by M. L. Larzelere

Created on: January 17, 2010

Human rights are concepts borne out of human needs. Human rights have nothing to do with God, Let me repeat that, so that I am perfectly clear; human rights are concepts borne out of human needs. Human rights have nothing to do with God. God, for those of us who believe in God, laid down a set of commandments by which we should all live. God never set down a list of rights. Nowhere in the Christian bible, and I propose the Torah nor any other part of the Jewish Bible, nor the Koran or Islam bible are the words human rights ever mentioned. It is not my thesis to argue against the concept of human rights.  On the contrary, I am very much in favor of human rights. However, let us put the ownership of human rights where it belongs, back on earth among us human beings, and especially with the people who decide the fate of every other human on this planet - those who wield the power through wealth, and position of authority.

History is full of despots and rulers who controlled everything from land ownership to food distribution, from slave labor to classless societies. Our own country, the United States of America, owes much of its success to the denying of people their ‘human right.’ Our constitution, while written with the claim that all men are created equal, laid claim that some were only 3/5 human. Even as a young student in elementary school I could not understand morally how somebody could be counted as only 3/5 of a person. Would God count a person as 3/5? This part of Article 1 was not changed until the 14th amendment. It took a civil war to change the mindset of people who believed God gave them the right to have slaves. They argued denying them the right to have slaves would be the downfall of the economy in the south.

It is important to stress rights are nearly always equated to the monetary system. In short, the more money and wealth a person has the more rights that person has. The poorer or less money a person has the less rights that person has. Our fore fathers wrote that rights are inalienable and cannot be taken away. For well over two hundred years these rights held up, not because of some ordained reason handed down from some mountain top, but because individuals fought and died so that others may live by these rights. Yet, we have seen these rights slowly eroding during the last three decades of the 20th century and the first decade of this 21st century.

When our fore fathers laid down the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments),

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