Self-Defense a Human Right

Utopia is not some mythical aspiration that a dreamer conjures up, but is a journey based upon the intrinsic order and consistent with human nature. Reaching the Promised Land requires a fundamental acknowledgement and respectful acceptance of inherent rights that must be universally applied.

Self-defense is the manifestation of the sacred character of life, all human life. Now consider just how vexing such a simple, yet profound principle, becomes distorted when government officialdom attempts to define, restrict or ban the means for individual protection.

The endless rhetoric that ambitious authorities announce is based upon false premises. These aspiring potentates want to make your right of self-defense conditional. Apparently the entire basis of allowing any municipality to define or dictate the most significant human right is obscenely absurd. Controlling elements that claim that the rule of law becomes the compelling distinction that produces a civilized society seldom challenge this premise.

Professor of history, Saul Cornell proves this point.

“Early modern English politi­cal theorists and jurists often described the right to defend oneself as the first law of nature. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke described a world without government or law as a state of nature, a primitive and dangerous world in which each person could use deadly force when­ever they judged it necessary.

In such a world each person was judge, jury, and executioner. Society and government were designed to provide the security and certainty unavailable in the state of nature. In exchange for the benefits of living in a world governed by the rule of law, individuals, with a few well-defined exceptions, gave up the right to use deadly force.

English common law, the collected body of legal deci­sions, which interpreted the meaning of England’s unwritten constitution, spelled out these exceptions in consid­erable detail. Individuals were legally obliged to retreat from attack and were not allowed to stand and fight, unless retreat was physically impossible. The only exception to the legal requirement that one flee was in one’s home.”

Missing from this viewpoint is that in the rapid imposition of a universal police state, the governments that profess to possess the legitimacy to defend citizens has become the greatest threat to residents of most countries. Facing the fact that individual human rights are the most endangered precept on the planet is a subject that is no longer allowed to be discussed.

As for employing methods for protecting those rights, a docile civilian much less a maltreated inhabitant is more likely subjected to a visit from a gang of SWAT enforcers than the prospect of having a civil liberty ruling from a court.

The Britannica Encyclopedia makes this distinction. “In another, narrower, sense, common law is contrasted to the rules applied in English and American courts of equity and also to statute law.”

This equity exception nullifies any legitimacy that U.S. courts might profess. “Equity, in Anglo-American law, the custom of courts outside the common law or coded law. Equity provided remedies in situations in which precedent or statutory law might not apply or be equitable.”

The consequences of this approach are that the law is applied in a capricious and arbitrary manner. The cultural bias that implementing such a legal system is an improvement over the first law of nature is questionable. Governments cause more abuses then any resolutions that come from legal or administrative actions.

In order to defend your natural rights, society must recognize that each person has an inalienable birthright of self-defense. A risk free Utopia does not exist. Ruling elites always emerge as the power behind the law and the inevitable causality is the practice of common law.

It should be obvious to even the blindest yokels that no one is safe in their abode. As Jonathan Swift described in Gulliver’s Travels, the Land of the Houyhnhnms was governed by (a race of talking steeds) who had more horse sense than (the deformed creatures that resemble human beings are called Yahoos).

The fate of leaving your safety to any ruling class always ends in some form of tyranny. It is impossible to engage in any form of constructive political discourse on guns, police deadly force, interventionist military deployment or foreign policy aggression, under these conditions.

For people who are limited in their inquiry skill to only address firearm issue, review the essay, Gun Self-Defense is a Natural Right.

“The immutable right for defending one’s person has no ideological test. It is an absolute justification for protecting the distinct safety of your being. For this reason alone, no government can morally disarm its citizenry from possessing the effective means to guard your security. The obsession of the anti-gun crowd to ban weapons defies all rational understanding.”

The best explanation for this maladjusted viewpoint of personal self-interest is that a substantial majority is fearful to recognize or exercise their own human rights. Deferring responsibility to a magisterial government for the price of obedience to their dictates seems to be a small cost for so many to pay.

Even if the overwhelming masses abdicate their obligations, they do not eradicate the underlying viability of the natural rights that underpin their being. If implementation of a spurious system of jurisprudence is allowed to ignore or abolish immutable canons of constitutional law, the ultimate conclusion will not be a utopian society but a concentration camp for dimwitted Yahoos.

Challenging every public institution is necessary to put the fear of God in the bellies of the gluttonous power hungry public servants. The true risk to your survival comes from your own government. The initial requirement to endure is the recognition that each and every individual has the task of self-preservation as their primary duty.

Civil disobedience often is an effective tactic to slow down the steamrolling methods of pseudo government authorities. The most that can be expected to achieve a temporal utopia is to strip government of any assertion that bureaucrats reflect valid authority. Personal dignity should be central to every person. Honor your nature by defending your rights.

SARTRE – September 4, 2018

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