Editorials
rights and responsibilities
The word “rights” is used a lot these days, and often in ways that obscure an
important distinction – namely, between rights that we have from God, based
on our very nature as human beings, and rights granted by the state or some
other human agency.
The first kind of rights are “inalienable,” as the Declaration of Independence
says. They are inherent and sacrosanct because our Creator endowed us with
them and they are an essential part of human life.
The second kind of rights are not innate, and can be withheld or modified
or revoked by the authority that grants them. So when it is said that people
have a right to an education, a job or medical care, for instance, those “rights”
(which have multiplied tremendously in recent years) are in a different category
than the rights we have simply by virtue of being human.
Such benefits may well be things that a humane and prosperous society
feels responsible to provide for all its members – but are they really “rights?”
And is government the best way to provide them? And at what point does the
obligation of others in society to pay for these benefits become an infringement
on their rights?
Confusing government benefits with “rights” is dangerous because it
reduces essential rights to the status of arbitrarily granted privileges. The
right to liberty is worth dying for, and many have; the right to a “free” college
education is not. (And calling it “free” is a misrepresentation since someone
will have to pay for it.)
The Writings say little about “rights,” but the spiritual order of human life
which they reveal provides a foundation for the concept.
It is an “eternal law that everyone should be interiorly in freedom.” (Arcana
Coelestia 2876) And since it is a general principle that what is interior and
what is exterior should be conjoined, it follows that human beings should live
in external or civil liberty also, and thus can claim it as a right.
The right to liberty comes from God; it is not given to us by the state. In
fact, it has to be defended constantly from encroachment by the state – which
is the rationale behind the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” as Thomas Jefferson said.
319