It is strange to think that what we consider “rights” were not always accepted as the norm. Today, outrage results when rights are trampled in the dust. Most of the world’s population would be confused and insulted when you and I blather about OUR rights. For millennia thinking people were not allowed to think but had to accept dicta about declared truths in societies where rights were absent. Instead, demands on human efforts were expected for there was belief in the existence of supernatural forces. Pharaohs needed their pyramids for an afterlife.

There was an article in the NYTimes yesterday about the anniversary of Baruch Spinoza’s excommunication by the Jews of Amsterdam.  He had the audacity to speak of rights.  His contemporary, John Locke put these rights in a phrase that rings down through the centuries: You and I, we have the “Right to Life, Liberty and ….” Then it breaks down and the last word has been the cause of our development into capitalistic lunacy.  This is where God is absent and might makes right. Rapacious men seek monetary supremacy and the power that goes with it. Striving men seeking the same prize look to acquire “property” – and thus is the cause of much of human misery since the days of colonial monarchies.

Adam Smith wrote much about the wealth of owning property brought to men of vision. So, his phrase became “Right to Life, Liberty and Property” when our Constitution was penned in the Convention held back over two hundred years ago.  Jefferson put it better when he wrote into the Declaration of Independence “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”.  Adding the heretic, Spinoza, into the picture set in motion the wave of moral certitude that still exiles this philosopher. Descendants of rigid thinking believers - whether Christians, Jews, Muslims and non-believers - still seek to control or expel the “heretic”. Rights are out of place here.

Spinoza spoke of nature independent of God. He pointed out the narrowness and lack of ability to see the universality of belief beyond the Ghettos of his time.  Christian nations were on the cusp of voyages of exploration and discovery at the same time the Reformation roiled the serene waters of a universal Catholic Church. While the last militaristic push by Islamic warriors against Constantinople was winning, Christian rulers of Spain and Portugal were holding auto-da-fes, roasting recalcitrant Jews not wealthy or smart enough to get out of the way.

Rights should be of right the gift of Nature and of Nature’s God but are handed out and taken back with great regularity by men. Rights fought for and won must be fought for and won over and over again. Losers are excommunicated, burnt at stakes or blown up by “martyrs. This will decide whose rights are uppermost.