Not a Gift from Government: Our Natural Rights Foundation

Rights are not gifts from government. They don’t come from documents – not a constitution, not even a bill of rights. You have rights because you exist.

But government has never been a big fan of that view. The ruling class prefers a population that thinks liberty is a privilege to be granted and withdrawn. Far too many people today play along – talking about their rights like they’re favors written into law.

“My First Amendment free speech rights.”
“My Second Amendment rights.”

Some go even further, insisting all their rights come from a particular amendment, like the ninth, as if without those words on paper, they’d have no rights at all – a view the founding generation would have seen as absurd – or dangerous – or both.

PAINE’S ANSWER

Thomas Paine rejected the rights come from a document view outright.

“It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights.”

Paine saw the trap. Treat rights as gifts of a charter, and they could be redefined, limited, or revoked whenever those in power decided it was “necessary.” That would turn rights into government-granted privileges.

Instead, he described rights as something that exist by nature, belonging to every person without exception.

“Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants.”

AMERICA’S DNA

That truth was already woven into America’s political DNA long before independence was won. So Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress could declare what they saw as obvious to any free people.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This principle in the Declaration wasn’t something new. Jefferson later explained the document wasn’t meant to break new ground.

“Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject.”

Instead, its purpose was to capture and state what Americans already knew to be true.

“It was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”

He went on to describe the Declaration as a product of ideas that were already widely shared – ideas drawn from conversations, letters, essays, and the great works of political philosophers that shaped the thinking of his generation.

“All it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc.”

THE COLONIAL VOICE

Natural rights were at the heart of those harmonizing sentiments. They formed the foundation of the American Revolution itself. Samuel Adams made the case in 1772.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”

Adams grounded this in the oldest rule there is.

“These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.”

James Otis Jr. cut right to the point. Like Paine, he understood that natural rights weren’t just for the few. They were inherent in everyone.

“The Colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.”

Otis also took natural rights to its logical conclusion, a step much further than many in the 1760s.

“Are not women born as free as men? Would it not be infamous to assert that the ladies are all slaves by nature?”

ANCIENT ROOTS

The founders didn’t invent natural rights. They inherited them, going back centuries.

Jefferson mentioned Cicero for good reason. Two thousand years earlier, the Roman statesman had laid out the same principles.

“Man is born for justice, and law and equity are not a mere establishment of opinion, but an institution of nature.”

Cicero didn’t invent these ideas either. They can be traced even further back to the ancient Greeks. Jefferson also cited Aristotle, who wrote, “That is natural which has the same validity everywhere, and does not depend on our accepting or rejecting it.”

THE BRIDGE FORWARD

Jefferson also drew from Algernon Sidney, a man who put his life on the line for the same principle. Sidney wrote “Discourses Concerning Government” in the 17th century. He was executed for it before it was even published. He reinforced the same truth echoed by Aristotle and Cicero.

“The Liberties of Nations are from God and Nature, not from Kings.”

John Locke carried the principle of natural rights forward, making clear that they do not vanish – ever. The law of nature applies to every person, including those who write the laws.

“The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them, to inforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others.”

PUTTING PRINCIPLE INTO PRACTICE

This was the bedrock principle the Founders used to justify their secession from Great Britain. But they didn’t leave natural rights to theory. They constitutionalized them.

George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights spelled out those rights as beyond the reach of any government.

“That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Months later, the Pennsylvania constitution adopted language nearly identical to Virginia’s. In July 1777, Vermont did the same. But they went a step further and put those words into action. They became the first in the United States to partially ban slavery.

“Therefore, no male person, born in this country, or brought from over sea, ought to be holden by law, to serve any person, as a servant, slave or apprentice, after he arrives to the age of twenty-one Years, nor female, in like manner, after she arrives to the age of eighteen years.”

That same natural rights foundation influenced the debates over the Constitution. Luther Martin of Maryland, a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention who would later become a leading Anti-Federalist, emphasized that this was the basis of everything else.

“The first principle of government is founded on the natural rights of individuals, and in perfect equality.”

Theophilus Parsons, speaking in the Massachusetts ratifying convention, made clear that the Constitution granted no power to violate natural rights.

“No power was given to Congress to infringe on any one of the natural rights of the people by this Constitution; and, should they attempt it without constitutional authority, the act would be a nullity.”

UNCOMPROMISING

Virginia’s ratification of the Constitution reaffirmed the very language from its 1776 Declaration of Rights. Some rights are untouchable.

“That there are certain natural rights of which men, when they form a social compact cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

North Carolina used the same language in its ratification, making clear that these natural rights were not open to government interference.

Two years before independence, Thomas Jefferson captured the principle in a single, uncompromising line.

“A free people claim their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate”

It’s not liberty if it comes with a government permission slip.

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