Natural Rights
Natural Rights are rights that come from nature.
Your right to scratch a mosquito bite is a right you just have. A person or group can say "You are not allowed in our business / etc if you scratch mosquito bites", but they cannot stop you from scratching your mosquito bites unless they use force of some kind (violence, intimidation, etc) to take away that natural right.
One implicit element of natural rights is the spiritual component "Do not harm others" or "Do not do to others what you do not want done to you". Because words are so easily twisted by clever minds, even this necessary element is useless as a phrase and must be understood or it is useless.
Perhaps a bureaucrat will say "I am protecting people by limiting them and I think protecting is good, so no harm". Or a rapist will say "I had sex with her and I would not have minded if she had sex with me, so no harm done".
One of the dirtiest tactics of groups, governments etc is redefining rights.
Many people have no idea what a natural right is, or how it differs from a privilege or legal right.
In the days of slavery (which, in fact is still a practice in certain countries as of 2012) a government could give you the "right" to own another human being. You had the "right" to do as you liked with that person, beat them, work them, feed them well or starve them, etc. The "slave" though did not have the legal right to simply walk away. If they were to try to walk away the authority behind their slavery would rear its head to prevent their "escape", i.e., to protect the "rights" of the slave-owner.
Historically, some brilliant leaders have tried to model society on natural rights.
Some of the founders of America spoke and wrote at length about the difference between natural rights and legal rights. These individuals generally made it clear that legal, or non natural, rights should be used only as a means to preserve natural rights. They saw how unnatural authority raged out of control in other countries and tried to prevent that happening here.
Were they successful? Below is a list of natural rights. You decide.
1) The natural right to speak freely. As a natural right, free speech has no limits. The first word that is restricted, no matter the circumstances or justification, is the end of free speech. The reason being that once you can convince people that they actually do not have the right to say something then that people has surrendered all of the rest of their rights. You own them like a farmer owns cattle.
2) The natural right to travel at will. There are some places that pay very little heed to paper. Once I spent two years in French Guiana with no passport or other identification. Anytime the issue of documents came up, any person, even government officials, would just shrug their shoulders and say "It's Guyane". Meaning "Don't worry about it". Their were refugees and travelers from Brazil, Haiti, Suriname and many other countries who got the same respect, not because they were "foreign" but because they weren't.
Today it is the fashion to restrict travel rights based on "terrorism". Hundreds of thousands of Americans, perhaps millions, of all ages, are on "no fly" lists that prevent them from traveling in America. Is it because of thousands of acts of terrorism? Hundreds? A few? One? Usually 911 is cited as the reason. A bunch of people working for foreign governments who not only had full rights to fly, some of them had pilot's licenses. Other than that, almost every "near miss" terrorism event has involved government agents providing (inert) bombs or other weapons to people who were either mentally ill or otherwise limited.
3) The natural right to control one's own space. There are no limits on a person's natural right to their own body and their own space where it does not overlap someone else's space. If you want to take drugs, eat fast food, etc nature has given you that right. No one can take away that right, even if they use force prevent you from exercising it.
Abortion is obviously in this category, though as a "natural right" it needs added consideration. A mother, under natural conditions, would never kill her child. It simply does not happen naturally. But when it does happen, for unnatural reasons, a person must ask who has primary responsibility for the life of the child. It is not any government or church. It is the mother. Out of respect for nature, when a mother (or father) wants to kill her unborn child a person should find the root of the problem, where the maternal instinct went awry. And a person should use their ability to speak to help the mother. And of course no person, doctor or otherwise, should assist in killing a child. But the unborn baby's life is always in the mother's hands.
Warning Signs
A brief list of seemingly minor things that should give Americans reason to pause.
1) It is becoming increasingly common for foreign political and business leaders to speak over the heads of Americans.
Whether it is a discussion of economics or a political meeting or social commentary, increasingly it is easy to find examples of foreign leaders (in whatever sphere) who know that their words will be interpreted in a simplistic way by Americans. They create "inside jokes" that most American really don't understand.
A stunning example was the skyscraper designed by Dutch architects for a South Korean firm to look like the exploding twin towers. They can say "We did not notice the resemblance until it was pointed out in the media" and that is defended by people who understand what they are reacting to, specifically American "exceptionalism".
Environmental Emergency
The earth seems to be at the brink of crisis.
Articles about strange disease trends are popping up almost daily around the world.
Long term human health is being ignored unsustainably, in favor of political and corporate interests. No matter what your beliefs or interests, unsustainable means it is outside of limits that allow long term survival. It may be months not years, until this budding crisis gets the attention that the "European" economic crisis is getting.
1) Mystery disease kills thousands in Central America.
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Mystery-disease-kills-thousands-in-Central-America-3288301.php
The timing of rises in Kidney disease in Ghana, India and Israel might suggest the problem is related to long term toxicity of a specific "safe" pesticide marketed heavily in the last fifteen years.
The Hunter
A hunter, ideally, is only a hunter.
A Hunter is not part of a group with motives, it is not a killer, not a provider of food, etc.
All of those things (member of group, killer, provider etc) include qualities added on to the Hunter archetype over time but they are nevertheless completely separate. It's as if you had a glass of water and added sugar and lemon and still call it a glass of water. Lemonade is similar to water but it is not water.
Hunting is not killing, any more than breathing is smoking.
Hunting is always part of a person and is always going on in any person in some way. The word "hunter" as it is commonly used has little to do with any pure archetype. Killing does not sanctify or complete a hunt, rather it negates and pollutes it. But if you are hungry and need meat to survive, then killing is tied to the hunt.
Why Torture Matters
In the last ten years America has gotten an international reputation for torture.
Aside from the obvious moral hesitation most decent people have when it comes to torture there is a huge practical problem it creates.
After World War two America basically rebuilt many countries. We extended our resources to crushed countries in a way no other country has ever done, and on an amazing scale. For decades, a person could go anywhere in the world and America was referred to with admiration and respect. Just being an American, in almost any country, was worth more than any credit card.
Slowly, that changed.
USAID is a United States government program that administers billions of dollars worth of aid to foreign countries. It would normally be a program that, administered ethically, would create boundless good will for America. It would seem to be easy to avoid turning a prize like that into foreign policy poison.
