What are Human Rights?
Kirk Lennon
July 2002
The term “human rights” dates from 1791 and, in the broadest sense, refers to rights regarded as belonging to all persons. This, however, has few practical applications and consequently needs a more precise definition. The problem of defining such an ambiguous term is augmented by deliberate misuse of the word.
Human rights are, fundamentally, moral rights. Legal rights, such as to trial by jury, are created by the state for the purposes of protecting moral rights. They are rights to something and are not true rights.
An actual right is a freedom from restriction. A right imposes no positive obligation on another, only the “negative” obligation to leave others alone. A right to property means that no one may take your property; it obligates potential thieves only to respect your rights—a negative obligation.
The phrase that best presents the concept of a right is the “pursuit of ....” You may pursue happiness, property and your life free of restraint. That does not give you the right to take the property of others, as that would violate their rights.
Rights are non-contradictory; they never conflict. Honest people can have disagreements where their rights appear to conflict and that is why a court system is necessary to adjudicate, determining who held controlling rights in the matter in question. Two people may claim a piece of land but unless they voluntarily agreed to jointly hold that land, only one actually owns it (or, for example, they may each own half). The claims may conflict but the rights do not.
The one fundamental right is the right to life. All human beings possess this moral/human right. It is important to note that only humans have rights. The term “animal rights” is a vicious abrogation of the concept of rights. Humans alone are within the realm of morality.
The right to life is the one right where the term “human rights” is almost always perverted into a contradiction. You, as a human being, have a right to life; you do not have a right to actually live. No one may interfere with your pursuit of your life but you may not harm theirs to further your own. A right to live means a right to live at the expense of others: it imposes a positive obligation on another and contradicts their property rights.
So what is so important about property rights? Your property is the product of your life. You hold the exclusive claim over your life and, by extension, you also hold exclusive claim over the product of that life. Both are yours alone to use, misuse, keep or dispose of in any way you chose.
Property rights are the primary corollary of the right to life and are the only means to apply rights. As a practical matter, the only right a government can protect is the property rights (considering the fact that you own yourself).
To pursue happiness and the extension of your life, you absolutely must have at least a minimum amount of property. Your right to pursue intangible happiness cannot be directly protected but your tangible (and even intellectual) property can.
While most acknowledge the existence of rights, few are able to provide a rational basis for their rights and are thus threatened by the presence of glaring contradictions in the “rights” they create.
A right is a requirement for living as a human being: man qua man. You must have a right to life and to the product of your life in order to live as a man (or woman; I use the masculine form out of convention and for clarity). Man is special because he is a rational being. All of the animals in the world survive by use of their instincts. Some have highly limited use of reason but they still survive by means of natural instincts, existing at birth and requiring no cognitive thought. Man, however, lacks instincts entirely. He survives using Reason, a product of his mind. It is only his biological functions and physical reflexes that do not require higher-level thinking. Man is born totally helpless, without the knowledge to survive—he must learn it. He has no instincts that teach him to hunt, build a shelter or fire, grow crops or harness the incredible power created when electrons flow in a circuit. He is fundamentally different from all the animals—he is a rational being.
It is man’s nature as a rational being that requires rights. Rights are not a gift to be given (and thus possibly revoked); each person has them by virtue of his status as a human being. Rights are not a gift from some mysterious deity nor are they a gift from society; the disembodied collective known as “the people” do not have any collective rights and they do not have the authority to grant you individual rights.
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