Thank God CanadianCynic wasn't a Founding Father!

This is simply frightening:

Most people, if you ask them, would undoubtedly tell you that people have certain "rights," be they the right of free speech, right to worship in their own way, right of assembly and so on. Some folks will even go so far as to say that some of those rights are "inherent," "fundamental" or "inalienable," by which they mean that some rights are so utterly basic that everyone is somehow absolutely entitled to them.

That is complete nonsense.

Quite simply, the only "rights" you have are the ones granted to you by those in power, and nothing more. You don't inherently have the right to, say, free speech if the government doesn't allow it. You can whine that you deserve it, or that you're entitled to it. But if no one allows you to exercise it, then you don't "have" that right. Period. End of discussion.

If you read the Bill of Rights, it is undeniably evident that no document, government or person on earth grants us our rights. The BoR states that the various rights "shall not be infringed" or "shall not be violated" and not anything to the effect of "this document grants these rights" or "the people in power grant these rights." The Constitution both gives power to the government and restrains the government. The rights referred to in the BoR are considered to be pre-existent and incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred (i.e. "inalienable"). That's the way it should be. If our rights are "granted to you by those in power," then they are not rights at all and any concept of freedom under anyone of any political party is a complete and utter joke.

It's kind of a stellar day for leftist nonsense over on CC's blog today. So far, he's cheered on China for attacking Christians with electric cattle prods and equated evangelism with physical assault. Thankfully, some of his backers are taking him to task in the comments. I tried to do so as well, but he couldn't handle facts and logic, so he's been deleting my comments despite the fact that other people are agreeing with me! (He isn't banning them, of course.)