NOTE:
This series has been streamlined, updated, and rereleased in three parts. Titled “Return to the Founders’ Perspective on Rights,” it is available here.

This deserves wide attention. Read the series on rights here and then share it with many others.
—E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and the author of Social Justice: How Good Intentions Undermine Justice and Gospel—

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective on Rights Is Leading America Into Tyranny, Part 1
A History Lesson from the Golden Age of Radio
5/13/16
Did you know that what the people of a nation believe about rights will influence their nation’s, and thus their own, destiny? Our Founders understood the truth about rights, and so must we, if we are to preserve our freedoms and liberty. A first step into exploring this issue is to revisit the Golden Age of Radio. The trip will be entertaining, interesting, and educational!

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 2
The Revolutionary War Was Over, but not the Struggle to Establish a Free and Stable Country
5/20/16
Learning about how the Constitution and the Bill of Rights came to be can help us understand just how far we’ve departed from our Founders’ perspective on rights and personal liberty. Join me on an enlightening journey into the past. Once we’ve made it, we’ll be better equipped to chart the best course for the future.

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 3
From Liberty to an Entitlement Mentality: The Deadly Enticement of Government Help
5/27/16
President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address—a presentation that later became widely known as the “Four Freedoms Speech”—is a great place to learn that two kinds of rights exist. To secure some rights, government needs primarily to stay out of the way and not hinder people’s activities or seek to influence them. Yet to secure others, government has to get involved in and even has to interfere in people’s lives. This thwarts the rights it can maintain only by staying out of the way. If this doesn’t make sense, it will. Let’s open a time capsule from 1941 and unpack some important lessons for today!

Lightstock

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 4
Negative and Positive Rights
6/3/16
Social and political scientists have names for two types of rights. Understanding these helps us see how far we’ve departed from our Founders’ perspective on rights and liberty. It also will help us to find our way back.

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Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 5
How True Rights and Genuine Liberty Are Becoming Casualties of the Supreme Court’s Redefinition of Marriage
6/10/16
The Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling on marriage pushes our nation even further down the road to tyranny. By now, it shouldn’t surprise us that our continuing journey down this road relates directly to the prevailing perspective on rights in popular American culture. Yet it also relates to the insatiable desire on the part of many government leaders—including Supreme Court Justices—to overstep their constitutional authority.

Freedom of Worship / Norman Rockwell

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 6
How the Government Is Bulldozing Over Conscience Rights to Secure All the “Rights” Associated with Same-Sex Marriage
6/17/16
Positive rights always trump negative rights. We see this clearly with the “right” to same-sex marriage and all the “rights” that flow from it. As Erick Erickson says, “You will be made to care.” We better care now, before we’re forced to!

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 7
Eight Reasons Obergefell Has Derailed America
The Importance of Rediscovering the Authentic American Way
6/24/16
Between the authentic American holidays of Father’s Day and Independence Day is situated June 26, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling that redefined marriage in 2015. This is ironic, because same-sex marriage and the related “rights” that are flowing from it are blatantly un-American. We need to rediscover the authentic American way!

Freedom of Speech / Norman Rockwell

Misinformed and Misled: How a Distorted Perspective of Rights Is Leading America into Tyranny, Part 8
Initiating Reform
7/1/16
In this eighth and final post in this series, we examine the cultural divide between those contending for positive rights and expanding government, and those vying for negative rights and limited government. Slipping further and further away from the principles our Founders embraced, we’ve moved ever closer to tyranny. Yet there is hope. We need to see an uprising of the people, one like the uprising we saw in the Civil Rights movement—and one like that which gave birth to our country in the first place. Are you willing to be a part of such a movement?

Epilogue: Seven Sermons that Inform, Challenge, and Warn the Church and the Culture
The Duty to Warn
7/8/16
In part 8 of our series on rights, we said that pastors must lead the charge to bring America back to its founding principles. This includes warning the church and the culture about the perils of changing the definition of marriage. In fact, warnings are essential to effective evangelism. This post challenges Christians, especially pastors, not to not shy away from warning the culture about the perils of departing from the age-old definition of marriage. Seven Bible studies are offered that pastors and Bible study leaders can use in their ministries to explore this important topic. Dive in!

For excerpts from articles in this series, go here.

Copyright © 2016 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All Rights Reserved.

Writing in The Federalist, Joy Pullmann echoes numerous observations in this series in her article titled “Iowan Bureaucrats Force Trans Bathrooms On Churches, Forbid Non-PC Preaching.”

image credits: top image and images for parts 4 & 5: lightstock.com