The Founding Fathers aren’t very popular in public high schools these days. Apart from a cursory and incomplete introduction to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, much of what our Framers wrote is ignored.
Every once in a while, however, a teacher or administrator might quote what she thinks is Thomas Jefferson’s rationale for public education, as if our current fixation on “college and career readiness” were what he had in mind when he wrote: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Ironically, though, many teachers are ignorant of the very things Jefferson thought necessary for a free civilization. I became aware of this during some acrimonious labor negotiations between my school district and its teachers union. In various ways, the union warned that my rights (and my students’ rights) were in jeopardy if the district didn’t accede to the union’s demands.
The freedom Jefferson had in mind depends on understanding the conceptual and philosophical foundation upon which one can claim a “right” to anything. If that foundation erodes because of negligent education institutions, Jefferson expected the walls of our self-governing republic to topple.
What Can Be Considered a Right?
We often hear of one’s “right” to education or health care, although these are not rights in the technical sense. As the things we are told we have a “right” to grows each year, why shouldn’t a 5 percent raise be considered a teacher’s right?
The rhetoric of rights is appealing. Label whatever you want a “right” and you tip the scales in your favor. However appealing the tactic may be, however, is conceptually incorrect and politically dangerous.
A “right” is not something you deeply desire. The Founders understood that a right is a constraint upon others not to violate what humans do by nature of being human. The very concept of “rights” implies a belief in human nature. In the words of Alexander Hamilton, “The sacred rights of mankind…are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself; and can never be erased.”
You Have a Right to Do What Humans Do By Nature
Rights are not given to us by governments, but they are recognized and protected by the best governments. Rights are ours by nature, which is to say that humans, by nature of being human, do certain things. To protect someone’s rights is thus to protect one’s freedom to live a fully human life.
To offer an analogy: a flower, by nature, absorbs nutrients from the soil and sun and blossoms in the spring. That’s what it means to be a flower. Absorbing nutrients and blossoming in spring are its rights, for that is what it does according to its nature. A society seeking to protect the natural rights of flowers would constrain anyone wishing to stop the flower from doing what flowers do. Thankfully, though, we don’t yet live in such a world.
But humans do have rights. The Founders not only held beliefs about our nature but made a value judgment on that nature. Thus we have “rights,” chief of which is the “right to life,” to secure the sacredness of human life. We also reason and, acting on that reason, we pursue human flourishing; thus we have the right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
By definition, humans reason and act in accordance with that reason. Jefferson can write “all men are created equal,” a phrase that perplexes many of my students who find it patently false after a cursory empirical investigation. But to say “all men are created equal” is to state the obvious: we are all human and we all do what humans do. It’s an obvious but profound and deadly idea, undermining anyone claiming a right to rule by nature over anyone else.
Consequently, this view of human nature entails the right to self-governance. As rational animals exercising reason and striving after our own ends in community with others doing the same, we all have the right to participate in creating the laws under which we live.
In light of this view of human nature, our Bill of Rights safeguards those rights in order for us to fully live as humans. To offer two examples: freedom of speech safeguards our rights both to participate in self-governance and to reason with our fellow humans. And the freedom to bear arms safeguards both our very lives by allowing us to defend ourselves and our right to “alter or to abolish” any government failing to protect our rights.
Rights Aren’t Just Things That Would Be Nice To Have
Contrary to what many students learn in school, rights are not things that we think would be nice or even things that we need to live. For example, an education is not a right if it means that someone must teach me what I don’t know. A “right to an education” is not a constraint upon others to safeguard my human nature, but a demand imposed on others to satisfy a want.
To fulfill one’s illegitimate “right” to an education, someone’s else’s real right to liberty would be violated, for one must be forced to educate you if no one does so willingly. Yes, education is important, but it is not a right. If we institute a system of free, universal education, it should be done so by mutual consent of all involved and should be eliminated or altered when the majority deems necessary. In other words, free, universal education might be a good idea or a good policy, but it is not a right. The same goes for health care and raising teachers’ salaries.
To wade into more controversial territory, much of what is said regarding gay rights or transgender rights also misses the mark. What gay and transgender rights activists fight for are not rights, but definitions.
Prior to 2015, gays weren’t denied their right to marry. They could have married if they had wanted to—if they married someone of the opposite sex. Marriage was defined as a union between a man and a woman (for the sake of producing and rearing children). But activists claimed that everyone had the right to marry the one they love, not realizing they were talking nonsense: We don’t marry the one we love by nature of being human, so it’s not a right.
People today are not capable of putting our Bill of Rights into the proper context. Our nation was created at a time where practicing a religion, saying whatever you wanted to or not being accused of a crime so the government could take away what you owned was a rarity. Codifying basic human rights was a necessity, not some frivolous gesture.
Now, people view those rights as standard equipment, the base model of a life; they want to add the options, like health care, education, forcing others to accept your lifestyle or a person’s right to deny you of YOUR rights.
I don’t think that “rights” are what Curt says they are.
Aside from several “pretty” statements about rights deriving from “human nature” (as nebulous a term as Curt could find, no doubt) he doesn’t really offer where “rights” come from save by excluding where they do not come from, and just as an aside, from a practical perspective, his exclusions are entirely debatable.
