Unalienable Rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

The United Stated Declaration of Independence states “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.”

I have been talking lately with a lot of Americans who don’t believe that the founders meant “all men” and “unalienable” when they wrote “all men” and “unalienable.”

These folks are largely the Johnny-come-lately faux-libertarians whom Ron Paul attracted to the cause.

They believe, instead, that when the founds wrote “all men”, they means “all men with valid ID issued by the United States government.” These people do not believe that “all men” applies to immigrants — particularly Mexican immigrants.

The other portion of their disbelief relates to the word “unalienable.” When the Declaration of Independence says “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” they believe it relates only to men whom the Creator placed in the United States at birth. They do not believe that Mexican, Iraqi, or Aghani’s have the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Their belief is that these rights come from the State and that they therefore apply only to American citizens. Obviously, this is not what the founders meant when they wrote “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”.

Ron Paul is doing the entire nation a disservice by leading these young Americans down a dark and xenophobic path.

Nothing good can come from Americans abandoning our fellow men. If we follow Ron Paul’s recipe for disaster, America will become a besieged island of freedom in a globe full of nuclear-armed dictators. And eventually, we will cease to be anything at all.