Secularism and Despotism Necessarily Coeval

We Know What They Mean

Any discussion about rights--that is, human rights--can only proceed intelligently and rationally these days if it is prefaced by careful definitions.  Are we speaking about demand rights, freedom rights, natural rights, civil rights, egalitarian rights, and so on?  "Debates" over rights usually amount to little more than ships passing in the night, respectively catapulting slogans into empty air, with a mutual conviction that he whose foghorn is the loudest wins the debate.  All heat, no light.

Having said that, there are few things more amusing than watching a secular humanist trying to deal carefully and intelligently with human rights.  To unroll the broadest canvas, we must remind everyone that when a secularist talks about human rights he or she immediately casts the discussion around the role and responsibilities of government.  The reason is not hard to discern.  For the secularist, the State is the highest authority in existence.  There is nothing, no-one to whom the secularist can appeal beyond the power and condescension of the State.

We should note, however, that this view is an oddity in the grand scheme of things.
  Secularist atheism has a relatively recent history in the trajectory of human thought.  Prior to the Secularist Age rights were understood to come from the Deity--which makes sense, since rights inevitably originate from and are enforced by the highest existing power.  Thus, in a Christian/Deist world, statements about, and discussions of, human rights acknowledged the Deity as the originator and guarantor of human rights.  Most famously this truth is found in the preamble to the US Declaration of Independence:

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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .

The secularist version of rights runs like this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are equal by means of the process of evolution and are endowed by this process with certain unalienable rights.  To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men . . . 

So, governments secure the rights given to men by the processes of evolution.  But when rights are breached or remedies sought there is no solution beyond the appeal first to the State, and then possibly some vague appeal to to the processes of evolution, which means in effect that the appeal beyond the government goes nowhere.  Evolution is, after all, utterly and absolutely impersonal.  It is also random, nothing more than the result of brute chance.  To appeal to a rock is stupid.  To appeal to evolution for redress of wrongs would serve as a working definition of insanity.  Thus, to all practical intent and purpose, for the secularist, the State is the creator, definer, bestow-er, and remover of rights, for evolutionary processes have made it so.

To illustrate how secularists are utterly undone when they commence discussions about rights, consider the following.  Blogger David Farrar calls our attention to a conference sponsored by NZ Initiative:

Janesa Jeram at the NZ Initiative writes:

There is a common saying that human rights are what make us human. But with the modern expansion of human rights beyond its classical origins, are we becoming more human, or less?

This week, The New Zealand Initiative hosted Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson, who spoke on freedom, “the fundamental human right.” Tim Wilson argued that human rights are supposed to be sacrosanct principles, and criticised the expansion of human rights from their classical liberal origins.

The traditional liberal human rights were narrow, confined to freedoms such as freedom of speech, association, movement, worship and property rights. The government’s role was simply to protect those rights.

Modern society has deviated from these fundamentals, and human rights can now include everything from the right to education, right to shelter, right to non-discrimination, right to a decent wage, and the latest: the right to be forgotten.

The point Tim Wilson makes is that these social aspirations are not the same as human rights. Society may aspire to have equal access to education and shelter, or anonymity and privacy for internet users, but these should not be conflated with human rights.

Then David Farrar comments:

I think this is a critical point. True human rights are rights that protect us, not rights that the Government gives us.

Think about that comment for a moment.  Farrar is a proclaimed secularist.  To what higher authority is he implicitly appealing when he speaks of "true" human rights, as opposed to "rights that the Government gives us."  No matter how hard he tries--whether he would appeal to Nature, or evolution, or the cosmos, or reason, or whatever--in the end these are just meaningless abstract impersonal vacuities.  In Farrar's world, "true human rights" (as opposed to false ones the government gives us) don't really exist; they are metaphysical and cosmological nullities.  In the end, he has to come back to the State, the Government, for there is no other being, no other entity, no other power in his secularist world to which to appeal.

It is true that classically--that is, within the framework of the Christian religion--

The traditional liberal human rights were narrow, confined to freedoms such as freedom of speech, association, movement, worship and property rights. The government’s role was simply to protect those rights . . .

but that was because the government was believed to be a minister of God, and subservient to the Almighty Creator of all things, and charged by God with protecting human rights. If the government failed to do its duty, it would answer to Him.  But this view has long gone; the secularist world view now holding sway can no longer confine human rights to a narrow protection of human freedoms.  There is no higher power than the State to which the secularist can appeal to maintain such a limited, delegated charge.  And the State has a life and power of its own: within secularism there is no higher power to limit, restrict, and control the State and the extension of its power and interests.    

