Glenn Beck: God Is The Grantor Of Rights

Pope BeckYesterday’s sermon from the Reverend Glenn Beck was a revelation into the source of the rights enjoyed by the American people. His examination of these holy endowments was undertaken with his customary superficiality.

The sermon began with Beck chastising Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) for his determination to treat health care as a right. That blasphemy was too much for Beck to endure.

Beck: Harkin is declaring Congress as God, because we all know where the rights come from. If you read the Declaration of Independence there’s a phrase from the Declaration of Independence on where those rights come from. You may have heard it before. It goes something like this: 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. […] God is the grantor of rights. No one else.

This is going to come as a surprise to Constitutional scholars and legal experts. According to Beck, it was God who established freedom of speech. And the bearing of arms is also a gift from the Most High. And apparently God didn’t take kindly to the quartering of troops, but He did insist on jury trials and reasonable bail. These rights are just a few that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights whose preamble begins with…

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States…

Apparently these lawmakers think that they are the grantors of rights. And they continued to believe that as they persisted in drafting additional amendments to the Constitution and passing thousands of other laws. Amongst these are rights like being permitted to vote if you’re a woman or not having to be a slave. God must have overlooked those rights when the Constitution was originally ratified. Or maybe He didn’t consider them unalienable. At any rate, it’s a good thing that legislators got around to cleaning up God’s mess.

The only difference between health care being a right and it being a profit center for greedy, compassionless corporations is the passage of a bill and the signature of a president. It doesn’t require God’s endorsement. That’s a political framework more aligned with the Taliban than with democracy. Maybe that’s why Beck doesn’t understand it. After all, “democracy” has many of the same letters as “Democrat.” Hmm? Coincidence?

The Declaration of Independence gave specific examples of what the framers considered to be unalienable rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). They were all general principles that the framers regarded as foundational to a free society. However, the actual rights were established by legislators and citizens who were decidedly mortal, contrary to Beck’s assertion that no one else but God can grant rights. Beck’s inability to comprehend the role of law is boundless. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has heard his interpretation of law.

For instance, lately Beck has escalated his rhetorical ravings to maligning progressives as … I’ll give you one guess … that’s right, fascists (what else?). In a hilarious fit of befuddlement he has taken to charging that progressives were responsible for Prohibition. Never mind that it was largely church-based temperance groups who campaigned for the 18th Amendment, and the enacting legislation, the Volstead Act, was proposed by Andrew Volstead, a Minnesota Republican. That bill was subsequently vetoed by Woodrow Wilson, whom Beck regards as the father of modern progressivism and whom Beck has called “One evil SOB.”

So contrary to Beck’s claim, it was religious fundamentalists and Republicans who gave us Prohibition, in spite of Wilson’s veto, which was over-ridden by Congress. And the kicker is that, when the nation realized its mistake, it was Heber J. Grant, an apostle in the Church of Latter-day Saints (Beck’s Mormon Church), and the LDS who led the fight against repealing the 18th Amendment. Once again, reality is diametrically opposed to Beck’s perverse perception of it. But he is devoted to his dementia. The more absurd, the tighter he grips. Until he he ends up spewing nonsense like this:

Beck: More and more Americans are finding themselves where I am. In a place where you don’t want to believe the stuff that you now do. Even the stuff that you would have thought a year ago was crazy town. But you do believe it because you’re honest with yourself. You promised yourself, as I have, to seek the truth no matter how many times you think about it. No matter how many times you think, “Oh my gosh, what does this mean to my future or the future to my children.” If it makes me a pariah, so be it. It is the truth, not stuff I want to believe. But everything is in jeopardy. Our children’s future is at stake.

Yes, Glenn is stuck believing things from crazy town that he doesn’t want to believe. He seeks the truth no matter how many times he has to think about it. And he manages somehow to carry on though everything is in jeopardy. On the plus side, it’s fortunate that he is comfortable being a pariah.

Advertisement:

13 thoughts on “Glenn Beck: God Is The Grantor Of Rights

  1. People like beck who actually believe some bizarre diety actually gives them rights are totally beyond my understanding.

    The lengths he goes to stick his head further and further in the sand are impressive. No wonder he left christianity for LDS; christianity just wasn’t crazy enough for him anymore.

  2. It always seemed to me that the term “creator” was used, instead of “god”, because of people like beck?

    • Yep. But still it doesn’t stop Beck from getting everything wrong.

  3. “The genuises at News Corpse now fancy themselves constitutional scholars. Hence, they attack Glenn Beck for asserting the “crazy” claim of natural law:”

    ‘This is going to come as a surprise to Constitutional scholars and legal experts. According to Beck, it was God who established freedom of speech…. Beck’s inability to comprehend the role of law is boundless.’

