 Freedom
Keys
a
collection of
amusing,
fascinating,
insightful,
or
maybe
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About Rights
RIGHTS are
expressions of LIBERTY, not
of privilege,
of FREEDOM,
NOT of slavery.
|
"A 'right' is a moral
principle defining and sanctioning a
man's freedom of action in a social
context. There is only one
fundamental right (all others are its
consequences or corollaries): a man's
right to his own life.
"The concept of individual
rights is so new in human history that
most men have not grasped it fully to
this day.
"It was the concept of
individual rights that had given birth
to a free society. It was with the
destruction of individual rights that
the destruction of freedom had to
begin.
"If some men are entitled by
right to the products of the work of
others, it means that those others are
deprived of rights and condemned to
slave labor. Any alleged 'right'
of one man, which necessitates the
violation of the rights of another, is
not and cannot be a right. No man
can have a right to impose an unchosen
obligation, an unrewarded duty or an
involuntary servitude on another
man. There can be no such thing as
the 'right to enslave.' "
"The term 'individual rights'
is a redundancy: there is no other kind
of rights and no one else to possess
them."
--
Ayn
Rand in "Man's Rights"
"Man's rights
may not be left at the
unilateral decision, the
arbitrary
choice, the
irrationality, the whim of
another man."
-- Ayn Rand in
"The Nature of Government"
|
"Any group or 'collective,'
large or small, is only a number of
individuals. A group can have no rights
other than the rights of its individual
members. In a free society, the 'rights'
of any group are derived from the rights
of its members through their voluntary,
individual choice and contractual
agreement, and are merely the
application of these individual rights
to a specific undertaking... A group, as
such, has no rights.
"Any doctrine of group
activities that does not recognize
individual rights is a doctrine of mob
rule or legalized lynching... A nation that violates
the rights of its own citizens cannot
claim any rights whatsoever.
In
the issue of rights, as in all moral
issues, there can be no double
standard."
"Individual rights are not
subject to a public vote; a majority has
no right to vote away the rights of a
minority; the political function of
rights is precisely to protect
minorities from oppression by majorities
(and the smallest minority on earth is
the individual)."
--
Ayn
Rand in "Collectivized 'Rights' "
"Man's Rights" begins on
page 108, and "Collectivized 'Rights'
" on page 118 of THIS BOOK.
"The end does not justify
the means.
No one's rights can be
secured by the violation of the rights
of others."
--
Ayn Rand, "The Cashing-In: The Student
Rebellion," Capitalism: The Unknown
Ideal
"Rights
are conditions of existence required
by man's nature for his proper
survival. If man is to live on earth,
it is right for him to use his mind,
it is right to act on his own free
judgment, it is right to work for his
values and to keep the product of his
work. If life on earth is his
purpose, he has a right to live as a
rational being: nature forbids him the
irrational."
--
Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged
"If every person has the right to
defend even by force -- his person, his
liberty, and his property, then it
follows that a group of men have the
right to organize and support a common
force to protect these rights
constantly. Thus the principle of
collective right -- its reason for
existing, its lawfulness -- is based on
individual right. And the common force
that protects this collective right
cannot logically have any other purpose
or any other mission than that for which
it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an
individual cannot lawfully use force
against the person, liberty, or property
of another individual, then the common
force -- for the same reason -- cannot
lawfully be used to destroy the person,
liberty, or property of individuals or
groups."
--
Frédéric Bastiat, The Law |
"Justice is a cardinal virtue that renders
to another what rightfully belongs to him.
It is the ideal of man, the rule of conduct
given to mankind. By necessity of nature man
has certain rights, or claims in justice,
which are moral and lawful to possess or
obtain. These rights are antecedent to and
independent of the state, rights which the
state must not violate. In fact, the state,
or civil society, is instituted to preserve
these rights to its subjects, to adjudge
rights as between individuals—to render
justice. The idea of right and justice is
the general basis of the legal and
governmental institutions of what is known
as Western Civilization."
