"I've got rights."
You hear these words coming from the man in the street, from the man in the ivory tower, from the man in the White House. We are sure it is true. We are sure rights are real. Yet, ask a dozen of your neighbors to define what a right is and you'll discover lots of disagreement and confusion.
Oh, you and your neighbors may agree about
whether a specific act is rightful, but when it comes down to
the nitty gritty of defining what makes something a right, of
setting forth the general principles that define what a right
is, agreement evanesces. And it evanesces in the ivory tower and
in the White House, too. This is a serious problem in a country
the political governments of which are established in large part
to secure our rights.
Our personal freedom, the variety of ways of living a life, the
stuff of humane individuality, is on the wane in America because
of the vagueness of our comprehension of what these things we
call rights really are. Today the word right is
invoked to mean practically everything, and a word that means
practically everything means nothing at all in particular. Few
men will risk much in a fight to preserve something that means
nothing at all in particular to them.
But right does mean something real and recognizable, something
precious and dear. Something worth risking quite alot for.
What is a right ?
One place to start looking for the answer is in the intuition we all share about rights . This shared intuition is apparent in the following excerpts from essays about rights.
"WHAT IS A RIGHT? A right is the sovereignty to act without the permission of others. The concept of a right carries with it an implicit, unstated footnote: you may exercise your rights as long as you do not violate the same rights of another-within this context, rights are an absolute...
"A right defines what you may do without the permission of those other men and it erects a moral and legal barrier across which they may not cross. It is your protection against those who attempt to forcibly take some of your life's time, your money or property...
"There is only one, fundamental right, the right to life-which is: the sovereignty to follow your own judgment, without anyone's permission, about the actions in your life. All other rights are applications of this right to specific contexts, such as property and freedom of speech. The right to property is the right to take the action needed to create and/or earn the material means needed for living."
-- Fulton Huxtable
(from Fatal Blindness, 1999)
"A right is defined as 'a just and proper claim,' but it is more than that. A right implies not only freedom of action in the total absence of coercion, but it implies freedom of action even if coercion is present. Thus, a right isn't lost, even if coercion appears.
"Additionally, a right is freedom of action morally without asking permission. If, to remain moral, the person must first ask permission from another, then he is in a state or condition of privilege. If he may morally act without permission, then he has a right. "
--Kenneth W. Ryker
(from Freedom in a Nutshell )
So, part of this intuition we all share about rights seems to be that right has something to do with a range of freedom to act.
In Mr. Ryker's definition there is a germ of confusion, and of disagreement between Mr. Huxtable's definition. Is a right a claim to a range of freedom to act, or is it the range of freedom to act itself?
Mr. Ryker tries to clear up the confusion immediately after he creates it. And it appears that at bottom he understands, as he states in his second paragraph, that a right is a range of freedom to act, not merely a claim.
Both authors seem to agree that we have this range of freedom to act without the permission of anyone -- we have it whether we are in chains or roaming alone in the woods. This means that this range of freedom to act resides within us -- it can be different from the range of action that we are physically permitted to engage in without getting punished or restrained by someone else. This point is vital to understanding what a right is.
If a right necessarily has to do with a range of freedom that resides within us, and not necessarily with the range of action we are permitted by others, then a right has to do with something that is established by our human nature. What is this something that is established by our human nature? It is the capacity for a type of behavior -- the capacity for speech, the capacity for foraging, the capacity for associating, the capacity for defense, etc. It is these capacities that make it possible for us to fulfill our natural needs.
These capacities establish our raw natural range of action in the world. They make possible a choice of how we shall attempt to acquire what we want. This possibility of choice is what gives meaning to the word freedom when used in the context of our raw natural freedom to act.
Is this entire raw natural range of freedom to act what we call a right ? Intuitively we seem understand that it is not, that this raw natural range of freedom to act is bounded by something that makes it a range "proper" to a human, a right. What is it that properly bounds our raw natural freedom to act?
You can see from the two definitions I quoted above, that this is the point at which a great deal of disagreement and confusion arises about rights. There seems to be general agreement that the boundary has something to do with morality -- that is, with what is good for humans. But what is good for humans? Is it good for humans that we can seek the attainment of our necessaries merely, with no hope of success?
In the context of rights as a limitation on raw natural freedom, we know intuitively that what is good (what we ought to seek) for humans is that the useful nature of the behaviors we have a natural capacity for be preserved for us all. This means that we intuitively know that we "properly" limit our raw range of natural behavior for the purpose of preserving a setting in which there is a reasonable chance that each of us engaging in those behaviors will attain all the goods that we naturally need for a humane life.
This intuition about what the proper limit of a right is can be seen in Mr. Huxtable's assertion that "the right to property is the right to take the action needed to create and/or earn the material means needed for living." The right to act is bounded by the acquisition of what is "needed for living" a humane life. When acquiring more than one needs for living a humane life unnecessarily deprives others of the reasonable chance to attain their necessaries, then the act is outside the bounds of right.
Necessity, then, is a vital key to understanding rights. We have a right to engage in a characteristic human behavior that is necessary in order to fulfill our natural needs. If this necessary behavior renders someone else's behavior no longer useful to them, then that is a tragedy, but it is not unrightful for us to act in that injurious way. Only when we unnecessarily act in a way that renders a general behavior practically useless to ourselves or others are we acting outside the range of right .
We are now ready to answer the question: What is a right?
Right : The range of a characteristic general behavior of humans to fulfill a natural need, properly limited by Reason (and society) so that the behavior does not unnecessarily and intolerably diminish the effectualness of the characteristic general behaviors of other human's to fulfill their natural needs.
In this finite world rights can and do conflict -- theories by self-described libertarians and Objectivists notwithstanding. In fact, rights can and do cause conflict.
So how, then, can a government secure the rights of all?
The only practicable means of securing the
rights of all is by creating and maintaining that setting I mentioned
a few paragraphs ago.
This is a task that requires vigilance, patience, toleration,
courage, and an empirical bent -- that is, respect for experience.
The failure of the Soviet experiment is ample evidence that attempts
to remedy theoretical (unfelt by the man in the street) harms
or anticipated harms to the useful nature of our general behaviors
are risky and usually dangerous undertakings. Such remedies are
better administered after the sickness is felt but before it advances
to an irreversibly fatal stage -- an art requiring all of the
virtues I mentioned, in abundance.
And this task requires something else -- good fortune. The good fortune of a people to have political control over a territory large enough that all may have access to material necessaries through means that do not systematically and lastingly deprive any of their number of the reasonable chance to attain all the natural goods needed for a humane life.
America is a place blessed with this good fortune. But we have not been as careful with this blessing as we ought. Our leadership has been careless about promulgating the proper concept of right. That carelessness has contributed to the confusion about rights that now abounds. And as a result of that confusion our political governments have promulgated a passel of unwise laws that have prevented rightful access to material necessaries, and that now threaten to destroy the blessing of the tolerable balance between population and land that allows natural right to be useful as a tool in maintaining social harmony. An example of these unwise laws are those that ban resource extraction from public lands. Another example are those laws that in the name of species protection deprive private property owners of the useful nature of their property.
The sickness caused by this careless and unwise leadership is now being felt by the man in the street. It is time, right now, to begin administering carefully and courageously the remedies necessary to the preservation of the health of the setting in which rights can be an effective tool in securing the blessings of Happiness to all Americans.
Have we leadership that possesses the virtues needed for this task?
We shall very shortly learn the answer.
Whitefish, Montana
January, 2001