On Human Rights and Government

That which comes before should inform that which comes after. Since humans were necessarily here prior to human government, our concept of humans and human rights should inform our concept of government. We hear much talk of human rights in the media and among people so inclined to discuss political and human events. Nevertheless, do people really know what human rights are? When asked most people simply make a list. They cite the freedom of speech as a human right or the freedom to assemble peaceably. They can list any number of things that they believe to be basic human rights but lists are rarely if ever exhaustive. Few can actually define the term. Surely we can do better than Justice Stewart's I know it when I see it in the US Supreme Court decision of Jacobellis v. Ohio. Moreover, just what is a basic human right? Are there advanced human rights? I would say not. So then, what we really have are just human rights. Nevertheless, what is the definition of human rights? What systematic method may we use to determine what falls under this banner? I would propose the following definition: Those essential qualities intrinsic to the individual by virtue of our existence as moral agents, which are possessed and exercised independently of others. I have little doubt many people will believe this to be an insufficient definition or perhaps just wrong. However, I would appreciate a fair hearing on the merits. Let us start by breaking down the definition into its component parts. Those essential qualities. What do I mean by that? Essential, necessary, of highest importance and most elemental of features. Qualities are characteristics that make up the indispensable identifying nature of the human ethos. The human animal and human rights are so interwoven and melded that one simply cannot be separated from the other and thus we have: intrinsic to the individual. Part of the very nature of the individual. Inseparable from the individual. Why the individual? Because it must be the individual. If there were only a single human being on the entire face of the planet, would that individual have human rights? I say most emphatically, yes! Furthermore, human beings have the exact same human rights and can exercise them in totality whether there be one or one hundred trillion human beings in existence. Each and every individual has human rights inherently and intrinsically. But why is this so? by virtue of existence as moral agents. Humans have an ingrained sense of morality. We are moral beings. While this sense of morality may be shaped by experience and societal mores in its specifics we do none-the-less have an ingrained sense that the concept of right and wrong exist whether or not we can agree on the specifics of any particular action as being right or wrong. This is what separates us from the animals and not mere intellectual capacity. What exactly gives us this moral sense I do not know but I do know it is there.

It is this sense of right and wrong, this moral sense that gives us the expectation of being treated in a rightful and just manner. It is this moral sense that gives us the human right to be treated rightly; to be treated justly. It is this universal moral sense which makes it wrong to be treated wrongly and unjustly by others. It is this universal moral sense that gives us our universal human rights. which is possessed and exercised I say possessed and exercised because it is pointless to posit the individual has rights and then deny that he can exercise them. As in the possession of human rights, if there were a single individual, that individual can completely possess and exercise his or her human rights in totality. To demand that others must participate in order to exercise a right in effect denies the individual right exists which brings us to: independently of others. This will be the real sticking point for some. Rights are individual. They of a necessity must be. If another person or entity is required for the exercise of a certain right, then that right is dependent upon that other person or entity. That other person or entity can then remove or impart that particular human right. I would posit here, also, that there is no such thing as group rights. For example, a group cannot have the right to free speech if no one in the group can speak. If the individual cannot speak on his own, who then empowers the individual to speak for the group? Could it be from some outside authority? But rights do not proceed from some outside authority else they be given and taken at the will of that outside authority. Could it be the cumulative authority of the group? Absolutely not. A group of humans has no more moral authority than any single human. To posit otherwise is simply to proceed under the ill-fated tenet that might makes right. Rights proceed from the individual. They are intrinsic to and inseparable from the individual. This of a necessity must be true else, human rights can be given and taken at will by whoever is deemed by himself or others to be empowered to do so. However, groups may yet exercise human rights. Individuals already possessing the right of free speech may assemble to propagate a certain message, to work together towards a common goal and share the fruits of exercising their individual human rights. Now that we have a working definition of human rights, we can go about determining just what specific human rights exist; of just what exactly our rights consist. I would posit we have three rights from which all others spring. These would be the right to life, liberty and property. These are, I suppose, blatantly stolen from Locke. Let me explain these three rights. The right to life would seem self-explanatory but it may not be. Each human is a separate entity unto himself or herself. Each human is sovereign in and of himself or herself. Once we exist, through whatever means, we have life and no entity has the just authority to end that life save through forfeiture of the one who lives it. Notice I say just authority. Most people have heard the phrase, the end justifies the means. Many things are done and attempted under color of authority. However, authority, no matter whence it comes and no matter what the intent or aim, cannot go about unjustly curtailing anyones human rights and yet do so in a just manner. This may seem obvious upon first reflection but it is not. While most would eschew such a philosophy as the end justifies the means if asked publicly, many of us, if not all, engage in such practice as suits us from time to time while out of the public eye.

