What are your RIGHTS?
The idea of rights gets invoked a lot these days. There are two categories of rights that dominate today’s political discourse.
First, there are welfare rights, which include "rights" to housing, healthcare, and education.
Second, there are identity-based rights, which include women’s rights, workers’, gay rights, and trans rights.
There is also a lesser-known third category, one associated with classical America. The classical American rights can be broadly described as a philosophy of individual rights.
Though the individual rights paradigm has been largely forgotten in recent decades, it is actually much older than the other two and is foundational to the modern world. So, in an effort to bring clarity to this increasingly confused topic, let’s explore the individual rights and see what role it can play in our modern context.
Individual Rights: The Classical Liberal Tradition
The classical approach to rights was most famously summarized in America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which states the following:
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.
In developing this formulation, the Founding Fathers drew heavily on the writings of John Locke (1632-1704), who has been called the “father of liberalism.” They were influenced in particular by Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, in which he elaborated his liberal philosophy of government and rights.
Consider the parallels between the Declaration of Independence and this section from Locke’s Treatises:
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
As this and other passages make clear, Locke was a major source and inspiration for the American Revolution (a revolution that was much more a battle of ideas than a physical war). The American political system is largely a Lockean system. Thus, to understand the paradigm of rights that framed America’s founding, we need to go back and understand Locke’s view of rights.
So what was Locke’s view? In short, Locke saw rights as being fundamentally connected with ownership. If you own something, you have a right to control and use that thing as you see fit, and others have a corresponding duty not to interfere with that right.
Chief among these ownership rights is self-ownership—the idea that you own your own self, that is, your body. If your body is rightfully yours to do with as you please, it means others (including government officials) have an obligation not to interfere with your use of your body. In particular, others are morally prohibited from destroying, assaulting, or enslaving your body. This is your right to life, health, and liberty.
Since you can also own possessions, others have a moral duty to refrain from stealing, damaging, or otherwise interfering with your use of your possessions. In other passages, Locke calls this the right to “estate.”
While there is debate as to why Jefferson used the phrase “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence instead of something like “estate,” “property,” or “possessions,” what’s clear is that the Founding Fathers were drawing on Locke’s theory of rights, which was very much a theory based on ownership: both self-ownership and ownership of external resources. As they saw it, the protection of individual rights was primarily about the protection of individual property rights.
There are a few things worth highlighting about this view of rights. The first is that these rights apply equally to all people regardless of race, sex, nationality, occupation, ancestry, and such. Though the Founding Fathers certainly fell short of this ideal in practice, they were still some of the first to implement the idea that rights should be for the individual—not based on group membership—and that they should be universal, applying to everyone.
Another noteworthy feature of ownership rights is that they are very limited in scope. The right to life is simply the right to be free from murder. The rights to health and liberty are likewise rights to the absence of assault and enslavement, nothing more. The right to property is simply the right to not have your possessions stolen, damaged, or otherwise interfered with.
Since these rights all involve things that may not be done to you, political philosophers often refer to them as negative rights. In short, you have the right not to be killed, not to be assaulted, not to be enslaved, and not to be robbed.
Negative rights imply that others have negative duties, that is, a duty to refrain from certain acts. Specifically, people have a moral duty to refrain from murdering, assaulting, and enslaving others, as well as a duty to refrain from robbing others.
Individual Rights are what the Country was founded upon and by upholding individual rights consistently and without compromise, we will advance true justice for each, plus prosperity and harmony for all. If you need assistance upholding your rights, please reach out to Winslow Law: 843-357-9301.
May God Bless You, Your Business, Israel, and the United States of America,
Tom Winslow
