WHAT IS A “RIGHT,” ANYWAY? 

What a “right” is may be one of the best kept secrets of modern times. 

We use the word “rights” all the time.  BUT--do you REALLY know what a “right” is? 

Some people think it’s some kind of law. Some people think it’s some sort of entitlement granted by the government. Some people think a “right” is like some sort of “permission slip” given by the government. 

If you think a right is anything like any of those things, or if you don’t really know, don’t blame yourself. To tell the truth, I am not aware of a single school that teaches kids what a “right” really is.  

About the closest some schools come to teaching about rights is to teach something about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Those documents describe some rights, but when you really get down to it, even they don’t define what a “right” is. 

We’ll do that in a bit, but first, let’s look at what the two Founding Documents of the United States have to say about rights, since the descriptions they offer are very good, and since very existence of the United States is based on what they had to say. 

The purpose of the Declaration of Independence was, of course, to announce to the world that a new nation had been formed:

 “When, in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected it with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station. . .”

But that wasn’t the Declaration’s only purpose; it was also to explain WHY it had become necessary to dissolve those “Political Bands:”  

“. . .a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”

And so, with this introduction, the seminal passage in the Declaration of Independence was about to begin, a passage that sought to explain to the rest of the world what it was that inspired fifty-six men to risk death as traitors, should their effort fail, and to “. . .pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” 

Like the document itself, this seminal passage, stating the cardinal moral truths about rights that were derived through reason, was short and to the point: 

 “WE hold the 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, That to secure the Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of the Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Ah—there it is! The first clue about what a “right” is!   

The very existence of “rights” is “self-evident.” To be “self-evident” meant that the existence of rights was identified through the use of reason, and derived from a long study of the tradition of natural law. 

“…all Men are created equal…”

The rights of every individual are equal to the rights of every other individual; no one’s rights give him any superiority over the rights of anyone else. Everyone is equal under the law. 

The Founders went on to say that rights are UNALIENABLE, meaning they are an integral part of each of us from the moment of birth. They aren’t separate from us—they are ours by our very nature. Some other things that are ours by nature are things like our blood type or our eye color. Rights are no less a part of us than these other attributes are, and in addition to the right to life, we have the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Remember the phrase, “pursuit” of happiness. Note that the Founders realized that we have a right to pursue happiness, but not to happiness itself. This point is easily missed, but it is absolutely critical when thinking about what rights are.

We’ll discuss why that’s the case later; it is a central issue in the concept of rights. 

But, for the moment, let’s just go with the fact that a “right” is something that is an integral part of us, innate, and thus “unalienable,” and NOT something that is devised, given, or granted. Because it is innate, it can’t be given to us. By the same token, it can’t be taken away by other people, organizations, or governments, either.  Rights, like blood type or eye color, can be acknowledged, but they can’t be given to us or taken away from us. 

The birth of the United States during the height of the Enlightenment enabled it to do something that had never been done before in history, and that was to design a government based on the proper relationship between a government and the citizens; to that end, the only legitimate role that government played in the lives of individuals was to protect their rights:  

“That to secure the Rights, Governments are instituted among Men. . .”

That—the need to protect the rights of individual citizens—was the reason the Founders deemed it “. . .necessary. . . to dissolve the Political Bands which. . .  connected it with another. . .[and]. . . to institute [a] new Government. . .”   King George III, they concluded, was not accomplishing that function.  

Upon the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, James Wilson of Pennsylvania said, “The idea of a constitution, limiting and superintending the operations of legislative authority, seems not to have been accurately understood in Britain. There are, at least, no traces of practice conformable to such a principle. The British Constitution is just what the British Parliament pleases . . . [but] To control the power and conduct of the legislature, by an overruling constitution, was an improvement in the science and the practice of government reserved to the American States.” 

The United States was the first nation in the history of mankind to be designed from scratch, and this provided an opportunity unequalled in history to start fresh, to discard old habits and mistaken ideas, and incorporate new discoveries into the structure of the country. In every instance prior to the design of the U.S, the relationship between government and citizen had been adversarial; the individual was bound to support and protect the government, no matter what the cost to him. His rights were never acknowledged—he lived by permission, at the pleasure of the state.  