-- Hans F. Sennholz
"Property is surely a right of mankind as
real as liberty. The moment the idea
is admitted into society that property is
not as sacred as the laws of God, and that
there is not a force of law and public
justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny
commence."
-- John Adams
"If we buy into the notion that somehow
property rights are less important, or are
in conflict with, human or civil rights, we
give the socialists a freer hand to attack
our property."
-- Walter E. Williams
"A right is a claim to
freedom of action (including that of
securing privacy) which is the basis
for the 'basic golden rule,'
which is: 'Do nothing unto others you
wouldn't want them to do unto you,'
or, as Alfred the Great put it,
"What ye will that other men should
not do to you, that do ye not to
other men."
(King Alfred's Book of Laws,
circa 878 AD, according to Winston Churchill's History
of the English Speaking Peoples)
"As Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes said, 'The right to swing my fist
ends where the other man's nose begins.'
Rights must apply to everyone in the
same sense at the same time. So rights
must therefore be limited to claims of
freedom to do anything which does not
violate the freedoms of others. This
requires recognizing, respecting and
abiding by anyone else's wishes to be
left alone whenever he wants, and his
wishes to be free to do anything which
doesn't violate others. This is why no
one can claim a 'right' to interfere
with your life in any way
without your explicit, personally-given
consent for a specified purpose. There
can be no such thing as a 'right' for
anyone (or any group) to mess with you
whenever he wants (or whenever
they want) since it obviously isn't
applying to YOU in the same sense at the
same time.
"The purpose of a Bill of
Rights is to prevent anyone (including
the majority-of-the-moment) from
violating (or even voting away the
recognition of) the rights of anyone
else (including a minority of
one).
"We who use the English
language are blessed with the words 'allowing'
and 'permission' to refer to a
freedom of action granted by another
person or persons. This helps emphasize
the clear distinction of a right
as being a freedom of action a person
claims for himself.
"We who use the English
language are cursed with the word
'public' being used for both
government property and its use, as in
'public building', and for private
property and its use, as in 'open to
the public.' This can let
intellectually sloppy and even
intentionally dictatorial people try to
get away with implying that private
property must be treated as government
property, nomatter the owners' wishes.
"Rights apply to living beings
who rely on their conscious choice-
making abilities to live, as they are an
integral part of their codes of ethics
-- meaning guides to decision-making --
in cases where other decision-makers are
involved. On Earth, anyway, this
obviously applies only to human beings
and their interactions with each
other.
"Rights include the right for
anyone to defend himself from any force
or fraud initiated by others.
"Rights
are
negative in nature. My right to
free speech does not override your
rights. I cannot force you to print my
article in your newspaper. The
government is here to prevent anyone
from interfering with my right of free
speech. Similarly, I have a right
to apply for a job with your
company. I do not have a right to
a job! I cannot, and the
government cannot, force you to hire
me. Same for medical care, food,
clothing, etc. I have a right to
look for these things, but I cannot
force you to provide them. We can't
safeguard Peter's rights by stepping on
Paul's."
-- Marty Lewinter
| "Rights do not come from
governments nor their
Constitutions. They come from
man's nature (and/or, if you prefer,
his Creator). Thus
governments should be instituted
among men to protect rights,
not to grant them or to
violate them.
"Without consistent recognition
and protection of individual
rights, no civilization can last
long. People's ability and
willingness to simply live in
close proximity to one another,
let alone their ability and
willingness to cooperate with one
another, would be lost (Of course,
the importance of rights is
irrelevant to anyone who lives as
a hermit in permanent isolation.).
Anyone who uses even the tiniest
product or benefit of civilization
to advocate even the "tiniest"
violation of human rights is
guilty of perpetrating the
fallacy of the stolen concept (in
this case trying to use rights to
deny rights), the inconsistency
which destroys civilization, and
all its benefits, in the long run
(in effect using civilization to
destroy civilization)."
-- Rick Gaber
|
"From the fact
that people are very different it follows
that, if we treat them equally, the result
must be inequality in their actual position,
and that the only way to place them in an
equal position would be to treat them
differently. Equality before the law
and material equality are therefore not only
different but are in conflict with each
other; and we can achieve either one or the
other, but not both at the same time." -- F.
