All forms of government have some sense of rights. But natural rights exist independent of government and its laws.
This post is a brief summary accompanied by a link to an article written by Justin Stapley for the Federalist Coalition, a 501(c)(4) non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to promote and educate Americans on the principles of federalism. For more links as well as insights, short-posts, and general ramblings from Justin Stapley (editor and owner of The Liberty Hawk), visit The Editor’s Corner.
In my very first article for the Federalist Coalition, back in September 2017, I laid out what constitutes a right, what differentiates a natural right, and even discussed the ideas of civil rights and collective rights.
Some of the points I sought to make were that every government in history built the foundations of its legitimacy on rights, though those rights were more often believed to be conferred on a sovereign leader or group of leaders.
It wasn’t until the Enlightenment that rights began to be considered universal in nature and invested equally in all mankind. After the Enlightenment, it wasn’t until the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution that a government was constructed to protect the sovereignty of its people and to preserve the natural rights of the individual.
I also touch on the necessity of considering and establishing civil rights, rights that necessarily come into existence to protect the natural freedoms of individuals from infringement due to the realities created by the existence of government, such as the right to vote.
Finally, I attempted to dispel the myth of collective or group rights. I assert that only individuals think, feel, and act. Rights only properly exist as individual rights. Governments, organizations, and associations may be granted certain powers and authority by their members, but they have no rights.
To believe that any collective or group can grant itself rights that supersede individual rights is tyrannical and regressive. Such tyranny resulting from the idea of collective or group rights can be seen both in the Socialist and Communist regimes of the past as well as in the institution of slavery in early American History.
Click here to read the full article.
Do you have a response to Justin’s article? Would you like to offer your own take on this topic? Feel free to submit your own article or offer a comment below.
Justin Stapley is the owner and editor of The Liberty Hawk and the voice of The New Centrist Podcast. As a political writer, his principles and ideals are grounded in the ideas of ordered liberty as expressed in the traditions of classical liberalism, federalism, and modern conservatism. You can follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.
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This is true of property rights to the fruits of labor, but not true of property in land, which is conditional. Locke’s two conditions were that the land must be in use, and that there must continue to be “enough, and as good, left to others.”
Thomas Jefferson noted that,
“A right of property in moveable things is admitted before the establishment of government. A separate property in lands, not till after that establishment. The right to moveables is acknowledged by all the hordes of Indians surrounding us. Yet by no one of them has a separate property in lands been yielded to individuals. He who plants a field keeps possession till he has gathered the produce, after which one has as good a right as another to occupy it. Government must be established and laws provided, before lands can be separately appropriated, and their owner protected in his possession.”
Writing to James Madison, he said,
“Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed.”
When Bastiat said, “Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property,” he excluded land from that statement:
“First, let me state that I use the word *property* in the general sense, and not in the limited sense of *landed property*. I regret, and probably all economists regret with me, that this word involuntarily evokes in us the idea of the possession of land. By *property* I understand the right that the worker has to the value that he has created by his labor.” [emphasis Bastiat’s]
Finally, John Locke, William Penn, Francois “laissez faire” Quesnay, Adam Smith, Mirabeau, Turgot, Franklin, Paine and many other classical liberals and paleolibertarians advocated putting the entire tax burden on land values.
John Locke unmistakably intended for land (as any other possession) to be owned exclusively by the person who mixes his labor with it. The spoilage and sufficiency qualifications form no impediment to exclusive ownership as the value of improved land is so much greater and serves mankind so much better than uncultivated lands that are not owned. In a developed landscape, there is no limit to the land that can be appropriated and improved since by that time humanity survives on the fruit of the labor produced by productive individuals. The virtually unlimited lands available for appropriation within the borders of the United States preclude the need to restrict land ownership.
“The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions of the several states, and the organic laws of the territories all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.“
— Susan B. Anthony
The Rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”
— John F. Kennedy
“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