Out of respect for his convictions, though, let’s assume that Curt is correct about the right to life and the pursuit of happiness. If that right is “sacred”, doesn’t that mean that it belongs to God, and that we as mere “humans” can’t abrogate it for our own “human nature”? (Like killing each other?) With human nature obviously involving the never-ending slaughter of human life – a whole lot of that slaughter being presumably lawful – where again does the sacred part really enter the picture? Did GOD say it was sacred? Or do we just have that on hear-say? Why was Curt silent on this question, because it would seem that God would be a good place to start. But which God? No, really! The old, vengeful one that drowned people, asked them to murder their children, etc., or a Nouveau God redesigned to comport more comfortably with evolving (not static) concepts of morals, ethics and rights? The Christian God, or one of the others, or all of them?
The further Curt reaches back into the stone age to find justification for his sense of what rights are, the further away he gets from how our MODERN society not only views them but manages them. (Really, that “human nature” idea is so bogus it didn’t deserve mention. It can’t stand up by itself. It would have to be believed by virtually everyone – not just Republicans or evangelicals for example – for it to be a workable basis for our laws, and it simply isn’t.) More to the point would be a rational explanation of how rights are expressed in our laws and the contemporary decisions that adjudicate them, as opposed to simply being satisfied by telling each other where rights come from… and “human nature” isn’t a good answer.
It is those human constructs, those laws and decisions that are what affect our lives, not what Alexander Hamilton wrote about sunbeams and divinity over 200 years ago.
where and when did all this crap become free and mandated as necessary??Roosevelt in the era of the new deal gave free stuff out and whore dog billy and the terrorist obama kept it going. the right to bear arms was given by a group of men in gray wigs that 50% died in the first two years of the War for Independence. does anyone recall in history the circular paper-no? recall that king james III died as a md man- one can only hope that polosi, schiff and nadler will follow the same course in history. A good read is Mike Lee’s book, Our Lost Declaration a very good read to explain Curt’s post
We are a collection of diverse folks from a great many different places, and we hold a great many different and often conflicting opinions about both what is right and what rights are. Nevertheless, we are a self-governing body, and we, in the here-and-now, through the various instruments and actions of our governance do collectively decide and enforce what we can and what we cannot lawfully do. This process essentially itemizes our rights, whether they existentially derived from a herald of angels or from Darwin’s Origin of Species and his notion of the survival of the fittest.
So long as road conditions permit, my vehicle is safe, I am properly licensed and not otherwise impaired, and the posted speed limit is 55 mph, I have a RIGHT to drive at 55 mph. Neither God nor the Founding Fathers made it so. Our civic agreement set that right in place, not for posterity nor for the future, but for the here and now. Same thing perspective applies to gay marriage. It didn’t exist as a right when the country was formed any more than did the right to drive at 55 mph, but those rights are both now in effect as a consequence of governance.
Perhaps a more pressing question would be why the exercise of these many various rights is encountering more and more violent opposition. There is a profound connection between overpopulation and violence within a society, and there is strong evidence that such overburdened societies tend to self-destruct.
“Our Lost Declaration”? For what? To keep the rules as they were when we were but one percent as populous as we are now? To keep our understanding of the universe through science pegged to the state of the art as it was in 1789? Our population has more than doubled in my lifetime, and it will double again, bringing challenges unimaginable to our Founding Fathers. And science has exploded over the same period, discovering and creating in ways never imagined 250 years ago.
Perhaps Curt is right in one respect: It is human nature to grow, expand, and learn, and the rights associated with that growth also evolve. Our history is not forgotten or lost. It is an important component of who we are by virtue of where we came from. But where we originally came from does not tell the whole story, because each successive generation adds its own contribution, and by now, for better or for worse, we are vastly different from how we were.
@George Wells: You speak much of gaining so called rights what about losing rights? They are trying to codify speech, in NY a steep fine for saying illegal alien. Now that is a law taking away freedom of speech. When are rights granted to a human? conception,birth,12, 16, 18, 21? Per the constitution you are created with them.
Man has not evolved out of his form nor nature since 1776. Rights are for an individual not any special identity group.
@kitt:
” Rights are for an individual not any special identity group.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly made the point that “rights” also belong to corporations. Remember Hobby Lobby? Were they making the point that a corporation is an “individual” or that rights are not just for individuals?
Losing rights as opposed to gaining them? Sure. We had the right to drink alcohol, then we did not, and then we did. That right, like so many others, was diddled with because a self-governing society does just that – it determines what rights its people have and what rights they don’t have. The government giveth and the government taketh away.
When are rights ‘given”? Whenever the society decides to give them. At one time, if you were 18 and forced to serve your country by putting your life on the line in War, you had the right to drink alcohol. Then that right was taken away and returned to you when you reached 21 years of age. Some rights – like citizenship – confer when a birth certificate is issued, which happens around the time of birth, but you don’t get the right to vote at that time, do you? “Per the Constitution you are created with them” is not in a practical sense how rights work. The question is more complicated than that.
Man has not evolved significantly in the past 250 years, but the science that informs our understanding of truth has, and the Founding Fathers had no way of anticipating smart phones and the rights of privacy attendant to that technology, or any of the other complex issues which have surfaced SINCE 1776. If our laws were restricted to address only those issues and associated ‘rights” which already existed in 1776, those laws would be woefully inadequate.
Much like the Democrats’ neutered efforts to reverse the results of the 2016 election of Donald Trump after the fact, you would be well-advised to move on from your now-hopeless cause of defeating gay marriage. That “right” was “created” by the Supreme Court out of its interpretation of the very Constitution you are so infatuated with, and their option to reverse that decision is severely enjoined by the millions of gay marriages that have been legally entered into since the decision was issued. Neither is there anywhere near enough social objection to gay marriage to allow a legislative reversal of that right. You don’t have to like it any more than you have to like driving at 55 miles per hour, but that is the Law.