    “The ignorance in their “analysis” is staggering, given that Beck was espousing the same principles laid out by Thomas Jefferson. But if the Corpsicles are comfortable with [ennabling slavery]*, hey, it’s all in a good cause: smearing Fox!”

    * http://www.thevoicemagazine.com/christian-living-christianity/exclusive-interviews/judge-napolitano-the-cause-of-liberty.html
    ***
    J$P: Fox Haters Week in Review
    http://homepage.mac.com/mkoldys/blog/psk284858918.html

    • Where was I comfortable with enabling slavery? You’re just making things up now. Probably because you haven’t the brain power to argue coherently.

      Beck was NOT espousing the same principles laid out by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson never said that God is the grantor of rights, no one else. That is a idiotic invention of Beck’s (and his spiritual masters). It is only common sense that citizens and legislators establish the rights and laws that govern any nation.

  4. Perhaps you should have put “common sense” in quotes, as a nod to Beck’s twisted reading of his supposed hero, Tom Paine!

    • Yeah, right. 🙂

      If Beck ever bothered to read Paine he would be appalled at what a socialist scumbag he was:

      “It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal.”

      Paine also advocated a guaranteed income. OMG!

      BTW, do I know you? If so…HI! And welcome to News Corpse.

  5. Of course you know me! Funny, I don’t recall either of us being very political way back when — and now we *both* are!

  6. I’m an atheist so I won’t say that “God” is the source of some rights, but I do believe that some rights are fundamental and beyond the ability of any government to “grant” them. Life and Liberty come to mind and for the right to life to have any meaning, a means to defend it is reasonable.

    You seem to think that freedom of speech was “granted” or the right to arms so Let’s look at that.

    I refer you to District of Columbia, et al., Petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller (page 19 if you care to read it..)

    “This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it ‘shall not be infringed.’ As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), ‘[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.'”

    “codified a pre-existing right”

    “Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence”

    If you argue that the government “grants” rights, then I assume you accept the authority of the supreme court to rule on these rights and that their statement that some rights are pre existing rights is the final word.

    Like I said, I’m more of a natural law Locke type guy, not a “granted from God” guy, but to pretend that Beck’s claim that the rights existed before the government is wrong is surely a misunderstanding of the founders writings, their own thoughts on the matter and the words of the supreme court.

    So. If it is a pre existing right, then where did it come from? 90 some percent of Americans are some sort of Christian. It is logical that they see those preexisting rights as coming from God. I see them as “self evident” but whatever the source it sure as hell is not the government’s to “grant”

    The government passes laws. Some constitutional, some not but all subject to the failings of men. “real” rights are those that infer a negative responsibility on other people the rest are simply made up rights subject to the whim of men.

    The right of health care for example.

    Your “right” to health care absolutely depends on someone else being willing to pay for it of you cannot.

    How would you exercise that right if no doctor will choose to treat you for the money offered?

    Would you force them to treat you? What about the doctors rights?

    • I am not an atheist, but I completely disagree with the notion that there are preexisting rights. First of all, who decides what they are? If some person or group has to enumerate what rights you call “self-evident,” then they weren’t really self-evident were they?

      Secondly, even the right to life is not granted automatically by some external force or body, and many examples exist that demonstrate that it isn’t universally held. Take capital punishment, for instance. Well meaning people (like you and I) may regard it as fundamental, but there is no basis for asserting that it preexists. All rights must be articulated by the cultures who embody them and they must reflect their values.

      As for the Supreme Court, it is not the final word on the law because it always has the prerogative to revisit past decisions. Therefore, there is no finality. Also, the Constitution can be amended. It is more correct to say that it’s rulings are determinative for so long as they are in effect.

      What I really don’t understand in your comment is that you seem to consider the right to bear arms as a fundamental right because you regard it as necessary to defend the right to life. In that respect it’s a secondary right required to support the primary right (life). Even if I accept that reasoning, many things could be designated as necessary to support the right to life. I could make the same argument that food is a fundamental right by your logic.

      If you’re consistent, then you should agree with me that health care is fundamental because it is as much a requirement to sustain life as guns. More so in fact, because it affects everyone eventually, which is not true for guns.

      Finally, as to your question about forcing doctors to treat patients and what their rights entail: Have you read the Hippocratic Oath?

      “I will treat without exception all who seek my ministrations…”

      • I would say that no one decides what rights are, any more than we decide what gravity is. But I would agree that rights are not self-evident. Heck, as a math teacher, I’m pretty sure that algebra isn’t self-evident, either.

        • And furthermore, gravity, like evolution, is just a theory. Maybe we shouldn’t be teaching it in public schools. 😉

        • No, gravity is a phenomenon. Our explanations of it are theories.

Comments are closed.