Class 2, Feb. 16: Principles 1, 2; pp. 1-57

This class went over the first two principles,
Principle 1 - The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.

Natural law is God's law. There are certain laws which govern the entire universe, and just as Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, there are laws which govern in the affairs of men which are "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Principle 2 - A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

Principle 1 - The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
As was brought up in discussion afterwards, there seem to be many things attributed to 'Natural Law', which seem more like being simply reasonalbe conclusions, and then justified as 'That's Natural Law!', and there is more than a little truth to this... as well as justification for it.

Principles of Natural Law, as it was learned from Cicero, Locke, Blackstone, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and others, were deeply influential on the Founders and guided them in writing the Constitution, not to mention in prompting the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence. But it is a subject that is very easily hijacked into its opposite, which we know today as Regulatory Law, and also, as Burke noted, if not carefully checked and verified, the well meaning can easily proclaim the merely sensible - such as the Separation of Powers - as being a tenet of Natural Law.

At best, I think we can say that there are many propositions, rulings and laws which, being well reasoned, are in accordance with principles of Natural Law, because they are well reasoned, but, as many in class noted Skoussen does at the end of the chapter on Natural Law, to say that such things are "Natural Law" themselves, is a step or two beyond what seems supportable.

Such conclusions are even a bit dangerous, in that with the seeming sound basis they provide, it doesn't take much to begin talking about Natural Rights, and end with justifying Natural Wants... which will soon undermine all of your Rights and Laws.

As a rule of thumb, it seems that what can properly be called self evident under Natural Law, are only those things which a person could not be expected to live a fully human life if prevented from engaging in such actions. If you were somehow

• prevented from acting as you saw fit,
• prevented from speaking your mind to those who cared to listen,
• prevented from associating with those who wished to associate with you,
• prevented from defending your life,
• prevented from retaining that property which was yours,
• prevented from enjoying the privacy of your property without tresspass,
• prevented from having a voice in the government agreed to by the community and extended to all others,
• prevented from speaking on your own behalf in a legal dispute,
• prevented from moving about or jailed without reasonable cause (and whose reasons were publicly available),
• prevented from knowing legal charges that were brought against you,
• prevented from speaking in your own defense in court,
• prevented from having a well and fairly regulated trial if charged with a crime,

if you were prevented from doing these things either by Government, or by those in community with you under that government, those would be violations of Natural Law.

Natural Law upholds your right to live as reasonably as you are able, and prohibits unreasonable interference with your actions, it does not bestow privledges or entitlements upon you, it doesn't tell you to do anything, only what shall not be done unto you by others, and that you must accord such considerations to others who are themselves behaving reasonably and in accordance with these same principles of Natural Law.

These are the basic tenets of Natural Law which a thinking person, respectful of reality and concerned with what is right and true, should be able to arrive at on their own, that being the meaning of self evident, and they were also summed up by Blackstone in the first ten or so paragraphs of "The Nature of Laws in General".
The concept of a Right stems from the one central understanding of Natural Law, that man's nature, his tool of survival, is his faculty of Reason, and he cannot live as a human being if forcibly prevented from exercising it. The seemingly separate concepts we talk about, result from one single seamlessly integrated whole, which, when discussing specific situations, we call Individual Rights. The apparent separateness of our Rights, is simply the result of the nature of what gives rise to them being viewed from different perspectives; for someone to say that some rights conflict with others, is no different than saying that the northern hemisphere of a spherical ball is in conflict with the western hemisphere of the same spherical ball. It's your position and perspective which shifts, the globe remains One globe, no matter which view you concentrate upon.

What all of our understanding of Natural Law and Rights depend upon, are the reflection of, and are necessitated by, a single central distinction of human nature: that we have free will and we must use it to Reason our way to making those choices the reality of life requires, in order for us to live.

That's it.

We can take no conscious actions whatsoever without making a decision first. No decisions will have much or any useful results unless made with respect to what in Reality is True; and Reason is our faculty for discerning options and deciding upon our choices and actions. From that one fact, the entire concept of Rights follows. From that fact of human nature, we derive all of our Rights as they are defined by 'Nature and Nature's God' as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence.

