Contributors
Gary M. Galles - Contributor

Mr. Galles is a professor of econmics at Pepperdine University.[go to Galles index]

The Pledge Fight We Should Be Having
Real threat to Constitution: When your taxes are used to fund others' 'rights' ...
[Gary M. Galles] 3/25/04

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments about whether the words "under God" make requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional.

Some wish to leverage this case into the elimination of religion from any public role. Of course, anyone familiar with our founders' statements about God and the role of religion in America's creation knows that claims the Constitution requires such a result are false. For instance, in his farewell address, George Washington said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports ... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

However, in terms of substance, it is surprising that another phrase in the pledge - "with liberty and justice for all" - is not even more controversial.

America was founded on the assertion of inalienable rights, which were derived from God, whether or not "under God" is in the pledge. But "liberty and justice for all" illustrates how far the word justice, as used today, is from the conception underlying our founding documents.

How can we have liberty and justice for all, when, in the name of justice, many claim rights to food, housing, education, health care, transportation, jobs and innumerable other things? We can't. The rights to receive such things, without a corresponding obligation to pay for them, must violate others' liberty by taking their income without their consent. They are just desires, convertible into goods and services only by having government take others' property, violating their right not to have what belongs to them taken.

Only by recognizing that justice involves negative rights - prohibitions laid out against others, especially government, rather than positive rights to be given certain things - can liberty and justice be reconciled. This is clearly reflected in the Declaration of Independence's assertion that all have God-given inalienable rights, including liberty, and that government's purpose is to defend those rights. And negative rights are what the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, defends. But they are being eroded by the creation of ever more positive rights in the name of justice.

Each citizen can enjoy negative rights without infringing on anyone else's rights because they impose on others only the obligation to not interfere. But when government creates new rights, burdening others to pay for them unavoidably takes away their inalienable rights.

In the Constitution, almost all the asserted rights are negative, to protect us from government abuse. It enumerates the few things our federal government was to be allowed to do, with anything else off-limits. The Bill of Rights makes this perfectly clear, as it consists almost exclusively of negative rights. The only positive right - to a jury trial - is to defend citizens' negative right against being railroaded by the government. And the Ninth and 10th Amendments reaffirm that all rights not expressly delegated remain with the people.

Liberty means I rule myself, protected by negative rights, with voluntary agreements the means of resolving conflict. Giving others positive rights means someone else rules over the choices and resources taken from me. But since no one has the right to rob me, they cannot delegate that right to government. To remain within its delegated authority and the consent of the governed, it can only enforce negative rights.

Our country was founded on the idea that our negative rights are inalienable, from God rather than government, so that government cannot take them away. But as people have discovered more things they would like others to pay for, and learned to dress them up in the language of rights, government has increasingly turned to violating the rights it was instituted to defend. This, not whether "under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance, is the greatest threat to the vision that became America.CRO

This column first appeared in the Orange County Register

copyright 2004 Gary M. Galles

§