Rights in the Absence of a Transcendent Creator

October 20, 2010

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased."

Alexander Hamilton,

The Farmer Refuted (1775)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

If the President of The United States includes "endowed" but purposely and conspicuously omits "by their Creator" (as he has several times) when quoting the Declaration of Independence, then by whom or by what does he suppose men are endowed with rights? And if that who or that what isn't bigger than man's power to oppress, tyrannize, injure, kill and take by force, then what, exactly, makes any rights inalienable? A "right" that is not inalienable is no right at all; it is nothing more than a privilege, granted by the strong to the weak, which can be altered or rescinded at any time at the whim of the grantor. Which was exactly the situation against which America's founders rebelled when they declared their inependence from King George III.