The First Versus the Second Bill of Rights

The writer of this New York Times op-ed piece thought he was saying something good and noble. He wanted to extol the values of the Left while running down the values of the Right, at least in terms of the current president and vice president. That is not what he accomplished.

What he did accomplish was to provide excellent grist for the intellectual mill, stuff of far greater importance than the Left and the Right.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Radical in the White House, April 18, 2005, OP-ED COLUMNIST, BOB HERBERT

That more wasn't made of this anniversary [of the death of FDR on 12 April] is not just a matter of time; it's a measure of the distance the U.S. has traveled from the egalitarian ideals championed by F.D.R. His goal was "to make a country in which no one is left out." That kind of thinking has long since been consigned to the political dumpster. We're now in the age of Bush, Cheney and DeLay, small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few.

To get a sense of just how radical Roosevelt was (compared with the politics of today), consider the State of the Union address he delivered from the White House on Jan. 1, 1944. Roosevelt referred to his proposals in that speech as "a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race or creed."

Among these rights, he said, are:

1. "The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.



2. "The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.



3. "The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.



4. "The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.



5. "The right of every family to a decent home.



6. "The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.



7. "The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.



8. "The right to a good education."

(All emphases mine)

These are the longings of socialist, also known as a Leftist or a liberal. Historically, these longings, expressed as Rooseveltian "rights," tell us a great deal about FDR, whom the Leftists try to tell us was just good ol' centrist populist.

These "rights" are diagnostic as well for the state of our culture. Our very ignorant and very poorly schooled populace will read these "rights" (if they read at all) and think these are good and proper. They have been "conditioned" by a ceaseless shifting of meaning driven by postmodernist academics, journalists, and jurists (America's infamous fifth columnists). All of these "rights" that this op-ed writer pines for are embodied in the infamous United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we have exposed.

The father of the original Bill of Rights was Virginian George Mason, a true son of the Enlightenment. Lacking adequate educational facilities where he lived in 18th century Virginia, he taught himself the classics, the law, and everything else he needed to learn. Better than any other of our Founders, he saw the need for amendments to the original Constitution to ensure the Rights of Man, which had been partially enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Incidentally, his prior work and thinking played a huge, and largely under-recognized, role in the formation and the language of the Declaration of Independence. He died in 1792 and tends to be under-appreciated, given the national formative events that followed. Were he alive today, he would be apoplexed by this "second bill of rights."

Mason and the other sons of the Enlightenment knew that "rights" referred solely to actions, not to tangibles. Let's illustrate the difference by asking key questions for each of the eight so-called rights FDR enumerated.

1. Who is to provide these jobs and guarantee the salaries?


2. Who is to guarantee that the worker will "earn enough"?


3. Who is to provide and guarantee that the farmer will "sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living"?


4. Who is define "unfair competition" and "freedom from ... monopolies" and to throttle industry to provide it?


5. Who is provide the costs, materials, and construction for a "decent home"?


6. Who is to provide the medical care?


7. Who is to guarantee the existences of aging persons, and how?


8. Who is to provide the schools, teachers, buildings, salaries,etc., to guarantee this education?

Every single one of these socialist precepts made it into the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every one of these precepts contains the same socialist flaw which has crept into current common thinking.

FDR wanted "to make a country in which no one is left out." And no one is. Only there is nothing benign about being included in FDR's country, once you know the "gimmick."

The gimmick is the switch from rights as moral actions to entitlements of goods and services. Properly, rights refer solely to actions individuals require to sustain and further their lives, and these are requirements of the human being, for him and her to live according to their nature required by reality.

This gimmick is very, very important to understand.

• Properly, rights refer solely to actions. For example, to sustain life (his right to life), a person needs food, water, shelter, etc. (right to property), so must be free to seek and produce these (right to freedom).


• The gimmick switches from necessary actions to the tangible products of those actions--being supplied the food, the water, the shelter. The gimmick says that a person is entitled to these concretes and drops the entire notion of who is to produce and give these to others.

That is how socialists think. They forever drop the context of who produces, who creates, who owns, and who earns--in favor of who gets. One of their most disgusting variants is their claim that successful people are just those who have won "life's lottery." I.e., products, including wealth, are accidental, not the results of the efforts of productive persons.

For someone to receive--by entitlement--food, shelter, education, medical care, tangible support in old age, etc., someone must first produce these things. To rephrase that, some must first earn, by use of their own minds. In a normal world, he who produces owns what he produces. It is his by right of property.

In the socialist world, he who produces is no more than a provider to those who have not earned or produced. And, if he who produces does not want to donate his products to those who have not earned, then he must be forced--which is the key element of socialism. Few people willingly consider themselves milk cows for others to milk and drink the milk so that the cow can just go make more. They must be forced.

Then, I ask: What do we call a person who is forced to do the bidding of others, to labor for their benefit but not his own, and who has no voice in how he uses his life? Here is the answer, right from the Encarta dictionary: "Slave: person forced to work for another: in former times, one person who was forced to work for another person for no payment and was regarded as the property of the person he or she worked for."

This is the gimmick, the conversion of free men and women into slaves by perverting rights. The writer of this op-ed almost affectionately slobbers about FDR's "egalitarian ideals." He would never let it occur to him that, under such a system, all are slaves, and all slaves are equal.

This is what ignorance gets you. Remain ignorant about rights, and you will find yours violated permanently. Recall the quotation often attributed to John Wayne: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

George Mason did not and would not stand for this. Neither will I. Are you standing for this?


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NB: Background information about the nature, application, and misapplication of rights is on our website in our two part article, Do Not Support the UN Unversal Declaration of Human Rights.