Life, Liberty, and Property
“It is not because men have made laws, that personality [i.e., life], liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality [i.e., life], liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.”
Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property...” (The Law by Frédéric Bastiat, 2007, p2).
The government cannot give you the right to live. The government cannot give you the right to have liberty, or the right to own property. God, and God alone, gives those rights to every human being.
Government isn’t formed to give us rights. Government is formed to defend our God-given rights.
If we had no preexisting rights for government to defend, then there could be no such thing as a just government—there could be only tyranny!
What do you think?
Joseph