I was listening to a webinar today discussing the legal ramifications to churches of the social changes going on around us.  Specifically, the company putting on the review kept referencing the issues as a conflict between the first and fourteenth amendments — freedom of religion versus equally applied rights.

But that’s not the basic problem.  A true “Right” is a negative constraint on government, protecting a person’s allowance to take an action.  That’s how it developed, what our Founding Fathers wrote in to the Constitution, and what was understood for many years.  But then the Left, in its glorification of the State, and its quest to remove all constraints from government, changed the definition (gradually) to “Right” being an entitlement granted by the state to select group(s) of people against other groups.

True Rights do not contradict each other, nor are they in conflict with each other.  They allow my action but put no obligation on another person.  The New Rights are different.  As an entitlement, they require others to enable my action.  Almost by definition, the New Rights suddenly stood in conflict with the True Rights.  Under True Rights, interaction between two people can be a win-win situation; cooperation allows both to advance their interests without conflict.  Under New Rights, the basic paradigm of interaction is win-lose.  As an entitlement, the New Right requires others to provide the wherewithal to enable my New Right without any advancement of their interests while doing so.

This is not a newly-discovered problem, of course.  It has been discussed for the last century or so.  Perhaps one of the best discussions has been by the British historian Paul Johnson in his series of lectures entitled “The Almost Chosen People.”  In lecture three, he points out that the two concepts of rights are incompatible, and that the New Rights (my term, not his) will destroy the True Rights if not checked.  By changing the essence within the form, (i.e. changing the definition within the legal wording,) True Rights can no longer be supported, and their destruction will follow.

The Left has almost succeeded in that destruction.

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