Two hit it again from a slightly different angle, from the fact that each human being possesses Free Will and has the need to use reason to choose their actions,

we can derive our particular rights when viewed from the perspective of your needing to

• ... make choices in communication with other people, we refer to that as a Right to choose those actions your pursuit of happiness requires you to take.
• ... make choices in communicating with other people, we refer to that as a Right to freedom of Speech.
• ... make choices in societal interactions with other people, we refer to that as a Right to freedom of Association and Assembly.
• ... make choices in claiming and using materials in concert with other people in society, we refer to that as a Right to Property.
• ... make choices in preserving your life, loved ones and property from assault or theft, we refer to that as a Right to self defense.
• ... make choices in deciding on rules to clarify how you will interact with others in society and resolve disputes in a civil manner, we refer to that as the Right of representation.
• ... make choices in deciding upon those rules, Law (laws, codes, regulations), which all in society will agree to observe and resolve disputes according to, we refer to that as the Right of equality before the Law.

Unless I've missed something, everything else follows from these, and nothing can violate these rights without using raw force to abridge all of your rights, via one particular infringement, just as a punctured ball collapses the entire ball, not just the portion punctured.

Principle 2 - A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
When someone shows an inability, or refusal, to use reason in accordance with reality, we remove them to either a medical or penal institution until such time as they can reasonably be expected to have regained their ability or willingness to behave reasonably once again, IOW, they will use their free will to make reasonable decisions without infringing upon others need to do the same, aka will not infringe upon the rights of others.

The entire concept of liberty hinges upon our choosing to not make decisions which forcibly prevent other people from exercising their reasonable choices and actions. That requires understanding the concept of Principles as being general guides to making particular actions, and realizing that any particular incident is not the same thing as the principle itself. This forms the basis for all morality, and no people can expect to live in liberty if they and their fellows refuse to acknowledge these truths, and live by them themselves.

Such a people requres not only strength of character, but some basic degree of intellectual understanding. Many of the founders regarded the American Indian as having physical strength and strength of character, but that they lacked the intellectual understanding - not the intellectual ability, only the material - to support living in peace and liberty with others.
Because of that, Education was seen as a vital necessity for a free people, as Jefferson put it,

"If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be."

Right Reason was the source Aristotle derived his Nicomachean Ethics from, and which Cicero derived his ideas of Natural Law from, whose ideas St. Thomas Aquinas derived much of his concepts of natural law from. Now, with all that said, it also needs to be said that prior to Christianity, for all the solid ideas of Natural Law which Cicero, the Stoics and others derived, they didn’t quite make the jump to INDIVIDUAL Rights, never quite made the leap to the idea that each individual was a unique and valuable soul, In their minds, the State came first, and citizens value was in how they made up the state – that is a realization which everyone, even atheists (and yes, it’s fun pointing this out to the rabid ones), owe to Christianity.

Still though, Cicero pointed the way many moons ago,
“"Treatise on the Laws" circa 51 BC:

"I will not detain you long. Since you grant me the existence of God, and the superintendence of Providence, I maintain that he has been especially beneficent to man. This human animal—prescient, sagacious, complex, acute, full of memory, reason and counsel, which we call man,—is generated by the supreme God in a more transcendent condition than most of his fellow–creatures. For he is the only creature among the earthly races of animated beings endued with superior reason and thought, in which the rest are deficient. And what is there, I do not say in man alone, but in all heaven and earth, more divine than reason, which, when it becomes ripe and perfect, is justly termed wisdom?
There exists, therefore, since nothing is better than reason, and since this is the common property of God and man, a certain aboriginal rational intercourse between divine and human natures. This reason, which is common to both, therefore, can be none other than right reason; and since this right reason is what we call Law, God and men are said by Law to be consociated. Between whom, since there is a communion of law, there must be also a communication of Justice.
Law and Justice being thus the common rule of immortals and mortals, it follows that they are both the fellow–citizens of one city and commonwealth. And if they are obedient to the same rule, the same authority and denomination, they may with still closer propriety be termed fellow–citizens, since one celestial regency, one divine mind, one omnipotent Deity then regulates all their thoughts and actions.
This universe, therefore, forms one immeasurable Commonwealth and city, common alike to gods and mortals. And as in earthly states, certain particular laws, which we shall hereafter describe, govern the particular relationships of kindred tribes; so in the nature of things doth an universal law, far more magnificent and resplendent, regulate the affairs of that universal city where gods and men compose one vast association."”

Here's an excellent passage from John Locke, showing that by Law, he means law which respects Individual Rights, rooted in Natural Law as known through Reason, and supported through Property Rights. The beginning of which can be seen in the full paragraph:

"The law, that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law; for no body can be under a law, which is not promulgated to him; and this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason, cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam’s children, being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason, were not presently free: for law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists: (for who could be free, when every other man’s humour might domineer over him?) but a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own."