(ThyBlackMan.com) In earlier columns I’ve talked about the natural rights that every person has, from birth. The first and most fundamental of these is the right to life. The right to life would be meaningless without the inherent right to defend yourself against attack. You have the absolute right to do so; you also have the right to possess the means of defending yourself, both the objects necessary for that defense and the training and ability to employ those objects competently. This right is unalienable, meaning it can’t be taken from you, and you can’t give it up. You always possess it.
“Attack” doesn’t refer exclusively to physical assault. You can be attacked physically, verbally, socially, financially, and in other ways. You always have the right to defend yourself against attacks of any
sort.
We all recognize that there are some who are unable to defend themselves (the young and the infirm are two examples) against attack. You have the right to defend others who are under attack just as you may defend yourself. Defending others against attack is one of the basic principles of civilized behavior. It is sometimes difficult not to attack the attackers yourself, but doing so is not defending others. Your right to defend others only extends to protecting them from attack and stopping the attack itself.
When you or others you are aware of are attacked, you must defend yourself and them in any way you can. As explained above, “attack” does not mean only physical assault. You must respond to any attacks in an appropriate fashion. This response must be measured, and intended to stop the attack and protect those being attacked. The original attack may not be used as an excuse for an attack of your own. However, if such a counterattack is the only to stop the provoking attack it is not only allowed, but required.
All of this is to say, for rights to mean anything they must be protected and defended. But protecting and defending your rights (and those of people unable to defend themselves) doesn’t give you the right to infringe on the rights of others yourself.
It boils down to us all having to take responsibility for our own lives and our own rights, and for those of others unable to defend themselves. This responsibility lies with each of us individually, but we can exercise it together in concert with other liberty-loving people to the furtherance of a truly civil society. As Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural address (under somewhat different circumstances):
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Staff Writer; Douglas Loss