Liberty is the freedom to act or think without coercion from any other entity, be that entity an individual or group. Liberty is the most elemental of freedoms; the most necessary and basic part of an existence based in freedom. In the beginning, organized society was intended to secure human rights; to protect the individual from those who would unjustly constrain ones rights. This is so even though the idea of human rights was not actually recognized at the time. The effect desired was to protect these rights. It has much more often than not ensured the opposite. Man has striven for freedom, for self-determination, for independence from unjust governmental and societal authority for most of history and yet freedom from this unjust authority is something we in the United States take largely for granted. We assume our liberties and freedoms will always be protected. History declares such a belief to be pure folly and yet most persist in it. Is property really a human right? The answer is yes and no. One does not have a right to own property. What I mean by property is that once one justly owns private property then that one has a right to be secure in that property, to know that no individual or group can use color of authority to take it unjustly. This is one of the most ignored, unrecognized and violated rights in our society. Sure, everyone knows that if one owns a home that home is his and cannot be taken without what our constitution and laws call due process. Well, at least we used to know that. With the Supreme Court decision of Kelo v. City of New London, real estate may essentially be taken from anyone when the government can show a likely increase in tax revenues from transferring real property from one private owner to another private owner. However, I am not only talking about real estate. Private property is everything one has under his ownership or in his possession that has been justly obtained. This includes real estate, automobiles, clothing, cash, labor, time and anything else of value or not to the owner. In this sense, property is the totality of every resource at the disposal and under the just authority of the individual owner. What does all this have to do with government? Everything. The understanding of human rights is the very foundation of the concept of government. It determines what the government can and cannot justly do; what authority that government may wield; what actions that government may or may not take. Ones concept of human rights parallels ones concept of government. It determines what one believes to be the proper role and function of government. For instance, recently US Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor was asked during her confirmation hearings the following question: Do I [the questioner] have a right to personal self defense? What was her answer? that is sort of an abstract question with no particular meaning to me outside the law. Outside the law? This struck me profoundly causing me to contemplate the broader implications of her answer. Perhaps if Justice Sotomayor would revisit the subject she would clarify her answer and make it clear my conclusion is less than accurate but nonetheless she seems to be saying that rights are dependent upon the law. Nothing could be further from the truth. Human rights precede the law. The law actually proceeds from our view of human rights, or more accurately, our understanding of ethics that proceeds from our understanding of human rights. Therefore, the progression we have is this: Our understanding of human rights leads to our understanding of ethics, which leads to our formulation of the law. In order to formulate law we must first institute government. The single most important role of any government is to secure the rights and freedoms of the citizen. By doing this, the government secures each individuals human rights. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson penned the

words, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal This was a radical idea at the time and stated as a refutation of the widely accepted theory of the Divine Right of Kings. In keeping with this ideal, the government must secure rights and freedoms equally among all citizens. Concurrent with this, the government cannot justly secure the rights of one citizen at the expense of the rights of another. While it may seem obvious that this cannot be done while keeping all rights equal, this concept has severe consequences for government. Critical to the formulation of government is the origin of its power and authority. The only just government, and thus the only government that can truly secure the rights of the citizen, is a government based on the consent of the governed. This is hardly a novel idea but it is true nonetheless. The power and authority of government is gained through the consent of the individual. When giving this consent, the individual loans or confers a portion of his or her human rights to the government. This is the one and only just source of government authority. Therefore, a just government can only do what each individual has the right to do him or herself. No individual has the right to violate anothers rights. In addition, no individual has the right to secure his or her own rights at the expense of anothers rights. Therefore, government cannot justly secure the right of one citizen at the expense of anothers rights. This applies to groups of citizens as well. Government cannot justly secure the rights of one group at the expense of another groups rights. Since all men are created equal, no individual and thus no government can justly treat individuals or groups differently. Since the governments sole source of just power and authority is that portion of the individuals human rights that have been loaned to government, it stands to reason that the individual cannot loan to the government that which they do not have. Therefore, if an individual does not have the right or moral authority to act in a certain manner, the individual cannot justly empower government to act in such manner in his stead. For instance, if person A needs a dollar for his supper and his neighbor, B, has dollars to spare, can person A simply go and take a dollar from person B? Of course not. Person A would be committing a crime and violating the rights of person B. Can person A justly empower the government to tax person B and give the money collected to person A? No, for person A simply cannot give power to the government that he does not possess himself. This happens all the time, of course, and it is quite legal but it is still a violation of person Bs human rights. I am quite well aware this concept of government will meet with much opposition. So I ask, what are the alternatives? The problem becomes that there is only one actual alternative, which can take many forms. Any other concept of government is simply based upon the premise that might makes right. Many forms of government are based blatantly upon this concept. A dictatorship is the most obvious that comes to mind but others do as well, such as a military junta, absolute monarchy, theocracy, or any number of others. These forms of government are obviously composed of just a few members of society dictating to the rest. They have the might and whatever they say is right. However, there are other forms of government that can work from this same principle while remaining unnoticed. Even our own form of a Constitutional Republic may work in this manner and often does. The reason is that any time any government takes any action which cannot be justified by the concept of human rights contained herein, that action is either an usurpation of