A. Hayek
"Equality, in a social sense,
may be divided into that of condition, and
that of rights. Equality of condition is
incompatible with civilization, and is found
only to exist in those communities that are
but slightly removed from the savage state.
In practice, it can only mean a common
misery." -- James Fenimore Cooper
"Machan
shines as he exposes embarrassing
contradictions of egalitarianism. Example:
'If welfare and equality are to be
primary aims of law, some people must
necessarily possess a greater power of
coercion in order to force
redistribution of material goods.
Political power alone should be equal
among human beings; yet, striving for
other kinds of equality absolutely
requires political inequality.' "
-- from Jim Powell's Review
of Private Rights and
Public Illusions
by Tibor Machan
"Rights are the implementation of freedom,
yet rights decide only one issue. They
decide who gets to decide. ...
[The initiation of ] force is immoral.
The use of force to achieve an objective, any
objective, deprives the result of any morality
at all. It degrades and demeans both the
objective and the result.” -- Tom and Linda
Rawles
"...the question
becomes, are you going to have everyone
play by the same rules, or are you going
to try to rectify the shortcomings,
errors and failures of the entire
cosmos? Because those things are wholly
incompatible. If you're going to have
people play by the same rules, that can
be enforced with a minimum amount of
interference with people's freedom. But
if you're going to try to make the
entire cosmos right and just, somebody
has got to have an awful lot of power to
impose what they think is right on an
awful lot of other people. What we've
seen, particularly in the 20th century,
is that putting that much power in
anyone's hands is enormously dangerous."
--
Thomas Sowell, in an interview in Salon11-10-99
"A free people [claim] their
rights as derived from the laws of
nature, and not as the gift of their
chief magistrate." -- Thomas Jefferson:
Rights of British America, 1774
"Under the law of nature, all men are
born free, every one comes into the
world with a right to his own person,
which includes the liberty of moving and
using it at his own will. This is what
is called personal liberty, and is given
him by the Author of nature, because
necessary for his own sustenance." --
Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770
"What
is true of every member of the society,
individually, is true of them all
collectively; since the rights of the
whole can be no more than the sum of the
rights of the individuals." -- Thomas
Jefferson to James Madison, 1789
"It
is strangely absurd to suppose that a
million of human beings, collected
together, are not under the same moral
laws which bind each of them
separately." -- Thomas Jefferson to
George Logan, 1816
"The
majority, oppressing an individual, is
guilty of a crime." --Thomas Jefferson
to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816
"Individual rights are the
means of subordinating society to moral
law." -- Ayn Rand
"The
function of rights is to keep society
from riding roughshod over the
individual. ... Individual rights are
inalienable--which means, they were
not transferred to you by anyone
or any government." -- Wayne Dunn
"The
authority of government ... can have no
pure right over my person and my
property but what I concede to it." --
Henry David Thoreau
"It is to secure
our rights that we resort to government
at all." -- Thomas Jefferson to Francois
D'Ivernois, 1795
"Nothing... is unchangeable but the
inherent and unalienable rights of
man." -- Thomas Jefferson to John
Cartwright, 1824
"[Our] principles [are] founded on the
immovable basis of equal right and
reason." -- Thomas Jefferson to
James Sullivan, 1797
"Of
liberty I would say that, in the whole
plenitude of its extent, it is
unobstructed action according to our
will. But rightful liberty is
unobstructed action according to our
will within limits drawn around us by
the equal rights of others. I do not add
'within the limits of the law,' because
law is often but the tyrant's will, and
always so when it violates the right of
an individual." -- Thomas Jefferson to
Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819
"Those rights, then, which God
and nature have established, and are
therefore called natural rights, such as
life and liberty, need not the aid of
human laws to be more effectually
invested in every man than they are;
neither do they receive any additional
strength when declared by the municipal
laws to be inviolate. On the contrary,
no human legislature has power to
abridge or destroy them, unless the
owner shall himself commit some act that
amounts to a forfeiture." -- Sir
William Blackstone, Commentaries on
the Laws of England, 1765
"A right without an attendant
responsibility is as unreal as a sheet
of paper which has only one side." –
Felix Morley
"If your most basic right is
the right to life, then it seems obvious
to me that you have the right to defend
your life. Guns are, in this century,
the most effective means of doing so -
so effective that every
genocide has only been carried out
against victims who were disarmed by
their governments." -- William G.
