Basic civics courtesy of a Syrian protester

Politicians and media experts readily adopt the latest notions, often without question. No one wants to miss their seat on the politically correct bandwagon. Toward that end media personalities and worldly politicians gush and swoon over the so-called Arab Spring. However, rhetoric and wishful thinking aside, the jury remains out on the forces driving Middle East protests and the emergence of westernized constitutional republics in Arab lands.

Consider what is known about the Arab democracy movements. The Muslim Brotherhood’s legacy belies the moderate agenda with which it has been credited, instead promoting violence, Sharia Law, and a general anti-Zionist bent. A Libyan rebel leader spent six years incarcerated at Guantanamo prison because of his links to Islamic extremists and the powers behind Syrian and Yemeni uprisings aren’t likely to prove better.

Arab Spring will likely bloom into Sharia Summer and Islamist Autumn, the result being greater authoritarian rule than Arabs previously experienced. But there’s at least one Arab protester who seems to understand the idea of deposing tyranny. In fact, America would do well to heed his simple civics lesson. This one man, a Syrian Kurd opposed to Bashar Assad’s rule, held a simple sign espousing a profound message. His poster read, “Rights are not given as charity.”

Such a concept of rights and liberty is becoming rare within American politics. Rights are increasingly defined as a function or extension of government with human liberty existing only when government reigns supreme. America has largely forsaken the Jeffersonian view of liberty sanctified in the Declaration of Independence, wherein freedom is a gift from our Creator, a divine and inherent right. It doesn’t exist at the whim of presidents, legislators, or bureaucrats.

Mankind possesses liberty from birth, just as we’re born with a beating heart and lungs capable of processing our life’s breath. The human spirit is free until subjugated via direct force or subtle coercion. Enter government, which often shows precious little regard for the inalienable rights of man: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, attaining said happiness isn’t guaranteed, as success and fulfillment are individual, not collective, determinations. Government cannot pledge happiness or achievement to one person without denying those pursuits to another. For instance, when government provides food, shelter, or clothing to one person as a matter of right, another person’s property rights must be ignored. The so-called contributor is denied the right to benefit from their production and to determine its proper use.

Governments are ideally instituted to secure and protect the innate rights of mankind. Yet such administrations are the exception rather than the rule, and too often temporary in duration. Governments are inclined to oppose liberty at every turn. Restraining liberty, often to the point of bondage or death, is government’s natural progression. Government must subside for liberty to flourish. So too, liberty must yield for government to ascend. When legislative bodies expand in scope they transform into ruling bodies, assuming a self-perpetuating identity.

Civil authorities are no more content with merely securing the blessings of liberty, as Jefferson described a government of just powers, than drunkards are satisfied with a single gin and tonic. A metamorphosis takes place. Governments instituted as benign protectors of liberty become imperious sovereigns dedicated to regulating every aspect of human behavior until freedom and individual decision are eradicated. Public charity is a proven, useful tool for manipulating the decline of the individual in favor of the state.

The Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Dependence on Government reveals disturbing long-term trends in America’s dependency on governmental charity. From housing and medical care to welfare and education, Americans are ever-increasingly dependent on government. Liberal politicians, bureaucrats, and social activists have sold dependency as a human right and the provision for personal need as a charitable act of government. Surging dependency signifies a people willingly surrendering their liberty birthright and a government capitalizing on the population’s apathy.

The Syrian protester hasn’t likely considered the profundity in his message as applied to American concepts of liberty. He does, however, understand human rights aren’t a matter of government charity. Liberty exists even when the possessor doesn’t embrace its presence and when governments fail to respect its existence. No government, via charity or other device, can grant that which we possess by matter of birth.

America stands at a crossroads in our understanding of rights. On one hand we demand less government, lower taxes, and greater individual choice. On the other hand we love liberty only until it interferes with a favored Washington program. Then all bets are off.

If America is to retain freedom, and preserve it for our posterity, we must become reacquainted with liberty’s core concepts: individual responsibility, self-motivation, and basic respect for self and others. Let’s begin with a civics lesson from an anonymous Syrian. Apparently, he possesses substantial wisdom regarding rights and their origins, a knowledge woefully lacking in the land of the free.