Rights are not Freedoms
Society converts rights into freedoms by limiting your choices!
Americans of all political persuasions conflate RIGHTS with FREEDOMS, talking past each other in a barrage of muddled verbiage.
We have a natural right to survival (food, water, housing), to travel, to express our own opinions and so forth. But those natural rights are moot without society converting them, by law and custom, into actionable freedoms.
Our colonial predecessors, struggling with the implications of a new and unfamiliar representative democracy, clearly appreciated the difference. As this excerpt from the 1778 Essex Massachusetts state constitutional ratifying convention argued:
The reason and understanding of mankind, as well as the experience of all ages, confirm the truth of this proposition, that the benefits resulting to individuals from a free government, conduce much more to their happiness, than the retaining of all their natural rights in a state of nature
In other word, your right to own property is meaningless unless society imposes a system of deeds, and police powers, to enforce your freedom to farm your own land without interference. Your natural right of free speech is muted if there is no currency to trade for pen and paper, or protections, when espousing unpopular views, from lynching.
Complaining that paying taxes, registering a gun, obeying the lawful orders of the police, being subject to reasonable search and seizure are all unacceptable infringements on your RIGHTS is wildly misplaced. As the assembled citizens in 1778 recognized, by giving up (alienating) some of your natural rights to a just government, you gain back in return a multitude of valuable freedoms.
Some rights (e.g, personal beliefs, including religion or conscience) are so personal and fundamental, they cannot be ceded to the majesty of any government. They are “inalienable”. Or as the Declaration of Independence promises:
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.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
Sadly (and part of a fascinating longer story) delegates to the 1787 US Constitutional Convention punted when it came to protecting rights, both alienable and inalienable. Fortunately, the American people rebelled, and refused to ratify the Constitution until they extracted a promise that a Bill of Rights would be swiftly incorporated.
Stranded in the 9th Amendment is a hollow, and rarely invoked echo of the Essex Result:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Even so, courts and Congress remain disinclined to list, let alone affirmatively protect, natural rights. Acknowledging a new inalienable right diminishes the power of an incumbent government, and in any case, we lack a systematic process of discovery .
We still have a long way to go before happiness (living in accordance with natural laws in state of harmony with reality) becomes the rule of the land.
What is your most essential list of alienable and inalienable rights?
