius applied the principles of Christianity when theorizing about international law. Regardless of culture, government or race, people everywhere possessed certain rights because they possessed a common Creator. In the 17th century, John Locke’s theory of government went so far as to assert that political bodies are instituted for the express purpose of protecting the God-given rights of individuals. From here it was a short step to the Declaration of Independence. The distinctly Christian idea of human rights now also became a part of civic religion, with all the mixed blessings that entailed.

All our modern ideas on this subject can therefore be traced back to Christian theology, which alone has birthed, and can alone sustain, so sweeping an idea as the dignity of the entire human race. It’s all too easy to view this Christian accomplishment in a vacuum, as many American do today. Most people have never considered that humanitarianism, foreign aid, abolition and systematic resistance to tyranny have only ever existed in countries touched by Christianity. As Christianity fizzles out in this country, we should expect to see our ideas of human rights—already so twisted, mutable and vacuous that we call abortion a fundamental right—die out, too.

In Defense of the Industrial Revolution

"Coalbrookdale by Night," Philip James de Loutherberg, 1801

If you’re like most people, you’ve been taught that the Industrial Revolution is the Achilles heel of free-market economics. Let a proponent of limited government make an argument ever so principled, your mention of children suffering in a coal mine will have him reaching for the white flag. After all, who’s going to defend poverty, squalor, filthy living conditions and profiteering?

Ironically, that’s precisely what you’re doing when you paint the Industrial Revolution as a period of exploitation and misery. F.A. Hayek wrote in “Capitalism and the Historians” that “[t]here is…one supreme myth which more than any other has served to discredit the economic system to which we owe our present-day civilization….It is the legend of the deterioration of the position of the working classes in consequence of the rise of ‘capitalism.’”

Hayek gives four reasons that the capitalism of the Industrial Revolution did more to advance workers' well-being than any other economic arrangement had done before:

1) Since we can never expect a perfectly just economic system, we should be asking ourselves if the coming of industrialism worsened or improved the worker’s lot compared to what it had been before. Marxist theory doesn't do this - it looks at industrialism’s abuse of workers in historical isolation. Hayek remarks, “While there is every evidence that great misery existed [during the Industrial Revolution], there is none that it was greater than or even as great as it had been before.” The manorial system of tenant-farming had been no Wordsworth sonnet.

2) Attention was first drawn to the abuse of workers during the Industrial Revolution, not because abuse had been unknown before, but because “[t]he very increase of wealth and well-being which had been achieved raised standards and aspirations. What for ages had seemed a natural and inevitable situation…came to be regarded as incongruous with the opportunities which a new age had to offer.” Just as we might find a sin inexcusable in a saint while overlooking it in a sinner, poor working conditions and low-living standards became so glaring because of the hope of betterment the Industrial Revolution brought to the worker.

3) The “overpopulation” and crowding of cities is itself proof that standards of living were improving. “[W]hat in the past had been a recurring surplus of population doomed to early death was in an increasing measure given the possibility of survival. Numbers which had been practically stationary for many centuries began to increase rapidly. The proletariat which capitalism can be said to have ‘created’ was thus not a proportion of the population which would have existed without it and which it degraded to a lower level; it was an additional population which was enabled to grow up by the new opportunities for employment which capitalism provided.”

4) Much of our information about the horrible conditions that workers had to put up with comes from the research of highly politicized, governmental commissions. “It was one of the main arguments with which the landowning class hit back at the manufacturers to counter the agitation of the latter against the Corn Laws and for free trade. And it was from these arguments of the conservative press that the radical intelligentsia of the time, with little firsthand knowledge of the industrial districts, derived their views which were to become the standard weapon of political propaganda.”

