Natural Right

If you were a Briton in a village by the sea when the Saxons came to loot and burn your village, you would have a right to resist the looting and burning of your home even if you weren't a soldier. If you were, later, a Saxon on the same shore when the Vikings came to loot and burn your home, you would have a right to resist even if you weren't a thane. If you were, later still, an Anglo-Norman living on the same shore when the French came to loot and burn your village, you would have a right to resist having your home looted or burned even if you weren't a knight. 

This kind of thing is called a natural right. It is rooted in what St. Thomas Aquinas called the natural law
The natural inclination of humans to achieve their proper end through reason and free will is the natural law. Formally defined, the natural law is humans’ participation in the eternal law, through reason and will. Humans actively participate in the eternal law of God (the governance of the world) by using reason in conformity with the natural law to discern what is good and evil.... On the level that we share with all substances, the natural law commands that we preserve ourselves in being.... Natural law also commands those things that make for the harmonious functioning of society (“Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal”). 
'Thou shall not kill' is one of the more famous mistranslations in the Bible. 
“The original Hebrew, lo tirtsah., is very clear, since the verb ratsah. means ‘murder,’ not ‘kill.’ If the commandment proscribed killing as such, it would position Judaism against capital punishment and make it pacifist even in wartime. These may be defensible or admirable views, but they’re certainly not biblical.”
So you can kill, but not murder. When might killing not be murder? Well, when it is necessary to fulfill the natural law: to preserve life, and the harmonious functioning of society. For example, when resisting a horde intent on burning and looting your village. Allowing looting and burning might actually kill people who were just minding their own business, and it will definitely degrade the harmonious function of society. The latter is the higher and better end, notice: you might think avoiding death was more important, but in fact on Aquinas' model that is just a thing that we have in common with plants and animals. The better end, proper to human beings as creatures of reason, is to preserve a harmonious society that fulfills the human good in a fuller way. 

Dying to do that is honorable; it is why we praise soldiers who fought and died for our way of life. Killing to do that is acceptable, if necessary, and at least according to George S. Patton it is preferable to kill than to die for your country. 

Positive laws that come to defy or refuse the natural law are rightly reformed. Today we saw that our positive laws in fact defended the natural rights. It is important to ensure they continue to do, and to reject attempts to reframe them in ways that would defy this natural right to preserve our homes against lawless violence.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:17 AM

    I was listening to Jethro Tull's "Broadsword" yesterday afternoon. "Give me my broadsword and clear understanding." The Vikings (or someone else) had come, and the time for peaceful speech had passed.

    When I teach comparative government, some of my students boggle that self-defense and protecting others is not a universal legal right, even if it is a natural right. They all feel that it should be a legal right.

    LittleRed1

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  2. When the early Christians were pacifist at all (they were not all), it was more usually on the grounds that no kingdom of this world was important enough in comparison to the world to come to warrant defending, somewhat similar to what Jehovah's Witnesses believe now. I think all groups even then allowed that force was legitimate to prevent the harming of innocents.

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  3. I usually rail at conservatives for picking the wrong hills to die on. Everyone does it, but it's so frustrating when it's your guys showing their loyalty to The Cause by defending people or things that don't deserve such devotion.

    But this time I think they got it right. Rittenhouse seems to be a good hill to die on.

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  4. Somewhere in the Jewish scriptures, there is a saying: "Where there is no man, you be the man." (credited, I think, to Rabbi Akiva)

    I believe that is what Kyle Rittenhouse was trying to do, possibly with questionable judgment, but how many others were trying to do anything at all? Civil society had been abandoned both by those who had the duty to protect it and by those who had some of the biggest stakes in it.

    The Left has a big problem with people doing anything that they haven't been specifically directed, trained, and credentialed to do, and with people doing anything that departs from strict specialization and division of labor. I remember when in the aftermath of 9/11 the idea of arming pilots was first suggested, left-leaning media figures were mostly appalled.

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  5. He rose to the occasion.

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  6. I think Tex had it right: If these protests were just and peaceful, how is it possible that 3 protestors had to be shot in self-defense? Admitting it was proper self-defense is admitting that the protests might not have been peaceful or just, and the left can't do that.

    If Rittenhouse had been black and forced to defend himself by shooting 3 protestors at a right-wing protest, the left would consider it self-evident proof of systemic racism that he was charged at all.

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  7. If Rittenhouse had been black and forced to defend himself by shooting 3 protestors at a right-wing protest, the left would consider it self-evident proof of systemic racism that he was charged at all.

    That's the Left's despicable counterfactual. Here's a factual-factual:

    https://www.wptv.com/news/region-indian-river-county/andrew-coffee-iv-found-not-guilty-on-5-counts-in-indian-river-county-swat-raid

    Only reported locally, it seems, as the Left and the NLMSM ignored/suppressed the story.

    Eric Hines

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