What Is a Right?

I’ve covered the definition of a right here and there. I think it’s essential knowledge if you’re going to achieve freedom, prosperity, and civilization, which is the goal here at the Spherical Model.

Bill of Rights in the US Constitution
image from the National Archives

In 2013 I wrote,

What is a right? Something you are entitled to just by virtue of being born a human. God has granted it to you. Others are required to respect your rights, but not to provide them out of thin air.

In the Economic Sphere section of the Spherical Model website, in the section called “How to Tell What Is a Right,” I offer this:

Let’s be clear on what a right is: it is not a privilege, something you might be granted under certain circumstances. It is something that you deserve simply for being human. You do not have to earn a right; you can’t rightfully be deprived of it (with possible forfeitures such as committing capital crimes). If it is a right, it does not come from government; it comes from God. Government may use its power to either guarantee a person’s rights, or to deprive a person of his rights. Restraint from depriving a person of his rights is not equivalent to granting rights. Rights simply do not come from government.

So, if something is a right, it is a person’s natural right whether there is a government entity guaranteeing it or not.

We’re born naked, impoverished, and inexperienced. It is by growth, hard work, and gaining in expertise that we try to overcome this condition throughout our life. We are born with the right to life, the right to live free (not enslaved), and the right to pursue our own path to overcome the naked impoverished state.

I came across an additional good source this weekend, reading Dr. Larry Arnn’s book The Founders' Key. He does a good—and fair—job of laying out both the definition of natural rights and the “progressive” definition of “positive rights,” as defined by FDR. And then explains why we should prefer the way natural rights are understood. He says,

The Founders thought that all our rights are connected. Our right to property is based on the same facts as our freedom of speech. Our right to the material things that we earn is founded in the same nature as our freedom to worship and pray as we please. Our civil and political rights depend on our ability to hold the means of our well-being in our own hands. We can have no rights of any kind that do not leave “to everyone else the like advantage.” This means that nothing properly called a right takes anything from anyone else. [p. 62]

The highlight is mine. I thought that was a main idea worth exploring.

Let’s look again at FDR’s list of “positive rights”:

In our day certain economic proofs have become accepted as self-evident: a second bill of rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station or race or creed. Among these are:

·         the right to a useful and remunerative job, the right to earn enough to provide food and clothing and recreation;

·         the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return that will give him and his family a decent living;

·         the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom—freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

·         the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care, and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

·         the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age—sickness, medicine, and unemployment;

·         the right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward in the implementation of these rights to new goals of happiness and well being. For unless there is security here and home, there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

So, if you have the right to a “useful and remunerative job,” then you have the right to an employer to provide it. If there’s a free-market agreement between you and the employer, you both benefit. But if the employer is coerced to provide for you, regardless of your skill or success in bringing profit to the employer, the government must enslave the employer in order to provide you with that “right.”

If you have the right, as a farmer, to raise and grow whatever you want, regardless of market supply and demand, and receive a particular government-set rate of return—even in a season when crops fail and the farmer provides nothing of value to society—then someone is going to be coerced into giving that farmer his “rightful” share, regardless of whether the farmer provides value.

The right to trade in a free market is a good idea; a monopoly is not a free-market idea. There are sensible laws to prevent monopolies from keeping supply and demand from working. However, if a company innovates and creates something new, they aren’t required to also create a competitor. They simply put their product out there and compete when/if a competitor shows up. So that one depends on whether government does its policing role to protect free trade, or steps in to pick winners and losers, which ends up actually interfering with free trade.

If every family has a “right” to a “decent” home, who buys it for the family that can’t afford it? And who decides what “decent” means? If everyone has the “right” to adequate medical care, who is coerced to provide it or pay for it? And who decides what “adequate” means? And while it sounds nice to allow everyone the “opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health,” who decides what the opportunity consists of? If illness or disabilities are preventing that person from enjoying good health, who is required to intervene and see to it that the person doesn’t have to suffer? And how, if a solution is unknown?

If someone has the “right” to be free from financial worry in old age—whether or not they work and save, or have higher than normal health care costs because of inadequate self-care or just circumstances beyond their control—who must be coerced to provide for that person?

