“What are my rights?  Where did they come from?  Are they permanent or can they change?  I know I have some.  I think there’s something about them in the Constitution; something about free speech, something about guns, another one about the police searching my house, and maybe another one about religion or something?  But these were all written in the 1700s.  Are they even relevant in modern society?  Times change, right?  I hear all of these blowhards on these news shows debating rights and they’re getting nowhere.  Why are they questioning someone’s right to make a minimum wage?  And how can someone say that owning an automatic rifle is a right but receiving health care when you’re sick isn’t?  That just doesn’t add up to me.  Who decides what is and is not a right?”

This crude illustration represents the abysmal level of understanding and awareness of the concept of rights in our society presently.  I constantly hear these questions and comments from coworkers and acquaintances.  The most disturbing factor here is not that the questions are being asked, but the nuance behind them.  They are, almost without exception, rhetorical questions put forth by lost souls who have relinquished all hope for definitive answers.  They consider the issue to be an everlasting perplexity open to subjective interpretation.  “It’s all just one person’s opinion against another person’s opinion.  Neither one can be said to be right.  The government will just choose one side and legally mandate that that’s what our rights are.  And I’m sure the government has our best interests in mind when they define our rights.”  And worse yet, these people are far less common than those who don’t bother asking the questions at all.  They are, for one reason or another, completely apathetic towards their rights!  A huge sect of the country’s population simply leaves the issue alone.  Both of these demographics serve to perfectly illustrate the truism that if you don’t know your rights, you don’t have any.

So why has a concept so central to our existence been reduced to this seemingly endless barrage of multiple warring opinions?  And why are individual rights commonly considered to be defined according to some governmental pronouncement?  Since this is my post, I’ll tell you why.

The plain and simple truth is that there has been a wholesale abandonment of basic philosophies and principals in our society.  Any “issue” can be argued until the end of time with no constructive conclusion if there is no philosophical groundwork behind it.  The trendy rationale of the day seems to be some sort of quasi “pragmatism;”  “If it makes sense to me at the moment, I’ll go with it.”  On this level of deliberation, these peoples’ positions are subject to the next convincingly eloquent argument one puts forth on an issue; regardless of its philosophical consistency or moral validity.  For example, many people are perfectly capable of formulating an impressive case in favor of the federal government handing out tax money for bailouts, so long as the moral and philosophical implications of it are left completely unmentioned; as is the case in any debate you will see or hear in the mainstream media.  A discussion of this type may involve two opposing “experts,” “analysts,” “consultants,” or whatever over-inflated title the media wishes to ascribe to them, bickering back and forth about how the government should go about “reviving the economy.”  The “liberal” states “this money should go to the individuals who were either duped by predatory lending into taking loans that the greedy bankers knew would default or are suffering from the reckless speculation of Wall Street fat cats. The consumer is the one that will stimulate the economy by making more purchases with this money, thereby driving production, creating jobs, and getting the economy back on its feet.” The “conservative” fires back with “first of all this assistance should go to the lending institutions because they will allow the consumer to make more substantial purchases and stimulate the economy that much more. And furthermore, if we help out the producers themselves, they can directly create more jobs, increase productivity, and restore this great country to its rightful place as the leader of industry.” Do you see the beauty of this debate? No matter which one of these people we side with, we are accepting the same underlying philosophical premise: it’s okay for the government to confiscate the property of some and appropriate it to others for the purpose of instilling economic prosperity. We are not hearing two sides of an issue; this is a scuffle over two facets of one side of the issue. The notion that the government should have no involvement at all is not represented; except on the rare occasion that they interview someone like Ron Paul or Peter Schiff, and then they are quick to marginalize them and accuse them of being extremists with unrealistic and impractical positions.  There is absolutely no reference to the fact that one of our society’s founding principals (and one of the factors that made us the most successful civilization in human history) was that the government was to have no role whatsoever in the economy except to punish those guilty of dealing through force or fraud. This idea is left out for fear of people finding out that this principal is being regularly and systematically violated.

I’m at a loss to pin down the precise cause of this.  Is it pure intellectual laziness toward the notion of forming a consistent ideology?  Is it the will of a malicious conspiratorial group who run the media and the government?  This is probably a topic for another post.  Whatever the cause, the subject of rights is inundated with this type of completely inconsequential quibbling over diluted topics.  It is simply two or more individuals spouting the byproducts of their ignorance and apathy.  No one is consistently individualist, consistently collectivist, consistently statist, or consistently anything.  Many modern-day so-called “conservatives” take an individualist stance on property ownership; and then they support a military draft, one of the most statist and anti-individualist concepts in existence.  Can they really believe that the individual citizen rightfully owns his/her material possessions but not their own life?!  Consider it for a moment.  Can someone really be said to be free if there is some governmental right to hijack their very person and force them into servitude that could likely lead to their death?  I guess plenty of people think so, and you will find them everywhere.  Meanwhile, we have “liberals” who rail against the Patriot Act in favor of the individual’s right to privacy and then demand that the state confiscate peoples’ earned income to fund performance art projects.   So the government can extort people’s property from them at will so long as they don’t violate their privacy in the process?  In this atmosphere, is it any wonder that so many people believe that rights are duly decided by arbitrary whim?