Hartwell
"As a man is said to have a
right to his property, he may be equally
said to have a property in his
rights. Where an excess of power
prevails, property of no sort is duly
respected. No man is safe in his
opinions, his person, his faculties, or
his possessions." -- James
Madison, National Gazzette, 1792
"A Bill of
Rights that means what the majority
wants it to mean is worthless."
- Justice Atonin Scalia
| To Secure Our
Rights
The Founders
established a government to
secure individual rights
because they believed, with
Locke, that justice requires
communities to recognize our
moral agency. We have a
personal responsibility to
run our own lives.
Governments are established
among men to procure,
preserve, and protect a
realm in which that moral
agency may be freely
exercised.
Enter the bad
guys, stage left.
Those who sought
to retain some elements of
the political outlook that
Locke’s theory had
overthrown—namely, the view
that people are subjects of
the state (in fact, belong
to the state)—found a way to
expropriate and exploit the
concept of human rights to
advance their reactionary
position, just as they
expropriated and exploited
the concept of liberalism.
(Yes, Virginia, Karl Marx
was a reactionary!)
Riding on
purloined prestige, they
perverted the concept of
individual rights at its
root so that it came to mean
not liberty from others but
service from others. Who
needs the right to pursue
happiness when one has the
right to be made happy (even
if the thus-extracted
“happiness” should render
the indentured providers of
it miserable)?
This was a view of
rights that wiped moral
agency right out of
existence. Positive rights
are thus nothing more than
mislabeled preferences, or
values, that people want the
government to satisfy or
attain for them—by force
|
|
|
"All rights, including the right to free
speech, are parts of a unified whole—they are
derivations from the fundamental right to
life, and obliteration of one of them is an
eventual obliteration of them all." -- Carter
Laren
"There is no such thing as Gay Rights,
Women's Rights, or Minority Rights. The only
rights that exist are Human Rights, those that
apply to ALL people. Any 'rights' that apply
only to certain groups are privileges that
they are attempting to obtain by mislabeling
them as rights." -- John Dobbins
| "Observe that all
legitimate rights have one thing
in common: they are rights to
action, not to rewards from
other people. The American rights
impose no obligations on other
people, merely the negative
obligation to leave you alone.
The system guarantees you the
chance to work for what you want
— not to be given it without
effort by somebody else.
The right to life, e.g., does
not mean that your neighbors
have to feed and clothe you; it
means you have the right to earn
your food and clothes yourself,
if necessary by a hard struggle,
and that no one can forcibly
stop your struggle for these
things or steal them from you if
and when you have achieved them.
In other words: you have the
right to act, and to keep the
results of your actions, the
products you make, to keep them
or to trade them with others, if
you wish. But you have no right
to the actions or products of
others, except on terms to which
they voluntarily agree." |
|
|
"The right to be let alone is
indeed the beginning of all freedom." --
Supreme Court Justice William O.
Douglas"
"They conferred, as
against the Government, the right to be
let alone--the most prehensive of rights
and the right most valued by civilized
men." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis (Olmstead v. U.S.)
"The right to be let alone is
the underlying principle of the
Constitution's Bill of Rights." -- Erwin
N. Griswold
"The
authority of government ... can have
no pure right over my person and my
property but what I concede to it." --
Henry David Thoreau
"A man's rights are not
violated by a private individual's
refusal to deal with him." -- Ayn Rand,
The Virtue of
Selfishness
"One must be free from
persecution for one’s political views,
from being arbitrarily imprisoned, or
from having one’s property seized. Such
rights are crucial to human life. Men
cannot learn, make new discoveries,
forge long-range plans, or enjoy the
rewards of their effort, if they live
under the constant threat of being
looted, imprisoned, or murdered. ... In
a truly Orwellian climax, the [U.N.'s]
Declaration brazenly upholds, as an
example of man’s rights and freedoms,
the individual’s duty to serve the
state." -- Robert W. Tracinski in The U.N.'s
Distortion of Rights
"Every group is predicated on
the existence of the individual.
