Ep. 107: Uplifting Nonsense
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2022
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We're so used to talking about "human rights" and "human dignity" that it's easy to just nod along when people start declaring the brotherhood of man. But how did we get here? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan argues that God is a load-bearing pillar—cut him out, and sooner or later the whole building comes crashing down. From the Enlightenment to the present day, if your rights are going to be secure, they have to come from God.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Man is born free and everywhere. He is in chains. |
| 0:08.9 | I bet a lot of people will recognize that. |
| 0:10.9 | It's a famous opening from Rousseau's social contract from 1762, |
| 0:16.2 | du contrat social. I believe it's the French title, |
| 0:19.2 | although my French speakers can correct me. |
| 0:23.0 | I love doing this show because you can start an episode out saying, |
| 0:27.6 | I'm going to talk today about rights. |
| 0:29.6 | And then for an hour, you can talk for an hour and be like, |
| 0:32.6 | okay, now we're almost ready to talk about rights. |
| 0:35.6 | And I genuinely mean I do love that aspect of it. |
| 0:38.6 | I love that you guys are with me for talking about the deep weeds on this stuff |
| 0:42.6 | because really the point of a class of education is to go back to the roots |
| 0:46.6 | right. Think about where stuff came from. |
| 0:48.6 | That's the story that we've been telling when it comes to the right to life, |
| 0:51.6 | the right to liberty, the right to pursuit happiness. |
| 0:53.6 | And I've been fixating on this sentence from the Declaration of Independence. |
| 0:55.6 | We hold these truths to be self-evident. |
| 0:57.6 | That all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator |
| 1:01.6 | with certain enailing and able rights. |
| 1:03.6 | And what I've basically been arguing, you could sum up the whole series |
| 1:06.6 | as an argument that every part of that sentence is essential. |
| 1:12.6 | That you can't take one away and keep all the nice rights that we have, |
... |
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