This particular kind of relationship between state and people was eventually given the name “the organic theory of state,” where each individual was compared to a single cell in an organism, and the government, the state, was the organism. The “cell” was considered to be dispensable, while the state was not. The theory had its roots in the thinking of the philosopher Plato, and was refined by the Three Stooges of Philosophy, Kant, Hegel, and Marx--who thought that the Average Joe just didn’t carry the intellectual freight to take the responsibility for his own life, and thus had to be micromanaged by an elite group which considered itself better qualified for the job.  

In such a relationship, it is impossible to acknowledge the existence of rights. If individuals had rights, then the power of the ruling elite would, of necessity, be limited. So, up to the time of the United States, rights were routinely violated at the whim of governments. 

The opposing view, that the individual existed NOT by permission, or at the pleasure of the state, but rather, he existed because he had an absolute right to his own life (and to all that this subsumes), had its roots in the thinking of Plato’s pupil, Aristotle. In fact, the views of the nature of mankind (among other things) held by teacher and pupil were so different from one another that they had a terrible argument about them. The argument was so serious that the relationship between the two philosophers was never fully healed; the rupture continues to this day, in the conflict between those who believe the group (or tribe, or government, or collective) takes precedence over the individual, and those who believe that the individual takes precedence over the group (or tribe, or government, or collective). 

Aristotle viewed man’s mind as fully capable of understanding everything in existence. He acknowledged that learning, like every other process, took time, and that we didn’t know everything yet, but that as we kept discovering new stuff and on working at it, we would keep on understanding more and more. Aristotle maintained that the individual was more than capable of managing his own life and that there was no need for the existence of a ruling elite to micromanage him. The thinking of people like Bacon, Locke, Madison, and Jefferson kept Aristotle’s light shining. 

It’s not difficult to see how Plato’s thinking ultimately led to the “organic theory of state,” while Aristotle’s thinking led to the design of the United States and the acknowledgement of the existence of human rights. 

It was the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, that laid out the basic principles upon which the new country was founded. It was the Constitution, ratified by the States in 1789, that described the form the new government should take. A constitution is a document that describes the relationship between an organization and its membership, and the newly written Constitution of the United States placed severe limitations on the government’s ability to interfere in the lives of the citizens.  These limitations were made explicit, and were added as the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and called the Bill of Rights.  

Many rights were listed in the Bill of Rights, but not all of them; the Framers knew that they were dealing with basic principles, thinking in broad brushstrokes, and not writing down in detail the description of every right that existed. To remind everybody that not every right had been listed, they wrote the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights: 

 “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”  

This Amendment is the most important one in the entire Bill of Rights. We often hear well educated men and women saying, “But such-and-such is not a right described in the Constitution!” It was the Ninth Amendment that tried to remind them that not all rights were mentioned in the Constitution, but it is seldom referred to for guidance that it is often called “The Forgotten Amendment.”  

The reason that it isn’t referred very often to is because most people don’t know what a “right” is, and because some people, the descendents of the Platonic line of thinking, actually like it that way. If the Average Joe ever started to wonder exactly what a right was, and to wonder which ones had not been enumerated in the Constitution, then he might rock the power grabbers’ boat severely. 

This is why it is so very important for everyone to know what a right is: 

“A RIGHT is the action taken by a living entity which is required by its nature to preserve its life.”   

There. That’s what a right is.  

Let’s start with some uncomplicated examples of rights: A green plant has a right to photosynthesize. That’s one of the actions required by its nature to preserve its life. 

A lion is an obligate carnivore, and can’t survive without consuming animal protein, so it has a right to chase after a zebra and try to catch it.    

On the other hand, a zebra has a right to run away from the lion to avoid being eaten.  

When it comes to humans, the question of rights is more complicated, because our nature is more complicated.

The thing about our nature that makes us different from every other species is that our primary tool of survival lies in our mode of cognition. That tool, our mode of cognition, is our capacity for reason.  

We share with animals the ability to gather data through our senses and form percepts. We see, hear, touch, and smell, and so on, and our minds automatically integrate these individual sensations into percepts. The lion perceives the zebra; he doesn’t perceive “black” and “white” as separate experiences; the zebra, if he’s lucky, perceives the lion, not just “yellow” and “smelly.” Percepts are concrete entities that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, etc. as a whole, integrated, identifiable things. 

