Man's Rights

Man’s Rights
Definition from dictionary.com: a Right is not something someone gives to you but something no one can take away.

“Rights” are a moral concept- the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others – the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context – the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society. Between ethics and politics, individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. (Rand 108)
A right is the property of an individual that society as such has no rights, and that the only moral purpose of a government is the protection of individual rights. 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 the other are its consequences or corollaries): A man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self generated action – which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life (such is the meaning of the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness) (Rand 110)
The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law but the law of identity. A is A and man is man. 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. (Rand, Atlas Shrugged)
For the first time in history man’s rights were not given to him by a dictator or by god as a privilege but were understood to be inalienable to be part of man’s nature and the best part of him. That government was not there to dictate a man’s life but was instilled by the people for the people. The Declaration of Independence laid down the principles that “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men” this provided the only valid justification of a government and defined it’s only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical force.
There has been a breaking and a misunderstanding of what rights truly are and how they operate in a social context. An alleged right which takes away the rights of another man cannot by its very definition be called a right. Right’s do not enforce obligations on another person or on a group of persons. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave”
One of the biggest key indicators of our society losing sight of the concept of rights and their corollaries was the Democratic Party platform of 1960 which summarizes the switch from the concept of rights from political to the economic realm. It declares that a democratic administration “will reaffirm the economic bill of rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote in our national conscience sixteen years ago”
1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms of mines of the nation.
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his product at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
4. The right of every businessman, large and small to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad.
5. The right of every family to a decent home
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment.
8. The right to a good education
Jobs, food, clothing, recreation, homes, medical care, education etc do not grow in nature. These are Man-Made values, goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? A question to add at the end of all 8 points above is a simple one, at whose cost? The question number one becomes the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries of shops or farms of mines of the nation, at whose cost. Number two becomes the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation, at whose cost? If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those other are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.
Our fore fathers spoke of the Pursuit of Happiness; they did not speak of the right to happiness, only a guarantee to the pursuit of happiness. This means that a man can take the actions he thinks are necessary to achieve his own happiness. It does not mean that other must make him happy. For example the right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work and to as high a level that he may reach. It does not mean others have to provide him with the necessities of life. The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property. The right to free speech means that a man has the right to express his ideas without danger of suppression, interference of punitive action by the government; it does not mean that others must provide him with a lecture hall, a radio station or a printing press through which to express his ideas.
In order to become a free society man must have an understanding of his rights and that no one may take his rights unless he allows them to take his rights from him. Over the last 80 years or so there has been a systematic destruction of man’s rights and only very few willing to do anything about it, this is because the main flaw in the founding of this country was a lack of a moral code to back up the constitution. Abraham Lincoln once said that “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves” Does this simply mean outright slavery, or does it imply in its context a slavery of any kind? Slavery of forcing a man to hire employees he normally would not, or of forcing some group of people to pay for the hardship of others?
One of the major problems with society today is the concept of their rights, that it is their right to medical care and a job simply showcases the ignorance’s of society and its Individuals in our modern culture. A group of individuals who claim they have these rights and it is the responsibility of the government to provide them with these rights.
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows that as a government grows liberty decreases.” - Thomas Jefferson.
In this end I leave a simple way to understand rights. Imagine this scenario, a man lives on a deserted island, in order to finally understand man’s rights he must ask himself these questions.
1. Do I have a right to food?
2. Do I have a right to housing?
3. Do I have a right to water?
4. Do I have a right to medical care if I get injured?
5. Do I have a right to a job?
The man on the island has none of those ‘rights’ along with many more that today we have begun to imagine as ‘rights.’ The only right this man has is the right to use his mind in order to build a net to catch fish, to make a fire to cook the fish. He must use his mind to cut down trees in order to build him a shelter and to make him bandages when he injures himself, he does not have a magical right to medical care on a deserted island. Rights are a moral transition from his individual rights to the rights in his dealings with other men.
I Swear by my life and my love of it that I shall never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine – John Galt (Rand, Atlas Shrugged).