If a person has a “right” to a “good” education, shouldn’t teachers be providing that for free? Shouldn’t builders be building the necessary buildings for free? If so, who works for free to provide housing and food for the teachers and builders? And who gets to decide what qualifies as “good”?

While it sounds nice to “give” security to every citizen, a government isn’t God; and a government isn’t a wealth source. Government is power, and a cost. Everything government does is a cost to society. So anything it “provides” that costs money must be taken from someone who earned that money.

So let’s be clear: if government is “giving” us rights that we weren’t born with, government is coercing someone to work to provide for someone else it deems worthy. Government deprives Person A of his natural rights to life, liberty, and/or property in order to give the illusion it is providing the extra, “positive rights” for Person B. Whatever Person B feels, Person A rightly feels oppressed by that arrangement.

image found here

If we want people to have some basic shelter, food, health care, and education, there’s a way a free people can do that: charitable giving. Local charities and philanthropies are a lot better at identifying the best way to provide those things than governments can ever be. Then, a person decides when he can afford to offer from his surplus, and he can decide what conditions apply when he makes his donation.

We can do that with anything that is not a natural, God-given right, but is nice to have. We can accumulate enough to offer it freely to those who can’t manage to work their way out of their naked, impoverished, and inexperienced state. We can care about, and for, one another.

Government has no feelings. It is only coercion. That power should be limited to necessary protections of our life, liberty, and property.

The Administrative Branch

We don't elect an administrative branch. According to the Constitution, we don't even have one. Unfortunately, it's very real.

I recently listened to lecture 9 of Hillsdale College’s current Constitution 101 class, “The Administrative State Today.” [You can register for all of Hillsdale’s online classes for free and go through them at your leisure.] Sometimes what you get from studying is discouragement. The lecture is a description of the changes in the way government is run, spread over the 20^th Century, resulting in something today that has very little resemblance to what our founders set up.

Kevin Portteus, associate professor of politics, Hillsdale College
screen shot from Lecture 9

First, in the “progressive” era, under Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, there was a move toward “expert” control. The legislative branch would make vague, outcome-based legislation—for example, we want clean water. Without defining that or creating rules governing water use, there was no way to ensure the outcome. So agencies were created to see to it; experts were hired, who would determine, supposedly through the best scientific knowledge of the day, to measure, make rules, and enforce them.

Already, there were some real differences between what the founders intended and how laws were being enacted. If law was to be detailed and specific to localized businesses or even segments of the population, it wasn’t supposed to come under the purview of the federal government in the first place. Laws were intended for the specific purpose of protecting life, liberty, and property of all the people. Suddenly you have some entity coming in and saying, “We don’t like how you’re doing your work or using your property, so we’re going to delineate exactly what you can do and how.”

These agencies took on a great deal of authority. The agency decided what the law was. The agency decided who was worth examining for violations of the law. The agency then investigated, prosecuted, and punished violators. They were suddenly doing the jobs of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches—and those branches seemed to cede the authority to them without much argument. Courts and legislators alike would say things like, “They’re the experts, so we won’t question their judgment in the matter.”

This was all very much in keeping with the “progressive” way of governing—with the assumption that the modern world required an evolved approach, because life was suddenly so much more complicated.

But this wasn’t enough for FDR. He saw that the regulatory agencies were headed by “experts” who had been appointed from previous administrations, and they might not have in mind the same political outcomes that he wanted. So he pushed for reforms that empowered his executive office. By executive order, he could appoint leadership of the agencies who aligned with his political intentions.

In addition, he pressed for more ways to control the agencies and their direction. One way was to go directly to the people, to recruit them to his goals, which he did using media—the first president to so use it.

And after FDR, more methods developed in a game of power between a strong executive individual and strong regulatory agencies. In this balancing act came the granting of standing to more groups. It used to be that a litigant had to show that it had been personally harmed; the change allowed groups to claim that they represented the people as a whole. It the abstract I don’t find a problem with that. But in practice, it granted groups, for example, environmental activists, to claim that they represented all Americans when claiming that we are all harmed by some practice.

