The point he’s trying—but failing—to make is to invoke the core underpinnig of American legal philosophy: that people intrinsically have rights as an aspect of their being, and that they grant their government limited authority to regulate rights in order to ensure that nobody’s rights get taken away or trampled on. Though the Declaration of Independence isn’t part of the Constitution, it’s useful rhetoric for understanding the legal philosophy of the United States, where everything I just said is phrased as:
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 […]
He idiotically phrases this as “divine power” probably because of this passage, but the actual salient point is that laws and states simply do not possess the power to grant or bestow the rights that already exist independently of them.
It’s not that government doesn’t have the power to grant rights. It’s assumed by default that if the right wasn’t enumerated here (in the constitution) then it exists by default. None of that bars either the constitution (via amendment) or law (so long as it doesn’t contradict the constitution) from granting or conferring or even restricting/limiting rights (again as long as it doesn’t contradict the constitution). All done via the consent of the governed (ie via elected government). We seem to have forgotten we have the power to “perfect” our laws and governing document.
But they literally define which rights those are. There is no “natural” base, it’s just whichever they decided to protect (and often times even those are infringed upon)
The point he’s trying—but failing—to make is to invoke the core underpinnig of American legal philosophy: that people intrinsically have rights as an aspect of their being, and that they grant their government limited authority to regulate rights in order to ensure that nobody’s rights get taken away or trampled on. Though the Declaration of Independence isn’t part of the Constitution, it’s useful rhetoric for understanding the legal philosophy of the United States, where everything I just said is phrased as:
He idiotically phrases this as “divine power” probably because of this passage, but the actual salient point is that laws and states simply do not possess the power to grant or bestow the rights that already exist independently of them.
So he’s saying that governments don’t have the right to declare food a universal right?
Yes and incorrectly so.
How horribly concise
It’s not that government doesn’t have the power to grant rights. It’s assumed by default that if the right wasn’t enumerated here (in the constitution) then it exists by default. None of that bars either the constitution (via amendment) or law (so long as it doesn’t contradict the constitution) from granting or conferring or even restricting/limiting rights (again as long as it doesn’t contradict the constitution). All done via the consent of the governed (ie via elected government). We seem to have forgotten we have the power to “perfect” our laws and governing document.
But they literally define which rights those are. There is no “natural” base, it’s just whichever they decided to protect (and often times even those are infringed upon)