Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
Rights follow facts.
A fact wraps itself in a right to be itself by virtue of its facticity. What you have you have a right to have because you have it (fact). What you do not have you have no right to have because you do not have it (fact).
You may want something, and you have a right to want it because you have the ability to want (fact). But your wanting something does not establish a right to have that something because you do not already have it (fact). The fact that you do not have something establishes the fact that you have no a right to it.
Whatever is a fact has a right to be itself. What is not already a fact has no being to be a being being itself. So, it has no rights. The only thing with a right to be itself is a fact that already is itself, something which already has being.
The fact of being a fact establishes the right to be a fact. Absent facts, there are no rights. A fact confers upon itself a right to be itself. Rights follow facts. For example, life starts at conception, a fact by which a life confers upon itself a right to be itself.
This solves the riddle of rights. A right is present, fact by fact, where a fact is and attaches only to its enabling fact. Absent facts-in-hand, rights are absent. You can want a home and food and therefore have a right to want a home and food, but you have no right to have a home and food.
The only fact which can override the absence of a fact with its attached right to be is love, as for example the love which motivates a parent to house and feed their infant and then young son or daughter beyond immediate into ongoing facticity.
This plenary authority of love confirms the observation that love can accomplish all things. It also demonstrates the fact that love is unrestrained by facts and rights as well as by law itself, and much less by custom.
If you do not own a fact, you do not own a right regarding it. You cannot own something which you do not already have. Rights follow facts.
What is a fact has a right to be a fact because it is a fact. What is not a fact has no right to be a fact because it is not a fact. If you want something to be a right, first make it a fact. Then it will be a right because it is a fact. Any other questions?
Βασιλεία του Θεού
Kingdom of God
Update 1: Don Surber on AG William Barr’s interview with CBS’s Jan Crawford.
Related: Scott Johnson.
Update 2: Glenn Reynolds: The Next International Right
Update 3: ABC News: [US] State Dept. panel to redefine human rights based on ‘natural law and natural rights’
Update 4: Roger Kimball: Sohrab Ahmari and Our Existential Struggle
Men are prone to argue about morality without reference to facts. Even when morality is argued with reference to facts, the terms of argument almost immediately incorporealize facts into abstractions that bang soon against one another as mere restless activity because they do not reference facts.
Update 5: Socialists assert that facts follow rights, that facts must conform to rights, regarding which Socialists claim to have sole authority for identifying. Socialists stand thought on its head. They cannot stand life on its head. But they jolly well can stand thought on its head, at least awhile (and here).
Update 6: Michael Crichton: Remarks To The Commonwealth Club
I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.
Update 7: Angelo Codevilla: The Way Out of Our Judicial Impasse Is Through It
Update 8: Myron Ebell and Steven J. Milloy: Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
