CommentsREJECTING GROUP RIGHTS-There is a specific reason that Nazis are un-American which goes far beyond their being evil. Other countries have their own reasons for rejecting Nazism, but America has something special. Our foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, states that all men have certain inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Please notice that the Declaration does not say that all “groups” have inalienable rights. It does not say only the British have these rights. It does not say that only Christians have these inalienable rights. It does not say that only whites have inalienable rights. Nor, does the declaration exclude any group. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and when he wrote those words, he knew that he was including all slaves.
The inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are inherent in all human beings. That is the basic truth which we as Americans hold self-evident. The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution expressly states that it was drafted to secure the domestic tranquility and the “Blessings of Liberty.”
Nazis, however, deny that all men have inalienable rights. They believe that rights derive from the group to which one belongs. Nazism is based on the concept of Group Rights in which only one group has the right to exist. In Germany, they called it the Aryan race. In the United States, they more often use the term “White” and they claim that as a group the white race is superior to all other groups, especially Blacks and Jews.
Nazis Grew from the European Notion of Group Rights
The Nazis were a product of European society wherein an individual’s rights, including his right to live, often depended on the group to which he belonged. For centuries, the group called Protestants and the group called Catholics fought to each other to the death. Much of British history after Henry VIII’s break from Rome to form the Anglican Church is drenched with the bloodshed of these groups fighting against each other. People would kill each other solely because the other person belonged to the wrong Group – much like the Crips and the Bloods in South Los Angeles. In fact, on July 18, 1290, King Edward I of England expelled the Jews as a Group from his island. That was 200 hundred years before Ferdinand and Isabella expelled all the Jews Spain in 1492.
In Europe, one’s life, liberty and happiness depended on one’s group. Our Founding Fathers knew the pernicious evils that resulted from this and for that reason took special steps to protect our country from the internal warfare that arises from Group Rights. The separation of Church and State in the U.S. Constitution is related to the need to make certain that no religious group could gain control of the government or gain special privileges. The bargain the framers struck with religion was, “you keep your religious group out of government affairs, and the government will stay out of your group’s business.”
Nazis Reject the American Value of Individual Liberty
In rejecting the inalienable rights of individual persons, attack the very core of American identity. They claim that they belong to a group with special rights, much as the religions groups in Europe once did. Claims of group rights always leads to hostility and violence. Much of the violence in the Middle East derives from the two main groups within Islam – Sunnis and Shiites. Like European Christians in the Middle Ages, they devote a lot of energy to murdering each other. That is the nature of a house divided.
Abraham Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” He rejected the notion that one group of men had the right to own another group of men. At that time, not all Americans agreed that inalienable rights were more important than group rights.
During the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Stephen A. Douglas held that the Declaration applied only to whites, stating, “Lincoln maintains there that the Declaration of Independence asserts that the negro is equal to the white man, and that under Divine law, and if he believes so it was rational for him to advocate negro citizenship, which, when allowed, puts the negro on an equality under the law. I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be, and ought not to be, under the Constitution of the United States.” (Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (September 1858).)
The bloodiest war in our history, the Civil War, settled the question that all men have inalienable rights: the war banished the concept of group rights, or so we naively thought. One segment of our society continued to deny inalienable rights to individuals, insisting that people’s rights depended upon their group identity. This became known as the “Separate but Equal Doctrine” which was ruled unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Group Rights Marching under the Banner of Equality Divide the Nation
Ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, a terrible thing occurred. The idea of group rights was re-written into the law, but this time group rights were conferred on certain designated groups in order to rectify prior wrongs. President Johnson’s Great Society gave us Affirmative Action. There was no logical reason that the Great Society or Affirmative Action had to be based on numerical quotas, but strict quotas according to group became the law of the land.
The racist Whites declared that the reason special rights were being given to Blacks was that Blacks were inherently inferior to Whites, and thus, they could not compete in education and employment. The less educated and talented the White person, the more he was convinced that society’s goodies were being doled out to Blacks and other minorities to as to deprive him. The unspoken secret in those days among many Liberals is they too harbored the same racist belief in the innate inferiority of Blacks and other minorities. Minorities could not successfully achieve, so went much of the Liberal dogma, unless standards were lowered and quotas were instituted to force schools and employers to admit and hire minorities. Through a series of executive orders under Johnson and Nixon, certain “goals” had to be met, but they were enforced as quotas.
Millions of white people took the government’s affirmative steps to rectify the impacts of prior discrimination as depriving them as a group. First, there was the Silent Majority, then the Moral Majority, then they became the Christian Right, and then the Tea Baggers. Now we have the Alt-Right, composed of Nazis (who have always believed in group rights), the KKK who likewise believe in White Superiority, and a polyglot of miscellaneous groups called White Supremacists, Nationalists or Nativists. What holds them together is their firm belief in group rights, and consequently, a rejection of inalienable rights as spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.
If one tries to dissuade the Alt-Right in their belief in group rights, they refer to the Democrat Party’s Politics of Identity. For years the Democrats have been calling out to various groups to join in a coalition of other groups under the Equality banner. But Equality is another word for roup Rights. It bases an individual’s rights on the Group to which he/she belongs so that there can be a comparison with some other Group to make certain things are fair.
The Democrats tried to force group rights upon gays, but Justice Kennedy rejected that concept and instead, he based Gay Rights on the inalienable right to liberty. The opening paragraph of his decision in Lawrence v Texas 539 U.S. 558 (2003) makes clear that Liberty is the value on which he basis Gay Rights. Nowhere does Justice Kennedy mention Equality, aka Group Rights. In spite of Justice Kennedy’s consistent reliance on Liberty, rejecting group rights (aka Equality) the Democrats persist with the Politics of Identity.
Currently, Nazis and other White Supremacists point to the Politics of Identity as they claim that Mexicans are to blame for stealing their jobs, Muslims are to blame for all terrorism, Gays are to blame, and Jews are to blame, e.g., “Jews shall not replace us.” As happened in Europe with its recognition of group rights, something that has also plagued Islam for about 1,300 years. Now America is caught in a murderous Group Rights battle.
Nazis and others in the Alt-Right, who have captured our mentally impaired President, insist on the primacy of White Group Rights. But the Alt-Right supports a direct rejection of the inalienable rights of each individual and that is why Nazis are un-American. Sad to say, the Democrats likewise have rejected inalienable rights in favor of minority group rights under the banner of Equality or the Politics of Identity.
We know what can happen in this internecine war -- a divided nation, murders and even genocide. But neither the GOP nor the Dems seem to care. Appealing to the racism or the politics of identity then trumps the Declaration of Independence.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
Tags: Richard Lee Abrams, Corruption Watch, Nazis, Donald Trump, Alt-Right, Group Rights, Identity Politics,
