Many issues of the day concern the concept of “rights.” Most of us are familiar with the three rights named in the Declaration of Independence – the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But now we hear of a plethora of rights – the right to a free education, the right to healthcare, the right to an abortion, the right to a living wage, the right not to be offended, and so on.
To have an intelligible discussion of any of these, it is important to define what is meant by a “right” and what is the source of rights. Only then can you decide whether a claimed right is, in fact, a right or just a claim.
Much of the following discussion is based on “Man’s Rights” by Ayn Rand [1].
Nature of human beings
Human beings survive only by the use of their minds. That is our nature. We are conceptual beings. That is our identity. We observe and analyze existence and we discover what works and doesn’t in the furtherance and enjoyment of our lives and act accordingly. Is this mushroom food or poison? Is it good to stand outside in a thunderstorm when there is lightening? If I tell you a lie, will you trust me from then on? In all of these and a thousand other questions, we use our minds to find the answers. Through the use of our minds, we have risen from living in a cave and picking berries to putting a man on the moon, to inventing iPhones, robots, airplanes, life-saving medicines, skyscrapers, and all the wonders of modern society.
Each of us individually uses our mind to pursue our chosen goals and values. To live as a flourishing human being, we must be free to use our minds to make decisions and choices and we must be free to take subsequent actions. The mind does not work well under compulsion or slavery.
To repeat, since we survive by the use of our mind, we must be free to use it. This includes the freedom to act upon our own judgment in the furtherance of our own rational happiness, and the freedom to work for the achievement of our values and to keep and use the results.
Fundamental rights
A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a person’s freedom of action in a social context. The concept of a “right” pertains only to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion, or interference by other people. Based on the above discussion, it follows that it is the nature of human beings and their identity that is the source of rights. The source of rights is not a god and it is not government, but it is our nature. It is reality.
The most fundamental right is the right to life, and it is the source of all rights. The right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment, and the enjoyment of his own life.
The right to life means the right to think and to act on one’s own judgment – which is the right to liberty.
The right to life means the right to live for one’s own sake, to choose and to work for one’s own selfish goals – which is the right to the pursuit of happiness.
The right to life means the right to work for the achievement of one’s values and to keep the results – which is the right to property.
A right is the sanction of independent action. To recognize individual rights means to recognize and accept the conditions required by man’s nature for his proper survival.
The only way rights can be violated is by physical force or coercion.
How to identify if a claim is a right
If one claims an alleged right that violates another person’s rights, then that claim is invalid. A thief does not have a “right” to steal from you. Why? It is because that claim violates your right to property and to your life.
One quick litmus test is to ask, “At whose expense?” Many of today’s claims fail this test. If you are forced to pay (through taxes, for example) for someone else’s education or healthcare, then the claims that those are rights are invalid. They violate your right to property, since taxes are compulsory (If you don’t think so, when you refuse to pay taxes, the government comes after you with a loaded gun.) which means they violate your right to life.
Ask if what you want to do (or are doing) initiates force or fraud against someone. Often it doesn’t, which means you have a right to do so. Voluntary agreements between consenting adults fall into this category. Examples include marriage, business transactions (You have a right to buy food at a grocery store and the store has a right to sell food to you.), voluntary prostitution, hair braiding, employment (You have a right to accept a job if the company decides to offer it to you. Likewise, a company has the right to not offer you a job if it doesn’t want to.), and so on.
Unfortunately, often these rights are denied or restricted by government (that is, by force). For example, you have to get permission (i.e. a license) from the State of Louisiana to be a florist! In four states you have to get a license to be an interior designer [3]. In the District of Columbia you have to have a college degree to care for children. These are rights, but the government denies them unless you pay it money or take “training.” Many occupations that people should be free to pursue, that is, that they should have the right to pursue, are restricted by government. Government is the biggest violator of our rights, not only through occupational licensing but through thousands of laws and regulations denying or restricting voluntary transactions, more so than criminals.
For an excellent discussion of abortion and rights, please see the article by Craig Biddle Abortion and the Questions We Must Answer [2]. For another discussion from a different perspective, see my post Abortion.
It is important to note that one’s need is not a valid claim on the lives of others. One does not have a right to forcibly force others to satisfy their own needs, because it violates the rights of those others. Your need of education or of food or of shelter or of medicine does not mean that I have to be forced to provide it. If I want to voluntarily, for example, through charitable organizations, or through direct donations or help, that’s fine. But what is not fine and is wrong is when the government forces me to provide those things. Such action violates my right to conduct my own life as I see fit.
It should also be noted that rights only apply to individual human beings, as only individuals have minds, and only in a social context. Society does not have rights. (“Society” does not have a mind.) Animals do not have rights (Animals do not operate conceptually.) but you still should treat them rationally and nicely. Plants and the environment do not have rights (No minds, obviously.) but you still should treat them rationally and nicely. Only individual human beings have rights.
References
- “Man’s Rights” by Ayn Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
- “Abortion and the Questions We Must Answer” in The Objective Standard, May 2022, by Craig Biddle.
- License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing by the Institute for Justice https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-2/
Photo Credits
- Health Care banner: Unknown author licensed under CC-BY-NC
- Education banner: Unknown author licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND
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As you are probably aware, many discussions on this topic are sometimes unfriendly and contain logical fallacies. If you decide to leave a comment, or even outside of this post, if you decide to have a discussion, public or private, you might find it helpful to follow the suggestions on my post How to have a successful discussion
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