The Inalienable Rights of God

During the Tribeca Film Festival, I experienced what is sometimes termed a "brain fart." On May Day 2006, on my way to an utterly inhibition-free Czech film, which I regret having watched, I emerged from the subway in the middle of the New York City illegal immigrant rally. There were a lot of people there. Probably not as many as the Times said there were, but there were a lot. What with the crowd and the police barricades, I nearly didn't make it to see Jan Svankmajer's "Lunacy."

But I did hear something that was at least as bizarre as watching amputated body parts wriggle in and out of sculptures and cow skulls. While I was struggling through the crowd, I heard part of a speech that was being given in support of the rally. "We demand the basic rights that make us human! We demand the right to health care, the right to housing, and the right to education for our kids!" Granted, the pronouncements of a hysterical woman who is rapidly alternating between two languages at a large rally should not be taken at face value. To justify my dismay, though, the speaker made essentially the same point in both Spanish and English.

We demand the basic rights that make us human. If we do decide to give these people amnesty, maybe we should insert basic ontology into the citizenship curriculum. But, more seriously, the rampant rights-talk that pervades our conversation really has degenerated to this point. Rover has rights, and government benefits make Jose human. Does this strike anyone else as nonsense?

Rights-talk was always a doomed enterprise. Although I must admit that I find Locke's trinity of "life, liberty, and property" appealing, it didn't take too long before those damn Yankees turned "property" into "the pursuit of happiness." Ms. Hysteria was at least specific in her tabulation.

I am going to exercise my right to free speech to opine that "human rights" is currently among the most meaningless of concepts-along with "freedom." But, since rights-talk still seems to resonate, I would like to plead for the inalienable rights of God. God's rights, like the black man's, were not high on the priority list at the time of the Founding. God, in the First Amendment, did get the right to be left alone-which was a lot more than the French were willing to give him.

It seems to me that this arrangement is exactly backwards. From the viewpoint of Original Presbyterianism, God gets the inalienable rights, like the right to innovation-free worship, the right to respectful use of his name, the right to explicit political acknowledgement of him and explicit political support of his church and its confession. Humans get the privilege-the true privelege-of obedience. And it is that obedience alone that can make them happy (to which happiness they are not entitled).

I grant that it is monstrously unlikely that anyone will make a compelling political theory out of this any time soon, but there it is. Maybe John Rawls could have made it work-he was fairly good at revitalizing discredited political theories. Maybe if he had established the inalienable rights of God, I would agree that he was a genius.