Lecturer Kevin Portteus, gives the example of Massachusetts v. EPA:

the case that declared that carbon dioxide—carbon—was a pollutant that could be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and that the Environmental Protection Agency had better get busy regulating it.  The lawsuit against the EPA was filed by a number of environmental organizations and by several attorneys general in the various states: ergo Massachusetts v. EPA. Under the traditional definition of standing, it is hard to see how any of them would have been able to bring suit.  They would have lacked standing. The State of Massachusetts would not have been able, in all likelihood, to demonstrate the direct harm necessary to be able to bring a case before a court in the United States.

If you’re like me, you might have noticed how suddenly talk about regulating poisons such as carbon monoxide suddenly changed to the dangers of carbon dioxide, which is what we exhale, and plants “breathe in,” and that is pretty much part of all life on earth. And suddenly experts are telling us how much is allowed in our environment.

One purpose of the lawsuits from these groups, against the agencies, was to pressure the agencies to comply with political, typically liberal, ends. In other words, it was no longer about what experts in the science decided to lay down as the law; it was what a particular president’s experts said, using their science, to control entire industries the way he wanted.

Over time, there began to be quite a lot of collusion between politicians, regulatory agencies, unions, and corporations, to meet in back rooms and hammer out deals that were in their best interests—regardless of what the best interests of the public as a whole might be. This was termed “liberal corporatism” by Chicago sociologist Robert Flax in 1964. A ruling power elite had come to control policy, with very little input from us self-governing American citizens.

There’s always danger to freedom when the American citizens have their Constitutional powers usurped. Portteus quotes Charles Reisch, from his 1970 book The Greening of America:

The tendency of administration, while it may appear to be benign and peaceful, as opposed to the turbulence of conflict, is actually violent. For the very idea of imposed order is violent. It demands compliance. Nothing less than compliance. And it must obtain compliance, by persuasion or management if possible, by repression if necessary. It is convinced that it has the best way, and that all other ways are wrong. It cannot understand those who do not accept the rightness of its view. Administration wants the best for everybody, and all that it asks is that individuals conform their lives to the framework established by the state."

We can see that today with something as basic as making decisions about where our children go to school. Incidentally, Glenn Beck’s latest book, just out, is called Conform, and relates to the imposition of Common Core in our schools.

We’re not going the right direction. Portteus says,

The Obama administration has more faith in expertise than probably any administration since Lyndon Johnson. And Obama’s old Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag said, “You know what the problem with our system today is, is that we don’t put enough power in the hands of the experts: we leave too much up to the people.”

At this point in our nation’s history, says Portteus,

Policymaking has very little to do with what you learned in high school civics. The old framework of, well, the legislature makes the laws and the executive enforces them and the judiciary rule on cases, that’s really been scrambled. We get very hung up today on the expansion of government power and of course that is a real problem from the founders’ perspective. But the way in which the functions of government have been reshuffled among the various institutions is also a major problem. Things are being done by institutions that were never meant to do them.

We know the direction we need to go, if our goal is freedom, prosperity, and civilization. We know that adhering to the actual Constitution will solve a myriad of problems. But getting the power back from those who have been controlling policy—and controlling us—for so many decades is a tougher question. The lecture ended before we got an answer. I don’t know yet if there is an answer.

Counterfeits

I propose that, for every principle that leads to Spherical Model northern hemisphere freedom, prosperity, and thriving civilization, there is a counterfeit southern hemisphere claim. Here are just a couple of examples.

Rights

Our Constitution does a good job of spelling out many of our God-given natural rights relating to life, liberty, and property: freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom to defend self and others with arms, freedom to feel secure in our persons and papers, and more. The counterfeit was put forward by FDR, using the word rights that we were used to recognizing as a positive part of our free country. But he skewed it.

In our day certain economic proofs have become accepted as self-evident: a second bill of rights, under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all, regardless of station or race or creed. Among these are:

·         the right to a useful and remunerative job, the right to earn enough to provide food and clothing and recreation;

·         the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return that will give him and his family a decent living;

·         the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom—freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

·         the right of every family to a decent home; the right to adequate medical care, and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

·         the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age—sickness, medicine, and unemployment;

·         the right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward in the implementation of these rights to new goals of happiness and well being. For unless there is security here and home, there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

 

What is a right? Something you are entitled to just by virtue of being born a human. God has granted it to you. Others are required to respect your rights, but not to provide them out of thin air. So when Roosevelt uses the term, what does he mean? Something that we’d all like to have. And if you assume these things are rights—must be given to everyone—then government takes the place of God as the provider of rights. Government gets its power—and its money—from the governed. So, what FDR is saying is, you are required to give up whatever portion of your life’s work the government confiscates so that the government can grant that as a gift to someone else, in order to claim it is a better provider than God.