For instance, many of the early anti-industrial historians illustrated their arguments by referring to “Sadler’s Committee” of 1832. Here, several witnesses testified before members of parliament about working conditions in industrial sectors. There are just a few problems with using this as authoritative evidence. First, most of the abuses mentioned had happened over thirty years before, but were made to sound as if they were still in effect, though methods and conditions at factories had drastically changed. Second, very few of the witnesses were from industrial areas of the country. Third, the witnesses all refused to give their testimony under oath. Fourth, the opposition was not given a chance at rebuttal before the Committee’s evidence was published. Therefore, some of the Industrial Revolution's most lurid scenes, though published in newspapers, pamphlets and history books, was little more than baseless allegation.

The Punishment that Brought Us Peace

"Descent from the Cross," by Roger Van Der Weyden, 1435:

"Christ Carrying the Cross," by Hieronymous Bosch, 1490:

"Head of Christ," Albrecht Durer, 1503:

"Christ on the Cross," Albrecht Durer, 1505:

"Crucifixion," by Matthias Grunewald, 1515:

"Christ on the Cross with Mary and John," by Albrecht Altdorfer,1515:

"Descent from the Cross," by Rembrandt, 1634:

"Cross in the Mountains," by Caspar David Friedrich, 1808:

"Morning in the Great Mountains," by Caspar David Friedrich,1810-11:

The Myth of Self-Conscious Tyranny

Watercolor by William Blake, ca. 1795

"And Caiaphas was in his own mind/A benefactor to mankind."      --William Blake, "The Everlasting Gospel"

When most of us think of Hitler, Stalin or Ahmadinejad, we think of a creature who’s fallen so low that he’s become a separation – or, at best, an aberration- from the human race – someone whom we’re not like and could never possibly become.  Like the superstitious, medieval peasant, we see a beast descended from the demonic line of Cain rather than a fellow human being.

But what do we know of the author of evil himself – of Satan? Wasn’t his name once “Lucifer” (which means “light-bearer”)? Wasn’t he the mightiest, most beautiful and most virtuous of the Almighty God’s angels? Wasn’t he presumably exalted above all the others for his righteousness? Here’s what the Bible says:

Ezekiel 28:17:  “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.”

Isaiah 14:12-15: 

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.”

Evil often begins with the pride that comes from doing what’s right. Although we don’t know what exactly it was that Lucifer did that earned him so exalted a position, it was obviously something very good and deserving of reward. When any of us do evil, it’s often not conscious. It begins with a good purpose - like Hitler’s sincere desire to rescue Germany from inflation and foreign dominance, Stalin’s to usher in an egalitarian order, or Ahmadinejad’s to secure Iran from outside aggression – that becomes prideful. Pride then blinds the individual to their selfishness. As they pursue their  noble goal with increasing self-aggrandizement and wickedness -with an increasing philosophy of the ends justifying the means - they tell themselves that it’s for “the public good,” and that makes it okay. This is critical to understand: most egregiously evil individuals honestly believe that they’re doing what’s right.

John Milton’s classic work Paradise Lost brilliantly captures this truth about the nature of evil. Milton portrays Lucifer’s fall as beginning with pride that leads to righteous indignation against a God whom he begins to believe is a tyrant.

"My sentence is for open War; Of Wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait
The Signal to ascend, sit ling'ring here,
Heav'n's fugitives, and for their dwelling place
Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame,
The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns
By our delay? no, let us rather choose,
Arm'd with Hell flames and fury all at once
O'er Heaven's high Tow'rs to force resistless way,
Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer."
--Satan in Paradise Lost, Bk. II

Although this is extra-scriptural, it seems to me to be an accurate depiction of evil. God is seen as "the Torturer," "the Tyrant," and rebelling against him becomes a good, a noble, a laudable act. This is borne out by scripture: Isn't the essence of Adam and Eve's rebellion that the serpent convinced them that God was selfishly holding them back from their full potential? When Milton describes the angelic rebellion Lucifer leads, he portrays it as a kind of democratic revolution against a perceived dictator. Satan and the demons were, indeed, acting from the most base and selfish motives – but they thought they were in the right. Also along these lines is J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale of the king of Numenor who is so seduced and brainwashed by Sauron (Middle-Earth's Satan figure) that he leads his imperial fleet to Valinor (the land of the gods) to wage ware against the perceived injustices of the gods. 

