>>Valley Patriot>>

Rights... Do we Have Any?

“Well, of course we do,” you say, “just read the Constitution.”

But the Constitution didn’t exist in 1776 (or any other year before 1787, for that matter). So, did our forefathers not have any rights? Did they create them when they wrote or ratified the Constitution?

Certainly, America’s founders thought they had rights before the Constitution or they wouldn’t have rebelled against King George. The purpose of the Constitution was not to give us rights. It may amaze you that the Constitution wasn’t even intended to elaborate what rights the founders thought we had … except in a fairly weak and backhanded sort of way.

The Constitution was written to specifically enumerate the powers granted to our federal government. Basically it said, “OK, federal government, you can do this and nothing more.” It has become associated with the granting of our rights because of the Bill of Rights, which most Americans know by heart … well, maybe not completely. Most Americans can probably recall something about the press, speech, and religion. Only a few percent of Americans can enumerate the other protections.

Readers of this column are well aware that the inclusion of the Bill of Rights was a questionable proposition at the time and may, in fact, have been an ill-advised addition. Why? Because it leaves the impression — to those who stop before reading the Ninth Amendment, or to activist judges who just choose to ignore the Ninth Amendment — that the protections enumerated in the Bill of Rights constitute an exhaustive list of our rights. Of course, they do not, and the architects of the Bill of Rights never intended them to. Just read the aforementioned Ninth Amendment:

Amendment IX:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The irony is that the Constitution, which was written to list only what the federal government may do, has been turned on its head as a document that now allows the federal government to do anything it wants as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights protected by the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment, in plain English, says that the federal government does not have any powers outside those specifically granted to it in the Constitution, because all other powers are left to the states or the people:

Amendment X:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

What is even less well known, is that the Constitution (with the Bill of Rights) does not — nor was it designed to — guarantee even the rights listed in the first eight amendments. It was merely intended to make sure that the federal government didn’t infringe on these rights. The state governments were, at the time, not impeded by the Bill of Rights. [A mid-nineteenth-century Supreme Court ruling changed this and made any action by state governments that infringed these rights a violation of our national constitution.]

The founders feared that the federal government, not the state governments, would abuse its power. They were comfortable that the state governments did not pose a threat to our liberties because all of the states had constitutions that explicitly guaranteed our basic rights or prohibited state governments from violating them. Their focus was just the threat to our liberties posed by the federal government. Their fear was well placed.

To summarize this discussion so far, the Constitution didn’t give us any rights – we already had them. It was only written to grant powers to a new federal government and, as an added protection, a Bill of Rights was added to further ensure our liberties from federal trespass.

So, if the Constitution didn’t give us our rights, where the heck did they come from?

Many say, “We were given our rights by God.” For some reason, God must have left them off the stone tablets he gave Moses. Surely, it wouldn’t have been that big an inconvenience to carve a few extra tablets to clarify such an important subject.

If God is the source of our rights and they are not written in stone, how do we know what rights we possess? When someone makes up a right to free education or a right to adequate healthcare, how can one substantiate or refute his claim? Our Supreme Court justices are not theologians. Heck, if our rights came from God, maybe we should populate the Supreme Court with the pope, two cardinals, two Protestant ministers, a Muslim imam, a Jewish rabbi, a Hindu priest, and a Buddhist monk! Now that would be fun to watch!

Unfortunately, those who reference God as the source of our rights believe that no other justification or derivation of human rights is possible. They are wrong.

Man has rights because of his nature (thus, the historical references to “natural rights”), not because they were bestowed by society or by a deity. The basis of all other rights is a man’s right to his own life. That is the right to use his intellectual powers and efforts to protect, preserve, and enhance his life.

A necessary consequence of recognizing a man’s right to life is the right to property. If man can be denied the right to earn and use or dispose of property, his right to life can be easily undermined. If the government controls our property, it controls our life and can, if it wishes, deny our right to protect, preserve, and enhance our life.

But our right to property is not just the right to possess physical property, it is our right to take the actions with respect to our property that in our estimation are necessary to protect, preserve, and enhance our lives. When government expropriates our property or restricts our use of our property, it violates our natural rights.

Are our rights to use our property unbounded? No. A man’s rights are bounded by one simple principle: they can’t violate the equal rights of others. Clearly, I can’t claim to have the right to launch a boulder from my property if its trajectory intersects with your house or your head. To do so would clearly violate your right to use your property to protect, preserve and enhance your life or, in the case of your head, violate your core right to life. This example is obvious. Other examples are more complex, which is why we have laws and courts to ensure that the exercise of one man’s rights doesn’t impinge on the rights of others.

But the legitimate pursuit of laws and the logical process of applying them — in an attempt to ensure that rights do not conflict — is not an excuse to turn logic on its head and undermine or deny the very rights that the laws and the courts are intended to protect. You can’t justify the violation of property rights via expropriation (taxes) with the excuse that it is necessary to protect human rights. You can’t draft a young man and force him into a battle saying that your purpose is to protect human liberty. It is logically absurd.

Rights, inherently, are possessed by individuals. There are no group rights independent of the rights of the individuals that make up the group. Society doesn’t have rights; you and I do. If individuals do not have the right to steal property, society has no right to take the property of its citizens by force.

It is understandable to rebel at the notion that governments have no right to tax – if for no other reason that taxation is routinely practiced and accepted. Since there are few voluntary mechanisms currently being used that allow governments to raise revenues  (lottery being a notable exception), it is assumed that no such mechanisms are possible. Therefore, we assume the process of being taxed is a necessary evil. The evil part is correct; the necessary part is not — see my earlier article in The Valley Patriot, June 2004, “Funding Government without Theft,” available at www.valleypatriot.com. 

Unfortunately, unless you suspend reason, you can’t logically believe that we have a right to life without also having a right to property, and the right to property cannot be reconciled with a government that can arbitrarily decide what percentage of our property will be taken each year by force. If you accept the power of governments to tax, you logically convert your right to life to a privilege that you enjoy at the pleasure of government.

Now you know why our Founding Fathers didn’t give the federal government the power to levy a general tax on property or income. They knew that any such power contradicted their fundamental conviction that man had a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness … a more eloquent way to express the notion that you have the right to “protect, preserve and enhance your life.”

So, do we have any rights? Yes. They are ours by our very nature, irrespective of anything done by governments. The Jews in Auschwitz had rights. The Nazi government just didn’t respect them. The Nazis killed six million people that had rights.

The key lesson of history is that our rights don’t protect us unless we are able to strictly constrain government power. The Founding Fathers feared the power of government and did their best to limit it; even to the extent of adding a second layer of protection - the Bill of Rights.

The issue is not whether we have rights, but whether our government respects them. If our government doesn’t respect property rights, we are not safe.

The Constitution held firm for 125 years. The last 100 years have largely undone the miracle that created America.
Those who are alive today have never experienced the freedom that was America. Will we ever regain it?
it.

 *Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The April -2006 Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 8,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover, North Andover, Methuen, Haverhill,
Lawrence, Dracut, Tewksbury and Lowell.

Valley Patriot Archive

Prior Columns by Dr. Chuck