When the individual is sacrificed, in
whole or in part, the group suffers.
Protect the inalienable rights of the
smallest minority -- the lone individual
-- and all minorities as well as the
majority will be protected." --
Zon
"Rights are based on moral
agency and the assumption of
reciprocity. Those who choose not
to respect rights don’t get theirs
respected in return ... it's classic tit
for tat. It’s like advocating
tolerance for everyone but the
intolerant, or violence only toward the
violent. Unconditional tolerance
or nonviolence is not sustainable, and
unconditional respect for rights (for
those who disrespect them) is unilateral
ethical disarmament. " -- Matt McIntosh
"Multiculturalism is social
poison. Toleration of intolerance isn't
sophistication. It's suicide."-- Jack
Kelly
| "Some
folk have access to
better dentists or
whatever because they
are richer. That may
annoy someone who cannot
afford the whitest
teeth, but that is not
proof of unfairness, as
such. To prove it, one
would have to construct
an ethical theory that
says that humans have an
apriori claim on their
fellows to receive a
certain amount of
healthcare/watever as a
"right". But such
"rights" are abuses of
the term: one cannot
have a right to X that
requires that another be
forced to provide X,
such as forcing folk to
train as doctors to
serve the sick, and so
on [or even forcing
ANYone else to pay for
it -- ed.]." -- Jonathan
Pearce
"If
some men are entitled
by right to the
products of the work
of others, it means
that those others are
deprived of rights and
condemned to slave
labor." -- Ayn Rand
"Any
alleged 'right' of one
man, which
necessitates the
violation of the
rights of another, is
not and cannot be a
right."- Ayn Rand
|
|
Where
do Rights Come From?
...
|
"Human rights are an aspect of
natural law, a consequence of the
way the universe works, as solid and
as real as photons or the concept of
pi. The idea of self-
ownership is the equivalent of
Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by
natural selection, of general
relativity, and of quantum
theory. Before humankind
discovered any of these, it
suffered, to varying degrees, in
misery and ignorance." -- L. Neil
Smith |
|
| Ayn
Rand's Theory of Rights: The Moral
Foundation of a Free Society |
|
| "When
men rise above the strictly
perceptual level of consciousness,
the first, or simplest, of the
conceptual levels enables the
concept of the Golden Rule.
Using his uniquely human capacity
for concept-formation, he can see
that people can best prosper long
term instead of just for a day by
engaging in specialization, trade
and cooperation, and by fostering
an atmosphere of good will among
all by making sure everyone treats
everyone else the same. Thus
the concept of rights appears --
all based on claims of
self-ownership -- essentially as
demands to be left alone until
willing to be socialized with
and/or traded with. So
the concept of the Golden Rule
should be obvious, as a necessity
-- to men who live as humans, that
is, who use their brains, and the
concepts of property and other
rights (which must, of necessity,
apply to everyone in the same
sense at the same time) derive
naturally from that.
Further, they recognize that their
actions can help build, maintain
or destroy civilization, and they
thereby develop a conscience, a
sense of personal responsibility.
"At
the same time, the concept of
the criminal must appear, in
order to designate those who
initiate force or fraud against
others, that is, violating
others' rights, whether they can
grasp the concept of rights or
not. Willfully or not,
criminals remain at the level of
the strictly perceptual
mentality, as do animals, not
thinking long term, only of what
they can 'get away with'
immediately. As predators,
they are dependent upon the
unwilling support of productive
others, so they can't take pride
in their own productivity,
self-sufficiency or personal
integrity. They certainly
don't think anywhere near
conceptually enough to recognize
that their own actions help
build, maintain or destroy
civilization. So for
controlling those who operate on
such a perceptual level and who
therefore could become criminals
at the first opportunity,
preventive 'commandments' as
well as a system of punishments
for wrongdoing may be necessary,
especially if no one has the
time or the resources or even
the ability to train everyone to
think conceptually and recognize
rights.