There is a lesson here for all of us.  Whenever we hear that “Obama wants to destroy the country” or “The Christian Right wants to kill homosexuals” or “Ahmadinejad is a madman,”  we should remind ourselves that, tragically, whatever we think of these people, it's quite likely they believe that they’re doing what’s right – even that God is on their side. That’s what makes evil so insidious. The greatest evils are perpetrated when we believe that we can do no wrong. And that’s why we should cringe when people act like they could never become a Hitler or a Stalin. That attitude is the beginning that led to the infamy those two men obtained. Our attitude should rather be “There but for the grace of God go I.”


(Entire nations, too, can fall victim to the blinding effects of pride. Read this article to see how)

Sowing Wind and Reaping the Whirlwind

"Snow Storm: Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth,"
by J. M. W. Turner. 1842 

I've lately begun noticing what the Bible doesn't say, and what was left unwritten impresses me just as much as what was put down. There's something smacking of divine inspiration when a man could write Romans 13 after suffering what he had at the hands of the Romans. Why not come right out and condemn things like the Roman Empire, emperor-worship or slavery? God's Word is the complete and authoritative guide to everything in existence, and yet there are things it doesn't directly address. This is because if everything was spelled out for us, there wouldn't be room for our faith and reason, and God created us to exercise free will.

Constitutions operate under a similar principle. Like the Bible, the Constitution of the United States is also notable for what it doesn't say, and these things it doesn't say are an important recognition of our God-given freedom. At only 7,200 words long, the Constitution is very short. Its brevity is a reflection of its wisdom. It recognizes that rights are preexisting in nature and in the states, and thus, instead of spelling out all our rights, it limits itself mainly to telling the federal government what it cannot do. "Congress shall make no law respecting..." The conception of rights found in the Constitution is one of "negative rights," meaning that it prevents the government from infringing on all the rights we as citizens are already understood to possess. Even though a right to pursue education or employment isn't found within the document, its only because its understood that human beings possess them intrinsically. The Tenth Amendment makes this point vividly: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The E.U.'s constitution, on the other hand, totals about 78,000 words. Why so long? For one thing, because it's fundamentally based on humanistic assumptions. There is no God, therefore mankind isn't made in his image and doesn't have rights intrinsically - they're concessions from the state. Thus, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (the equivalent of our Bill of Rights) is obligated to give a comprehensive list of all the rights its citizens may want or need. The long, dreary litany includes such things as the right to education, the right to affordable housing and the right of the handicapped to have accessibility to buildings, etc. etc. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, if a citizen of the EU can't find a right within his constitution, well, too bad. The state hasn't decided that he has that right.

Notice how insidious this can be. A right to healthcare? A right to education? Rights become entitlements under this kind of "positive rights" system - a system where people have the right to have a specific good or service. Now, don't get me wrong. All the "rights" I just listed are good things in and of themselves. People should have the right to be educated and to be able to buy a house. Here in the United States we have the same rights - even though they're not included in our Constitution, . We have the right to pursue affordable housing and education, but we're not entitled to them.

Why is Europe facing the most daunting fiscal crisis that's ever beset the modern world? Because the EU's humanism has created an entitlement culture of unprecedented size and scope. Since education, healthcare and many other things have become fundamental "rights," the state is now obligated to make sure every citizen has them. To this end, it's had to take over from the private sector the job of supplying education, insurance, food, clothing, housing and many other commodities. Think about the costs involved in that. We've all seen how inept government is at stimulus projects and the like, so how much worse must it be when it's effectively running whole swathes of the economy? No amount of taxes that an average citizen pays in can possible finance the individual entitlements he has to a "free" education, healthcare or social services. The only answer, then, is debt and inflation. In their quest to have all the benefits of civilization without recognizing its Author, nations of the European Union have sown nothing but wind, and now they are reaping the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).