But, it gets worse.  Western secularism has championed democracy, which means that the State officially serves the interests of the people--it is government of the people, by the people, for the people.  Which is all well and good, except . . . . in order for the State to win favour with the people it has to bribe them with "goodies" which is pays for by extracting money and property from some in order to distribute to others.  The secularist democratic State inevitably invents human rights that are coeval with the extensions of its power and largesse.  This is not an aberration of secularist democracy--it is inevitable.  That is why in the West the most vast extensions of government power yet seen in Western history have occurred under secularist democracies.

Farrar demonstrates just this contradictory confusion.  He wants a limited role for the State and a narrow list of human rights.  But then he betrays his own position:

This is because, often, if not always, these social aspirations come at the cost of freedom. While they may be worthy goals, they should not automatically be given equal status to the classical human rights.

Human rights were originally enacted to protect the individual from state tyranny, and necessarily limited the power of the state. Social aspirations masquerading as rights expand the power of the state.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t aspire as a society to make sure everyone has education and shelter. But we should not talk about this as a human right.

He wants a limited State, but at the same time he wants an expanded power of the State to make sure everyone has education and shelter.  The power to "make sure" anything happens or exists can only come, in the secularist's mind, from the State.  But then comes the sniffy qualification: "we should not talk about education and shelter as a human right".  But you cannot have it both ways.  If you want the State to provide education and shelter in a "make sure" fashion, you have to be a cheerleader for a vast expansion of State power.  Therefore, when Farrar speaks of "aspiring" as a society to achieve universal education, he is not talking about a voluntary coalition of the willing.  He is referring to the State education system, which he supports and endorses in principle. 

But you also have to argue, at the same time, for a vastly diminished right of private to property, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  You cannot have it both ways.  The Government is going to end up telling you where, how, why, and in what your children are going to be instructed and educated.  It is going to make sure that these things happen.  To make sure everyone has shelter will require the Government's expanded power to regulate the housing market, controlling both the supply and demand for houses.  In the end, the citizen is told where to live, what kind of housing is appropriate, and what he will have to pay.

The broadest definition of a human right is this: it is the ethic by which people get their due, or what is owed them.  If governments expand their power into education--as part of its programme of systemic bribery of an electorate--they will inevitably warrant their expansion by an appeal to human rights.  The people will be told they have a right to education, it is their fair due.  And they will happily believe it--especially since someone else will be paying for it.  The notion that such things are their human right provides moral cover for such a perverse idea.  The power of the State must be wielded to ensure it and see it is provided.  It is inevitable, therefore, in a secularist world that education therefore will be cast as a human right--and so it has come to pass.

The point is this: if you want a limited list of human rights (which are essentially freedom rights) then it is necessary that the role and boundaries of government be restricted severely in society.  As soon as you grant to government a duty to provide education you are necessarily going to have to carry the case by appeals to a manufactured and inflated schedule of human rights.  The freedom right to pursue an education has morphed into a demand right that others provide it.  And you are going to have to accede to a huge expansion of State power, since in the secularist world, the the State is the final and highest power.  There is no other.  If everyone must be educated, the State alone can do it for the State has the power to command and compel.  It alone can deal with the recalcitrant and malcontent.  It alone bears the sword.

Moreover, as we have argued, democratic government has provided no limitation to the vast expansion of the powers of the State we have seen over the past two hundred years.  Rather, it has made it worse.  Democracy has left the population open to bribery by the State, by politicians, and by bureaucrats by which the Government has suborned the electorate to accept a vast expansion of State powers through expanding State rules, regulations, gifts, doles, and "services" for such "dues" as health, education, and welfare.  "If you want more money, vote for us.  If you want better schools, vote for us."  The electorate has been gladly complicit, agreeing with its masters that such things are human rights, after all.  It is right and just that the State should do this for us.  And on the other side of the ledger, human life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has withered on the vine.

In a secularist civilisation, human rights become a pretext for vast expansions of State power, diminishing freedom to its vanishing point.  When secularists talk about human rights we know what they mean.

True human rights--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--are meaningful and possible only if we pre-suppose from the outset the existence of the Creator and Sustainer of all things, and the State as just one of His servants.   

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