Animals share with us all sorts of things; they form strong emotional bonds, they experience fear and anguish, they suffer pain and enjoy comfort. Intellectually, many of them can manipulate in their minds the percepts, the concrete things, that they can see and touch, but they do very little else that is more complicated than that. An ape might see a stick, for example, and a termite coming out of a hole in a mound, and in his head he thinks about the two, holds the stick and pokes it down the hole and pulls out the termites that cling to it. He has never invented a steam engine, though, or understood the quadratic equation, or pondered the meaning of “justice.” 

We have, though, and the reason is that we’re different. We don’t stop with the integration of sensory data into percepts; we go one critical step further. We also integrate the percepts—remember, they are concrete entities—into concepts, which are NOT concrete entities. 

Here’s an illustration of simple concept formation: We see a chair. That’s a simple percept. It’s a concrete entity, so we can touch it, see it, and we don’t fall on our butts when we sit in it. And over there, we see a table. It’s also a concrete entity, so when we put our tea on it, it doesn’t fall to the floor and make a mess. 

But when we see a chair and a table together, our minds integrate them into something that we call “furniture.” 

We can touch a table and a chair and a bed and a couch etc, but we can’t touch “furniture.” We have formed a concept, and a concept is not a concrete entity.  

It is through the process of concept formation that we acquire knowledge about “justice,” “freedom,” and, of course, “rights.” 

The ability to understand reality through concept formation is our unique mode of cognition, our capacity for reason. It’s through reason, via concept formation, that we identify and deal with reality, and because of this, reason is our fundamental tool of survival. Without reason, we couldn’t acquire the knowledge and make the discoveries that enable us to survive. 

Human survival depends on intellectual action; everything a human being needs in order to survive has to be discovered by his mind, and then produced by his effort.

We’ve already shown that the Founders had a very good notion of what a right was—that it was self-evident, that it was unalienable, that men were equal to one another with respect to their rights, and, oh, by the way, they said, the only proper function of a government was to protect rights. It was not the proper function of government to violate rights. 

We’ve mentioned that among other things, our rights include the absolute right to our lives and to the liberty that is necessary to pursue the happiness that includes the means of survival. 

We’ve mentioned that the only way we can figure out how to make the discoveries that enable us to survive is because of our uniquely human method of cognition, our capacity for reason.  

But there’s one more thing about us that is critically involved with human rights, and that is the fact that we are a group-living species. 

It’s the combination of our capacity for reason and our preference for living among our own kind that makes the concept of human rights meaningful.  

That’s because the recognition of “rights” is what humans depend on to be able to live successfully together.  Every group-living species establishes some way to enable its members to live together in relative peace, cooperation, access to resources, reproductive opportunities, and so forth. Living in a group without some sort of behavioral limitations would be impossible. 

A herd of horses, a pack of wolves, a gaggle of geese—all have behaviors that organize their groups in a way that enables them to live together. Their behaviors result from inborn mechanisms. They don’t have a choice. 

But humans do have a choice. That’s the other big difference between us and animals. Our cognition, our capacity for reason, allows us to make choices in how we behave.

We use the process of concept formation to think about things, and it allows us to consider what is good for us, optional, or bad for us. In short, our capacity for reason allows us to make choices. From these choices, we form a moral code—a set of values we choose to guide our thoughts and actions. 

The limits we place on behavior are a matter of choice, and form the essence of our “moral code.”  

For humans, a right—an action taken to preserve our life—is a moral choice.     

Most people on this planet have chosen life as the value by which we can judge whether something is good or not good; life, then, is the “standard of the good.” Those processes which tend to support life are generally deemed “good,” while those processes which tend to threaten life are generally deemed “bad.”  

The stuff we deem morally “bad” is prohibited via legislation. No murdering, robbing, or stealing of hubcaps. 

A right, therefore, involves a moral code in the context of living in a group, in a society. Without the capacity for reason, we would not be able to determine what is good and what is bad (or optional). Without reason, we would not have a moral code; without a moral code, we would have no guide to the behaviors required to respect individual rights. Without being able to respect each other’s rights, we would not be able to live productively and happily as a group. 

Even the little things that “lubricate” our relationships in society—courtesy and good manners--all ultimately trace their origins to respect for rights.  

