by Mike Willis
Synopsis: Many expect the government to guarantee and fund benefits, ranging from providing daily necessities to forcing businesses to provide services for those involved in moral conduct that violates their conscience (abortion rights, gay marriage services, etc.).
The entitlement mindset perceives that just being born gives one certain rights. The Declaration of Independence expresses the belief of America's founding fathers that the Creator endowed men with certain inalienable rights, among which are "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Under the guise of these inalienable rights defining what it means to be a creature of the Blessed Creator, many have included such things as women's rights (i.e., demands of women's liberation), rights of minorities, gay and lesbian rights, and sometimes even animal rights.
The founding founders understood that governments around the world infringing on the basic human rights of its citizens. Therefore, they limited the power of government from infringing on the "natural law" rights of its citizens. By affirming the "rights" of individuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," they had no intention of guaranteeing the equal outcome of every man's pursuit of "life, liberty, and happiness." "When they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal,' they were not ignoring the obvious differences that make people individuals—differences in appearance, personality, aptitude, skills, and character. All men are equal in the sense that, since we are all human, we are born with certain inherent, natural, and unalienable rights. Those rights include 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'" (docsoffreedom.org). However, they recognized these differences in men would mean that the outcomes of the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness would be unequal as well.
Furthermore, the framers of our Constitution were comfortable with a government that infringed on the rights of some of it citizens, even to the point of taking life, as illustrated by capital punishment of murderers and those guilty of treason; through incarceration, they were willing to take away the liberty and pursuit of happiness of those who stole, raped, and committed other criminal offences.
Certainly, being born does not guarantee one an education, or even the same level of education of every other person in society. Throughout human history, many have not been blessed with an education. Mere existence does not guarantee one a certain level of medical care. Obviously, those born in the twenty-first century have much better medical care than those born in the second millennium B.C. (Do contemporary Americans have "inalienable" rights that humans who lived in antiquity did not?) Nor does it guarantee that all who live today will have the same medical care, as is verified by anyone who reads the reports from our Filipino brethren with medical needs and compares it with his experience in the U.S. The same could be said of housing, freedom of speech and the press, and other things taken for granted in our United States.
Yet, medical care, good housing, an abundance of food, stylish clothing, cell phones, and many other things taken for granted in the United States are not divinely-given and inalienable rights. Since these "rights" do not derive from God, many look to government to pass legislation guaranteeing their "rights" and then increase taxes to fund them. The carefully worded Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States represents the founder's attempt to produce a productive, safe, and prosperous society for its citizens. Our generation is the heir of their efforts.
The authors and signatories of these documents accepted Judeo-Christian morals as the underpinnings and framework on which United States society was based. The rejection of the Christian value system has left our nation grappling with the issue of which "rights" should our government guarantee for its citizens. Consider how the debate over homosexual marriage was shifted to a human rights issue, which assured the downfall of opposition to homosexual marriage. On what do human rights depend? Certainly, being born does not guarantee one the right to homosexual marriage, for a secular or atheistic society has only relative moral values and not absolutes. Also, the Creator Himself does not guarantee such rights, as evidenced by His divine proclamation that homosexuals in the newly formed nation of Israel were to be put to death (Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Deut. 23:17).
The same government that passes laws guaranteeing homosexuals the right to marriage can also pass laws that force those who do not believe that homosexuality is moral to participate in such wedding plans or be subject to prosecution if they refuse to do so.1 In the same way as a government can force acceptance of sodomy, it can deprive men of their inalienable right to life, such as occurred when Hitler decided that Jews should be removed from society and that the Nazi government could prosecute and kill those who attempted to hide innocent refugees.2
When this occurs, civil government has stepped beyond the boundaries that God established for government. Governments are to punish wickedness, as defined by God in His word (Rom. 13:3; 1 Pet. 2:14; 3:13). Governments are also allowed to do other things, such as provide for a national defense. Though some may disagree, governments can redistribute wealth through taxes, with divine sanction as occurred with the Pharaoh of Egypt, when by divine guidance Joseph taxed the prosperity of the Egyptians to prepare for the coming famine (Gen. 41:48). The transference of wealth that resulted from that famine made Egypt a country owned by its king, with its land being farmed by tenant farmers (Gen. 47:13-26). However, what was necessary during these emergency situations did not make good economic policy in the long run. One should understand that the right to tax does not guarantee that there will not be bitter consequences befalling a nation with misguided tax laws. It may become so burdensome that businesses move to more welcoming environments, leaving its citizens without employment opportunities.
On what grounds can it be claimed that one person/group is at liberty to take the earned income of another person/group in order to provide food stamps, housing assistance, free school meals (breakfast, lunch, and after school) for children (even when school is not in session), food stamps, unemployment income, healthy food for low-income Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LHEAP), a cell phone (Lifeline), Pell Grants for a college education for low-income houses, and job-training programs for low-income people, many of whom are not working members of society helping to pay for their own benefits? These programs are not "human rights," but the political and social policies of a political party that tries to obtain and retain political power by promising free food, housing, medical care, education, etc. Misguided efforts to build a "Great Society" (begun by Lyndon Johnson in 1964-65) ultimately created human dependency (many families have lived on entitlement programs for generations) and deprived men of the self-esteem that comes from working to provide for themselves.
1 For information on this, see the Jack Phillips case that is working its way to the Supreme Court [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/26/supreme-court-to-hear-case-bakers-refusal-to-make-wedding-cake-for-gay-couple.html].
2 For information on this, see Adolf Hitler's Endlösung, the German code name for his plan to murder all Jews within his reach.
Author Bio: Mike Willis served as editor of Truth Magazine for forty years. He has been working with the Decatur Township church since 2015. He can be reached at tmmikewillis@gmail.com.
