I agree with most of your post aldante (liberal bashing aside). My rants were directed more towards the type of people who think like the subject of this thread.

Sure, government can take away your right to life by imprisoning or killing you. But if you want to use that argument you have to accept the flipside that government can also help protect your right to life (via the same means they can use to take it away — security, military, police, etc). I may have an inalienable right to property and life, but unless the police are there to prevent some thug from stealing my shit and shanking me in my front yard, those inalienable rights seem pretty useless to me. I suppose I could defend myself (via my inalienable right to own firearms), but what if said thug is actually a foreign army? Does not government play a role here in protecting my inalienable rights? Theoretically, shouldn’t that be the entire purpose of government? Does believing so make me a “todays” liberal?

I fail to see how God would be able to protect my inalienable rights. Perhaps by striking down an invading army with lightning, or perhaps turning water into wine? That would be sweeet! It is my inalienable right to get a buzz on as I see fit.

I would hope that our rights come from logic and reason (which I would also hope, as our founding fathers did, would eventually lead to a perfect form of government protecting said rights). I do not believe that our rights come from some magical bearded dude in the clouds (unless it’s The Dude). These are my beliefs in theory, of course, and I agree that in practice, reality doesn’t quite live up to the expectations. But what can you do? *shrug*

And no, we do not live in a theocracy. But the person about which this thread was started would very much like to see it become one.