Today, President Bush addressed the National Governor’s Association, mostly talking about keeping competitive in a global marketplace, lowering our dependence of foreign sources of oil, and the ongoing War on Terrorism. However, at the end of the speech, the President said something that I know will be overlooked by our liberal press in the morning.

And I believe this country has got to be aggressive in our pursuit of democracy and liberty, based upon our firm belief that there are such things as the natural rights of men and women. After all, that’s what caused our founding, that there is universality to liberty. And we shouldn’t be surprised when 11 million Iraqis go to the polls and demand freedom in the face of unbelievable terrorist attacks. That shouldn’t surprise America. We ought to say we recognize that spirit, and it is that spirit that’s ultimately going to be able to say we’ve kept the peace for our children and grandchildren.

“…based upon our firm belief that there are such things as the natural rights of men and women.” It’s very interesting to see President Bush pointing out something many of us take for granted. The founders especially pointed out these “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence, but I think we’ve lost view of this important point of view.

Samual Adams, in a report to the Committee of Correspondence in Boston in 1772, communicated natural rights in this way:

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent; and they have a right to demand and insist upon the performance of such conditions and previous limitations as form an equitable original compact.

Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains.

All positive and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity.

As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.

In conclusion, it’s nice to see a President of the United States getting back to the basics, explaining what liberty and representative government are all about - protecting the natural rights of people.

President Bush addressing the National Governors Association