A Deeper Look At Individual Rights

From Third Palmetto Republic:

A deeper look into Individual Rights


On June 29, 2010, in Constitution, Secession, by Tom ....

In the last 100 years, perhaps no one person has been more of a defender of the individual and of the concept of liberty than Ayn Rand. Most people have heard of or even read her best-selling work “Atlas Shrugged,” but few realize that she in fact developed an entire philosophy and wrote several non-fiction volumes on basic issues like ethics, metaphysics, and rights. Thanks to the work of people like the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, her ideas and her defense of liberty lives on to this day, and serve as a great resource for anyone who believes in freedom.



There are plenty of political pundits out there who will talk about individual rights, and there are even some who give an honest and accurate portrayal of liberty, such as Ron Paul and fellows from Mises or Cato, but none have done so thorough a job of explaining why each one of us has the absolute right to our own life as Ayn Rand. It’s one thing to just assume that individual rights are “right” (moral), and to base your politics on that principle, but it is quite another thing, and quite an amazing accomplishment, to explain exactly how and exactly why it is right and moral for each one of us to have liberty and freedom.



For those of you who are anti-Rand, let me just say that I do not agree with all of the extrapolations of Objectivism (applications of the philosophy to individual practical issues) but I do agree with the basic premises of the philosophy, and I challenge anyone to prove them wrong. When it comes to fundamental issues such as these, “God says so” isn’t a sufficient answer, and neither is “because I’m right!” In order to be a true defender of liberty, you have to understand exactly why it is right for each person to be free.



To that end, I have included below a snippet of one of Ayn Rand’s essays. I would encourage you to read the entire thing (link at the bottom) but read this selection at the very least:



All previous systems had regarded man as a sacrificial means to the ends of others, and society as an end in itself. The United States regarded man as an end in himself, and society as a means to the peaceful, orderly, voluntary coexistence of individuals. All previous systems had held that man’s life belongs to society, that society can dispose of him in any way it pleases, and that any freedom he enjoys is his only by favor, by the permission of society, which may be revoked at any time. The United States held that man’s life is his by right (which means: by moral principle and by his nature), that 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 others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self- sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in 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.)



The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.



Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.



The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.



Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.



The concept of individual rights is so new in human history that most men have not grasped it fully to this day. In accordance with the two theories of ethics, the mystical or the social, some men assert that rights are a gift of God—others, that rights are a gift of society. But, in fact, the source of rights is man’s nature.



The Declaration of Independence stated that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man’s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind—a rational being—that he cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.