July 1776:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. (The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America)
July 2026:
Today, we hold these ideas to be superior and just: that all men are equal; that they are given certain alienable entitlements by their Governments; that among these are the right to Die upon demand (“end-of-life care”), the right to Kill unborn children (“reproductive health care”), the right to Safety at the cost of Liberty (“total surveillance”), the right to unearned Happiness that may be freely taken from those who pursued and earned it (“social justice”).–That to secure these entitlements, Governments self-reproduce among Elites, deriving their powers ex machina et sui generis.–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Entitled to complain, and beg for the institution of new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect and perpetuate the aforementioned as well as certain other entitlements laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (UDHR):
– the right to social security;
– the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment;
– the right to equal pay for equal work;
– the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their families an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection;
– the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of the workers’ interests;
– the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay;
– the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and of their families, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services;
– the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond our control;
– the right to free education, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages;
etcetera, etcetera, etcetra …
When Entitlement necessitates Detitlement
What the authors of the Utopian Declaration of Human Rights conveniently left out of their social-economic equations was that the en-titlement of these rights to everyone necessarily entails the de-titlement of the rights of some of us, i.e. of those of us who are forced to relinquish – a considerable part of – the products of their successful economic and intellectual efforts, so as to fulfill the purported needs of the entitled. Such in spite of the fact that, according to that same UDHR, everyone, including the de-tiled, is entitled to “all the rights and freedoms”, including the right listed in Article 17, which provides that “[e]veryone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others”, and that “[n]o one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” In this dystopian Utopia everyone is entitled to practically everything even though this implies that some “everyones” must be deprived of their well earned property, if necessary with the use of force and intimidation. The authors of the UDHR solved this inner contradiction in the document by the shrewd insertion of the word “arbitrarily” in the property clause, which makes that in principle the de-titlement of some for the purpose of en-titling others is perfectly justified as long as it takes place within the framework of the enumerated entitlements. This is how the framers of this “eat your cake and have it” universe overcame the express provision laid down in Article 30 of the UDHR, which provides that: “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”
From unalienable right to lienable entitlements
In the UDHR, the fundamental freedoms were redefined as “human” rights and freedoms that somehow come about when we are born: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” No longer are we “created equal” in God’s image and no longer are our unalienable rights endowed to us by the Creator of Man. By stealthily transforming our God-given rights into entitlements created by Governments which can formulate, reformulate, lienate and alienate them by discretion, the divine ones were stripped of their origin and intrinsic, transcendent, nature and strength. This is how the bucket list of so called “rights” could be extended way beyond and in contravention to the several unalienable ones endowed to Man by his Creator. The rights are now “human” in the strict anthropological and secular meaning of the word. They are no longer directly connected with the Creator of Man. They no longer belong ab initio to the rights’ owners. They are now directly connected to the Entitlers who – as human grantors – entitled us – the equally human grantees – to exercise or refrain from exercising the right to enjoy the carefylly crafted benefits to which we are entitled.
Splitting societies in two
By turning the God-given right to pursue happiness into the right to claim happiness, the signatories to the UDHR split their respective nations into, on the one hand, a class of claimants who are entitled “not to worry and be happy” and, on the other hand, a class of people who can, when needed, be coerced to produce and surrender a quantity of happiness that is sufficient enough for the unproductive class of Entitlers to pay for their own and their vast bureaucracies’ salaries, pensions and rewards and hand out what’s left to the entitled in order to keep them calm and make them totally dependent on and obedient to their Government. The “move” put both classes ‒ the productive and the unproductive ‒ at the mercy of the elites who are now in a position of “gauging” the taking and giving of happiness in respect to the endless list of “human rights”.
How things can change in 250 years …..
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