We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Declaration of Independence
There is a lot of talk nowadays about rights, but it seems little time is spent understanding what a right is. Yet understanding rights and how to use them is critical to a free nation.
Right: Just claim; immunity; privilege. All men have a right to the secure enjoyment of life, personal safety, liberty and property. We deem the right of trial by jury invaluable, particularly in the case of crimes. Rights are natural, civil, political, religious, personal, and public.
Webster’s 1828 Dictionary
A right is a just claim, immunity, or privilege, but what does that mean? Let’s start by breaking down the different types of rights and see if we can make sense of this.
First, a right can be alienable or unalienable. In other words, there are rights that can be taken away and others which cannot, and there are rights where you have to do something to get that right and others you have just for existing. For example, in America we have a right to vote. That right has been given to you by government and it requires you register with the government to do so. You also have the right to drive a car, but again that right was given to you by government and it requires you to pass the required tests to obtain a license which can be revoked for just about any reason the government decides. The government issues the license, the government can take away the license. These are examples of alienable rights, which are privileges that are given and can be taken away. Unalienable rights are those you have just for existing. They are sometimes called human rights and include things like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights cannot legitimately be taken away, though they can be forfeited. For example, as punishment when convicted of a crime via due process.
When someone violates a person’s right it is called infringement:
Infringe: To break, as contracts; to violate, either positively by contravention, or negatively by non-fulfillment or neglect of performance.
So when the government violates one of your rights (like the right to free speech), either by legal means or by neglecting their duty to protect it, they are infringing on your rights.
Rights can also be positive or negative. Positive rights require action from others while negative rights require their inaction. To use the language from Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, a positive right is a just claim, while a negative right is a just immunity. For example, the right to free speech is actually a negative right (the immunity from government action to impact your speech), while your right to counsel is a positive right (a claim that the government must provide you with legal representation).
Now that we’ve defined what a right is, there is one more extremely important aspect to rights we need to understand: The legitimate exercise of our rights. If rights are truly rights, then they must be applied equally to everyone. If my rights are more important than your rights then what you have isn’t really a right and certainly not an unalienable one. So the only legitimate exercise of ones’ rights cannot, in fact must not, infringe on the rights of others.
Let’s look at some examples. Starting with negative rights, my right to free speech cannot be legitimately controlled by others, especially government. However, I cannot legitimately use that right to infringe on someone else’s right. So, yes, I can yell “Fire” in a crowded theater, but if there is no fire I can be held accountable by the people whose rights I have infringed (like the patrons’ right to peaceably assemble to watch a movie or the owners’ right to operate their business without interference).
Of greater importance in today’s society is the illegitimate exercise of positive rights, the vast majority of which are not, and in fact can not, be rights since they cannot be exercised without infringing on the rights of others. Take the “right” to not be offended. The only way to not be offended is for you to force the speech and actions of others, and to infringe on their rights of speech, press, assembly, and free exercise of religion. Yet more and more today actual force, the exertion of power against one’s will or consent, is used against the American people, both by their government and by those in society. People are harassed, fined, or jailed for not expressing a currently favored point of view about homosexual marriage, belief in God, or the right of the life in the womb to be protected. These so called “rights” are used to force one group’s will upon another by violating their rights.
The other positive “rights” abused today include the rights to stuff. The “rights” to health insurance, education, a living wage, housing, and transfer payments cannot be legitimate rights since they can only be had by infringing on the property rights of others. You have an unalienable right to yourself and to the output of your labor. This means you cannot legitimately be told how to live your life or what to do with what you earn or create, as long as you don’t infringe on the legitimate rights of others. Yet listen to both political and social rhetoric today and almost all you hear are groups arguing about what they want to force other people to do. Force people to approve of your lifestyle or force people to live a certain way. Force people to pay for the consequences of your decisions or force people to ignore them. Force people to speak, act, and dress one way or another. Force people to pay others for not working, having babies, or getting hooked on drugs and alcohol. Any way you slice it, rights today, true unalienable rights, mean nothing to most people.
Think of it this way: If you can force your rights on others by infringing on their rights, what prevents someone else from infringing on your rights to enforce their own? You may be in a favored group today and you may be able to force your will on others, but the winds of change almost always blow the other way from time to time. That means if you don’t protect the rights of others today, you have no expectation of them protecting your rights tomorrow.
For a people to truly be free, they all must have their rights protected, not only from government, but from each other. There once was a saying in this nation: “I may vehemently disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The very concepts of freedom and liberty come from the recognition of the rights of others. How can we call ourselves the land of the free if we will not defend those rights? Sure, we are freer than most nations in this world, but a quick projection of the trajectory we are on leads not to freedom and liberty, but to tyranny and oppression. And at the root of it all is a complete breakdown of the fundamental idea of rights and our unwillingness to defend the rights of others.
