The Declaration of Freedom of Humanity
Rudy Rummel
July 4th is coming up next Tuesday. In anticipation of that, I offer the following Declaration of Freedom of Humanity. It is an updating of the July 4th, 1776, "The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies."
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that Humanity are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of those living under Dictatorships of whatever form; and the history of the world's present Dictatorships is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over their people. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:
Dictatorships subject their People to:
Laws without their Assent, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good;The Worst of these Dictatorships subject their People to:The obstructed of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for establishing independent Judiciary powers;
Prison without Trial by Jury;
Their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries;
Taxation without their Consent;
Swarms of Officers and Officials to harass them, eat out their substance, and loot their possessions;
The expropriation of their commerce, products, and monies for personal use;
Corruption so vast that bribing officials and officers is the only way to get anything done;
The dissolution of what ever Representative Houses they suffer too exist, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the Rights of their People;
And Death by the bullet, sword, and tank treads for only demonstrating their Right to be heard.
Mass Impoverishment, Famine, and early Death;We, the Free People of this World, therefore Declare, appealing to the Souls of Dictatorships' Victims for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the People of the World, solemnly publish and declare, that all Dictatorships are Criminal Governments; that their People of Right ought to be Free; that they ought to be Absolved from all Allegiance to these criminal Governments; that the sovereignty and independence of these criminal Governments ought to be totally dissolved; and that as fellow Human Beings their People ought to have the full Power to speak their Minds, follow their own Religion, peaceably Assemble, establish Commerce, elect their Representatives, and to do all other Acts and Things that Free People may of Right do.A border-to-border Forced Labor, Concentration, or Reeducation Camp;
Internal and foreign Deportations and mass Migration that deprives them of their Homes, Villages, Communities, and Roots;
Torture, Rape, Genocide, Democide, and Demoslaughter;
Rule by Fear;
And the Death and Destruction of Aggressive and Imperial Wars without the People's Assent.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Rightness of our Declaration, we mutually pledge to Communicate this declaration far and wide, and to support by whatever peaceful means at our disposal the freeing of these subject People.
If you join me in this Declaration, please post it on your blog, website, or otherwise publish it by whatever means at your disposal. If you go here, you will find a copy of this Declaration with a form at the bottom for passing information on it to others by email.
It's a shame the UN has so much institutional inertia that it can't be replaced with an equivalent association of free states. It's criminal to put liberal democratic governments who serve their people on the same moral footing as brutally repressive autocrats who oppress the people they supposedly "represent" at the UN.
But then, I'm the picky type who insists that the United States were created in 1789, not 1776. Heh.
Sorry, nature endows no rights other than might makes right, the right to do whatever someone else can't stop you from doing. Rights are either a creation of a sovereign God, or the creation of a group/civilization and are alienable dependent upon inclusion in that group and acceptance of it's social order.
Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
Declaration of Freedom of Humanity
They seem similar enough, but they are different enough to bother me. Nature instead of Creator, Men and Women instead of Men, minor enough changes and yet I can't help but see the DOF as greatly inferior to the DOI.
Men and Women, yes, it seems such a minor quibble and I understand that there are many countries where women are oppressed, but the term Men isn't just the plural of Man, it's also a gender neutral term that identifies a human being regardless of sex. Not only does "Men and Women" ruin the flow of the statement, it's needlessly wordy and honestly IMO it's a piece of PC piffle not worthy of a great declaration. If not Men, why not just say "...that Mankind is created equal, that people are endowed..." it's the same thing and it isn't nearly as clunky.
Re: "endowed by nature", that would seem contrary to the stated mission of the DOF. First we must recall that nature is bloody in tooth and claw, and as such there are no rights that it endows except the right of the strong to take what they will, and isn't that what Tyrants do by their nature? The reason the founding fathers (most of whom were deists) specified that our rights are endowed by a Creator and not derived from nature, is that God given rights cannot be taken away or denied. If one holds that rights are derived by nature, then we invite the Animal Farm argument where some are more equal than others.
The founders wrote the DOI at a time when many of their peers in Europe believed that rights were granted through Government action or derived from tradition, thus it was in the nature of some to suffer, some to be poor, some to be subject peoples while others ruled (see Edmund Burke). Rights that are derived by nature, tradition, or governmental action, can be transferred, regulated, and denied by the State - they are not, by definition, inalienable rights. Our founders, by stating that they saw the rights of Mankind as self-evidently granted by God, and thus inalienable, helped to create a government that enshrined our freedoms and individual liberties.
Sorry, that doesn't work either. Human nature sans civilization is really no better than the animal kingdom.
Robert,
A minor correction, the majority of the founding fathers were Christians, not just deists (Jefferson was one of the few deists). IIRC, 50 out of 56 on the signers were Bible-believing Christians (and 24 actually had seminary degrees), and a slightly larger percentage of the non-signing founding fathers.
But the important thing is that they agreed that mankind possesses rights which are bestowed by a higher power, and therefore only recognized, not created or removed, by government.
I disagee and have posted a reply on Rudy's update.