Rights refer to action, not objects. We have a right to seek food, but not to food itself; we have a right to seek an education, but not to education itself; we have a right to seek shelter, but not to shelter itself. A right does not ensure that someone will acquire something, it just ensures he may seek to do so. 

If we have a right to a thing, an object, then we have a right to coerce another human being to provide it, thus depriving him of liberty.  

It is the failure to understand that rights involve actions, but not things, that lead so many ideas about them (such as the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,”) to be so destructive of rights. To say that we have a right to something, instead of a right to seek something, is a recipe for the violation of all our rights.  

It’s a recipe for violation of all rights because to have a right to something means you have a right to initiate the use of physical force or deceit to get it.  

The initiation of physical force, or the use of its intellectual equivalent, deceit or fraud, is the only way to violate rights. In each instance, you have deprived the individual of his freedom to make choices about how to support and enjoy his life—the life that he alone owns.  

So—what does one do with the jerk that goes around violating the rights of other people? The guy who murders, robs, runs a scam--the answer is, when somebody does that, he waives his own rights. The person whose rights are being violated can act to support his own life by using whatever means necessary, including and up to inflicting death on the violator, if that is what is required. 

The little phrase, “Your rights stop at my skin” helps remind us of some important things about rights. It’s an oversimplification, but it’s not too bad. 

Life is the granddaddy of all other rights, and since life can exist only in material bodies, we must be free to take the actions necessary to acquire and use all the material things required to sustain it. That is the right to act to acquire property. Property rights are implied in our right to our own life and in the right to pursue happiness, and they are covered in the Ninth Amendment. However, since without property rights the right to life is not possible, they should have been specified in no uncertain terms in the Bill of Rights; that omission is one of the few mistakes in the Constitution.  

At some level, be it sophisticated or primitive, we recognize that property rights are very important. Here in the United States on June 23^rd, a hideous violation of property rights was committed by the very institution whose primary function is to guarantee the protection of rights. The Supreme Court of the United States rode roughshod over our property rights as enumerated in the Fifth Amendment, when it said that one group—in this case a development company—can take the property of a private citizen for its own private use.   

The response to this grotesque violation of individual rights from the citizens of this country has been overwhelmingly appropriate. The outrage has been enormous; actions are being taken to counter this awful miscarriage of justice. One man, Logan Darrow Clements, a candidate for the governorship of California, is even leading the charge for the retaliatory confiscation of the property of Supreme Court Justice David Souter, whose majority opinion was in support of this monstrous decision, for development purposes. Already there is some agreement among the Selectmen of the community where Justice Souter has his property, and he may well find his property confiscated and a hotel built on it. Legislators, national and local, all over the country, are rallying to the defense of property rights by passing laws that would invalidate the Supreme Court decision. 

One of the greatest economists in the United States, Dr. Walter Williams, Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Virginia, summed up the primary reason why the Framers enumerated in the Constitution the right of each citizen to bear arms (the Second Amendment). It isn’t for hunting, or even for protecting yourself against robbers; it’s so that the citizen can protect himself against violation of individual rights by the government, in accordance with the statement in the Declaration of Independence which  referred to the problem that: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of the Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.”  The Founders were no milquetoasts.  

The Declaration of Independence pointed out that “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends (the protection of rights), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…” In support of that right, the citizen was guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. 

As Dr. Williams said in an article in Jewish World Review, “The framers of our Constitution gave us the Fifth Amendment to protect us from government property confiscation. . . The Amendment reads in part: “[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Which one of those 12 words is difficult to understand?  The framers recognized that there might be a need for government to acquire private property to build a road, bridge, dam or fort. . . America’s socialists want more control over our lives, property and our pocketbooks. . .I think the socialist attack on judicial nominees who’d use framer-intent in their interpretation of the Constitution might also explain their attack on our Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” Why? Because when they come to take our property, they don’t want to risk buckshot in their butts.” 

In 1802, in a letter to Joseph Priestly, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Tho’ written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people: they fix too for the people the principles for their political creed.” 

The Supreme Court decision, “Kelo vs. the City of New London, CT” was made as a result of a delusion, and in violation of the rights of every citizen of the United States. The people are indeed watchful though, and our written Constitution has indeed caused us to rally, upon recalling to us the principles it embraces. 

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY, EVERYONE, AND LONG LIVE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!