So is there really a definitive answer to all of this?  Yes, and it is very simple.  (As a side note: whenever someone tells you that a concept is too complex for you to understand, they are probably purposefully convoluting the issue to conceal some kind of dishonesty on their part.)  Thanks to Ayn Rand’s school of Objectivism, the issue has been definitively and eloquently settled.  There is only one right that exists; and if you’re reading this, the tagline of this site has already told you what it is.  Every individual has the right to their own life.  That’s it.  Every other right is simply an offshoot of this central right.  You are the rightful owner of your life, your pursuits, your destiny.  It is strictly your responsibility to sustain your own survivability; and you may keep and dispose of your life however you see fit.  The only limitation you are obligated to recognize is that you may not interfere with anyone else’s equal right to life, and no one can interfere with yours; especially the government! And make no mistake.  Material property and monetary income are components of one’s life.  It’s dismissive and irresponsible to call them “mere possessions.”  They are the products of one’s mental and physical energy, and if one does not have full possession and discretion over the use of his/her own mental and physical creativity and ingenuity; then they do not fully own their life.  As Ayn Rand stated many times; “no rights can exist without property rights.”

All of this is consistent with the individualist philosophy.  Because one’s life is the ultimate right, the individual is the only entity that can possess it.  No collective can justly possess rights.  Any call for the rights of a group necessarily violates the rights of the individuals who fall outside that group.  “Group rights” almost always means group government subsidies; monetary-wise, policy-wise, or otherwise; and are always granted at the expense of someone else’s rights.  And don’t be fooled by the flowery euphemism “minority rights.”  This is still a call for collective rights.  The smallest minority in existence is the individual (another Randism).  But I digress.  This also a topic for another post.

When the Bill of Rights was suggested for inclusion in the US Constitution, several of the Founding Fathers were against it.  They knew that the right to life was the source of all other rights; and feared that any codified listing of rights would be widely considered to be exhaustive and be too narrowly interpreted.  But their opposition saw a need to make a clear and concise list of the most common rights violations occurring in other countries at the time (particularly several European countries) in order to express an overt prohibition against our own government following suit.  Needless to say, the latter side won out, but the inclusion of the Ninth Amendment served to state emphatically that the Bill of Rights was not intended to be all-inclusive and that the manifestations of the right to life are unlimited.

Now let’s revisit some of the questions from earlier.  Is minimum wage a valid right?  We’ve already established that your monetary income is an integral part of your life, so yes; right?  Not so fast.  Don’t forget that two parties are inherent in this scenario; employer and employee.  The employee has the right to earn a wage.  The employer has the right to receive some sort of benefit (usually labor) for the wage he pays.  In a society based on individual rights, the nature of this bargain (and all human relationships) is mutually beneficial, voluntary trade.  So it is strictly up to these two parties to negotiate the terms of the exchange.  Are we starting to see a problem with a third party butting in and dictating a minimum wage?  By forcing the employer to pay a wage that he may not have voluntarily agreed to, the government takes away his right to manage his business, property and finances (his life) as he chooses.  This may also be costing the potential employee the job (his right to choose his livelihood) if the employer doesn’t have the means or desire to hire him at the minimum wage, even though he may have been perfectly willing to work for less. While the employee has the right to any agreed-upon compensation for his services, no minimum amount is inherently owed to him. (Minimum wage also has numerous economic implications; but I’d be straying from the subject again).

Now the “automatic rifle vs. free health care” issue.  Your life is yours to protect and defend from violent attack by any means you choose.  This includes an automatic rifle.  This tool (like most any tool) may carry with it the possibility to be used to commit murder, but until the moment you use it to violate someone else’s rights, your possession of it is perfectly legitimate.  On the other hand, the demand for free health care necessarily violates the rights of others.  Like the minimum wage scenario, it calls for the enrichment of someone at someone else’s expense. As discussed above, anyone is free to voluntarily trade their products and services to others on whatever terms they choose.  But you have no right to forcibly expropriate the productive effort of someone else (or to have the government do it for you).    A doctor could not be forced to render their services involuntarily.  This would be an act of enslavement.  Now you may be thinking that this reasoning is silly because the doctors are compensated.  The government pays them to serve the public.  They may not have voluntarily agreed to the amount they receive, but they can just choose not to be doctors if they don’t like it, right?  Not so fast.  Who did you say pays them?  The government?  Does the government have its own money?  Oh yeah, taxes. That’s right.  Now we come to the meat of this issue.  Unlike the minimum wage situation, this does not involve two parties.  It involves millions: the doctor, the patient, and the tax-payers. Conversion of the medical industry into a federal program and doctors into government agents funded by tax dollars is exactly what advocates of “socialized medicine” are asking for, and this whole exercise in altruism violates the rights of all of those involved.  The doctor’s right to offer his/her services for the price they choose is abrogated, the patient has lost the right to shop for the best doctor based on quality and price, and the tax-payers’ property is being plundered to finance the transaction.  So tell me how this sort of interaction should take place as a matter of right.  Is there anything right about this?

So the question posed by the title of this post has an easy answer.  Who decides what my rights are?  NO ONE.  Your right to life is inherent in your very existence and is inalienable (the Founding Fathers didn’t choose that word lightly); as is any right that facilitates it.  They are not subject to anyone’s capricious proclamations and there is no expiration date on them. They exist whether your present government chooses to acknowledge them or not.  No government anywhere has the authority to alter them.  The Supreme Court (before they forgot their role) said it best in United States v. Cruikshank (1876):  “A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.”

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