"What of ancient Greece and the
slave-holding American
colonies? I consider them
to be 'bridge' societies of one
level of development or another,
growing out of primitivism, not
yet fully civilized (Are we
there yet? No, kids, not
by a long shot), but providing
an environment for the further
development of civilization
. Were the abolitionists
right in considering the
Confederacy's slave owners to be
criminals, for example?
Yes, I think so." -- Rick Gaber
|
"A Bill of Rights is what
the people are entitled to against
every government on Earth... and what
no just government should refuse." –
Thomas Jefferson in a Letter to James
Madison, Paris, Dec. 20, 1787
''It has been objected also
against a bill of rights, that, by
enumerating particular exceptions to
the grant of power, it would disparage
those rights which were not placed in
that enumeration; and it might follow
by implication, that those rights
which were not singled out, were
intended to be assigned into the hands
of the General Government, and were
consequently insecure. This is one of
the most plausible
arguments I have ever heard
against the admission of a bill of
rights into this system; but, I
conceive, that it may be guarded
against. I have attempted it, as
gentlemen may see by turning to the
last clause of the fourth resolution
[The Ninth Amendment].''
-- James Madison, June 8, 1789
"The
enumeration in the Constitution, of
certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people."
-- Amendment IX, Constitution of the
United States
A Poem
Lost Rights
Bill of Rights
Bogus Rights
Bill of NO
Rights
Chodorov on Rights
IndividualRights.org
Some Crucial
Definitions
Rights are moral
principles
Individuals and Their
Rights
A "Right" to Health
Care ?
The U.N.'s Distortion of
Rights
The U.N. versus
Individual Rights
The Destruction of the Bill
of Rights
"The Planetary Bill of
Rights Project"
Russell Madden Takes on the
Rat Freaks
Stop calling things
"civil rights" when they're not.
Individual Rights (&
Personal Responsibility) Home
Page
"Over himself, over his own
mind and body, the individual is
sovereign." -- J.S. Mill, On Liberty,
1859, "Introductory"
"...every man has a property
in his own person. This nobody has any
right to but himself." -- John Locke
"There is no such
dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property
rights.' No human rights can exist without
property rights." -- Ayn Rand
"From all which it is
evident, that though the things of
Nature are given in common, man (by
being master of himself, and
proprietor of his own person, and the
actions or labour of it) had still in
himself the great foundation of
property; and that which made up the
great part of what he applied to the
support or comfort of his being, when
invention and arts had improved the
conveniences of life, was perfectly
his own, and did not belong in common
to others." -- John Locke
"The highest manifestation
of life consists in this: that a being
governs its own actions. A thing
which is always subject to the
direction of another is somewhat of a
dead thing." -- Saint Thomas Aquinas
(who re-introduced Aristotle to
Western Civilization, eventually
leading to the Renaissance)
"[Art.] 2. [Natural Rights.]
All men have certain natural,
essential, and inherent rights - among
which are, the enjoying and defending
life and liberty; acquiring,
possessing, and protecting, property;
and, in a word, of seeking and
obtaining happiness. Equality of
rights under the law shall not be
denied or abridged by this state on
account of race, creed, color, sex or
national origin." -- New Hampshire
State Constitution, 1784
"In a new draft article, 'St. George Tucker’s
Second Amendment: Deconstructing
'The True Palladium of Liberty' [pdf],' Stephen P.
Halbrook takes the reader step-by-step
through Tucker's monumentally
influential annotated American
Blackstone, the most important
legal treatise of the Early Republic.
Analyzing Tucker's Blackstone, and
other writings by Tucker, Halbrook
shows that Tucker explicitly
recognized the Second Amendment as an
individual right, including the right
to posses firearms for personal
self-defense, unrelated to militia
duty." -- David Kopel
Some More Quotations about
Rights ... And
... More Articles on Rights
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