What did the founders mean by natural rights?
About this video
This video explains natural rights as rights that exist by our human nature rather than being created by governments. Because they come from the Creator rather than any human, no king, president or court can justly take them away, and they are 'unalienable', meaning we cannot even give them away. It contrasts them with conventional rights, like a driver's license, which governments create and can set rules for.
You'll be able to
- define natural rights and explain where the Declaration says they come from.
- explain what 'unalienable' means using an example.
- tell the difference between a natural right and a conventional right.
Key words
- natural rights
- Rights we have simply because we are human, not because a government gave them to us.
- conventional right
- A right created by people or government, which government can set rules for, like a driver's license.
- unalienable
- Cannot be taken away justly, and cannot be given away or sold, even by the person who has it.
- alienate
- To give away or sell something, like selling a car.
- might doesn't make right
- Having the power to do something doesn't mean you have the right to do it.
Transcript
Natural rights are rights that are not conventional. They exist not by human artifice by creation, by human beings, but rather naturally as it were embedded in our nature as human beings. Now, the declaration offers and accounts of where they ultimately come from. If they're not given to us by governments, by kings or by parliaments or by presidents or by congressman or a governor, who were they given to us by? Were they given to us by God? Since the source of those rights is not any human being, no human being can take them away. No matter how high that human being ranks in the political hierarchy. No president, no king, no congress, no Supreme Court can take those rights away. We have them as human beings. In other words, we have them simply in
virtue of our humanity, not in virtue of our race or class or sex or ethnicity or anything else. Simply in virtue of our humanity, they are endowments of the creator. Those are our natural rights. There also is the declaration says unalienable. Since they weren't given to us, they can't be taken from us, and we can't even give them away. We have them by nature, and they are rightly ours. We can't give them up. We can't sell ourselves into slavery. That tips up front, that these rights come with certain obligations. Not just obligations on the government but obligations on even ourselves. That's the basic story of the declarations. Then eventually, the Constitution's account of what we would today call basic human rights are natural rights are unalienable
rights. Unalienable means that we cannot give them away. They can't be taken, they can justly be taken away. Now, someone might have the shear power, the shear force at tyrant may have the shear power to take them away from us. But might doesn't make right. He doesn't have the right to take them away. He does a wrong when he takes them away.
They are unalienable in that sense. As I say, we can't give them away. We can't alienate them. The way we can sell a car, for example, a car is not inalienable. You buy a car, you can then later sell the car. But we can't alienate our basic today we would say human rights. The founders would have been more comfortable with the language of natural rights. Whites, they're not merely conventional. Your right to a driver's license is merely conventional. It's created by the government. It's not created by God. You don't have it in virtue of your humanity or your human nature. The government can decide. We're going to let you have a driver's license when you're 16 or say no, not until you're 18, or allow you to have it at 14 or something like that.
The government can make the rules on that one. Justly, there's no injustice in setting the driver's license age at 17 rather than 15 or 14, rather than 18 or anything like that. But with our basic unalienable rights, the government doesn't have that authority. The government can't justly take them away or improperly limit them
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