You do have the right to seek a good job; but if you have a right to a good job, regardless of your efforts or abilities, that means someone is required to hire you regardless of your efforts or abilities. That doesn’t square with the business freedom “right” he lists just below. You have the right to purchase a good home or a good education, but if you must be given those purchasable things, someone must be enslaved to pay for them.

Family

Family is the basic unit of society. It is the way we get a new generation, and pass along the values and principles required for civilization to that new generation. It is based on, and bound by, love for one another.

If there’s going to be a southern hemisphere counterfeit, it is going to appeal to the sense of belonging we crave. But instead of feeling the sense of belonging to parents, ancestors, siblings, and posterity, the counterfeit version is belonging to the collective—the state in the southeast quadrant, or the gang, mob, mafia, or other cabal in the southwest quadrant. The principle is the same: the collective wants/needs override the individual wants/needs.

I saw the latest Star Trek movie this past weekend, always fun. They re-enacted in a different way a scene from an earlier movie (that is set in a later time), where Spock had sacrificed himself by entering the hot nuclear reactor. He had said, “It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” But what has happened here? An individual sacrifices himself, because his love for the many he can save is greater than his love for his own life. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13 (King James Bible). That is the northern hemisphere version. Our soldiers do this for us. Our police take this risk. Last week we tragically lost four Houston firefighters who were acting on this honorable premise.

 

The southern hemisphere counterfeit takes the choice of sacrifice away from the individual, and replaces it with, “Because the collective is more important than the few or the one, the rights/wants/needs of the few or the one can be overridden at the will of those in control for the benefit of the collective.” This shows up in health care. If the collective is paying for health care, a costly and limited resource, then it is to the benefit of the collective to refuse care to whomever it deems less likely to benefit the collective: the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally impaired, the seriously ill. Everywhere in the world there has been state-run health care, there has been rationing, poorer service, loss of service to the elderly and seriously ill, and enforced euthanasia. There is no sacrifice involved; there is imposed punishment for being ill or elderly.

I’m in the middle of yet another youth novel, with the enemy being some entity trying to take over the world, ostensibly to “help” mankind (while incidentally giving unlimited power to the controlling bad guys). This one is Michael Vey, by Richard Paul Evans. The bad guy says things like, “Want is a thing of the past…. It’s a brave new world… with endless opportunities.” There’s a collection of young people with special electrical powers. They’ve been kidnapped and manipulated, and are essentially imprisoned. But the collection of them is called the family. If they don’t use their powers as required, to harm people and even murder, then the young person is punished and imprisoned. Most of them have succumbed, and the ones found at earlier ages were more easily manipulated. They’re made to feel “special,” told that they are eagles, among the chickens, and shouldn’t choose to act like chickens, or even worry about the chickens—because eagles eat chickens, after all.

When confronted with the discomfort of being asked to do something harmful, one who had been there from a young age said, “You get over it. At first you might hate it but before you know it, you’ll volunteer to do it…. Why do you care? We’re better than them.”

Ah, the old “we’re the important people and the others are subhuman” ploy, found in all savage tyrannies, wherever there is mass murder, genocide, or halocaust.

Belonging to a real family is something we’re designed by our Creator to respect and enjoy—where we can develop loving relationships that will help us in everything we do. The counterfeit is belonging to some replacement collective, with controllers that either tell us why we can disregard the rights of those supposedly beneath us, or why we are too insignificant to have our rights respected. There may be an inculcation of adoration for the collective. But real love—giving and receiving love—is missing.

Find something good in a society of freedom, free enterprise, and civilization, and there will be a correlative counterfeit in a society of controlled behavior, controlled economy, and savage disregard of the value of human life.