Saturday, February 6, 2021

day no. 15,447: author's have authority

"Men will more and more realise that there is no meaning in democracy if there is no meaning in anything; and that there is no meaning in anything if the universe has not a centre of significance and an authority that is the author of our rights."  -- G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America

If everything is subjective who could know? Who could definitively make that case? If everything is subjective, that maxim may not be precisely right and no maxim, by extension, is certainly exactly right. The law of non-contradiction insists that when saying, "Meaning, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder," you are also, by default saying, "Nothing has any meaning." If the only meaning of anything is derived by the individual at that moment then nothing is owed any particular reverence because nothing owns a particular meaning that I could rob. There would be no dignity to rob or honor to withhold. If nothing is owed anything, nothing can be required.

In other words, if there is no God outside of our rights, there is no God in our rights and whatever rights we have may be given, taken away, sold, or enslaved by someone else with no explanation whatsoever required. Even if we all agree on some rights, some other one may not. And if he doesn't, who are we to say he can't break our rules? You may say, "Well, he agreed to them." But who's to say that lying is unacceptable? Why is reneging on an agreement wrong? Whose to say that breaking your word is a bad thing?

If we, the people, is to mean anything, it must derive its meaning from something else -- something that has jurisdiction over all the other purveyors and perpetrators of lesser meanings.

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