power and authority or a manufacture of power and authority by force. The government cannot usurp power and authority from the people without an unjust use of force nor can the government simply manufacture power and authority without an unjust use of force. Thus, might makes right defines such action and the form the government may take is irrelevant. An unjust use of force, no matter how many citizens support such action, is simply might makes right and nothing more. In an example, the poor need help and it is not always easy to get help from family, neighbors and other local citizens and organizations for a variety of reasons. Private charities are often overwhelmed with requests so we have a government that has taken over a large portion of what used to be handled with private charity. Can government tax citizens and justly use this money to make payments to the poor for their upkeep? In answering this question, the first thing one must remember is that government is force. Whatever government undertakes, the threat of force is overtly made or implied. That in itself is not a bad thing for there is just and unjust use of force. The real question then, is from whence this force comes. For the use of force to be just it must be derived from individual human rights on loan to the government. Put in individual terms, can person A justly force person B to give charitably to person C? The only rational answer is no. One does not have the right or the moral authority to force another to give to charity no matter what the cause. Since this is obviously so, one cannot then loan the power they do not possess to the government. In order for the government to accomplish this end, government must manufacture the authority by force to do this. The governmental manufacture of force is unjust for any reason no matter how noble the cause. Government simply cannot undertake a just act by using unjust force and to do so amounts to nothing more than might makes right. A second example of this in our society is Social Security. I know you were waiting for something like this but hear me out. Social Security has a laudable goal. It attempts to ensure the elderly have a certain threshold of economic security through government assistance. It is widely supported by the citizenry and most of the political class. Nevertheless, Social Security violates the human rights of the individual. It does this because the government takes money from one individual by force or threat of force in order to give that money to another individual who did not earn it. This is essentially the same scenario we had with person A and B above. Most people would find it ludicrous to believe that a retired person has the right to go to a working person and demand money to fund his retirement. Yet so many are willing to accept that a government that allegedly derives its power from the individual can do what that individual cannot. Many people try to make the distinction that they are paying into a fund. There is, after all, a Social Security Trust Fund. What many people fail to realize, however, is that any money paid out in any fiscal year as Social Security benefits is collected from taxpayers that same fiscal year. This has been true since the inception of the program and will continue to be true into the future until Congress changes it. Social Security is funded merely by the government taking money from the person who earned it and turning that money over to a person who did not. When it comes time for you to retire, then the government will forcibly take money from one who is employed and give that money to you. Many people believe this to be a fair and just action. Nevertheless, it is not. Taking money from B and giving it to A is not recompensed by taking money from C and giving it to B. Two wrongs do not make a right.

In still another example, we have many calls today for democracy. Some believe the President should be elected by the popular vote and that the Electoral College should be disbanded. Others call for combining the two chambers of Congress into a unicameral legislature to facilitate legislation. Yet what do both of these propositions have in common? They both do away with protections of minority rights and institute might makes right into our very government. The majority wants what they want and they want it now. They are generally more than willing to ride roughshod over the wishes of the minority, if not outright ignore them, and do whatever they feel they have a mandate to accomplish. Pure democracy was recognized by our Founding Fathers as degenerating into nothing but mob rule and tyranny. While might certainly does not make right, government can justly wield force. One of the more obvious examples is an attack from some outside force against the nation. The government is perfectly justified to use force against any invaders who seek to subjugate the people. The individual has the right of self-defense and can justly loan this right, this power, to the government to exercise in the individuals stead. Human rights are those essential qualities intrinsic to the individual by virtue of our existence as moral agents, which are possessed and exercised independently of others. On this and this alone may a just government be based. It has been shown over several examples and explanations just how our concept of human rights must determine our concept of human government. It is only through a thorough examination and a proper understanding of human rights in general and in specific which can then lead to a proper understanding of the role of a just government. It is only through this understanding of human rights and the proper role of government that government may be properly restrained and prevented from violating the human rights of the citizen and thereby usurping the citizens just freedoms and liberties. It is only through this understanding of human rights, in all due diligence, that government may properly employ the power temporarily entrusted to it. Any other course is tyranny.