Where do personal rights come from? They don’t come from God, the Pope, Congress, the President or the Supreme Court. Rights come from the United States Constitution. Of course, the rights under discussion here are limited to our constitutional rights and we will only briefly address human rights and/or civil rights espoused by this group or that sect at the end of this article. Activist run around the country yelling for this right or that. Take for example medical insurance. Health care is not a “right” just as marriage or abortion are not rights; none of these "rights" are found in our Constitution; when the court starts dishing out "rights" willy-nilly, then everything becomes a right. Just because the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that: “the political community has a duty to ensure . . . in keeping with the country’s institutions . . . the right to medical care,” does not equate that medical care should be a “right” possessed by all citizens of the United States under our constitution. It might be a positive and honorable thing to do, grant free medical coverage to all United States citizens, but Catholic positions do not create “rights.” Many would argue that abortions and homosexual marriages are not rights under Catholic theology yet the Supreme Court has somehow found these two “rights” in our constitution. My argument is that if constitutional rights are not specifically delineated in our constitution, then rights cannot be manufactured out of thin air by the judiciary. That theory of constitutional interpretation is called “strict constructionism.” Here are a list of rights specifically delineated in the first ten amendments to our constitution called the Bill of Rights: Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition; Right to keep and bear arms; No quartering of soldiers; Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; Right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination and double jeopardy; Right to a speedy and public trial; Right of trial by jury in civil cases; Freedom from excessive bail, cruel and unusual punishments. Citizens also have the right to move freely within our country. All other rights are retained by the individual citizen of the United States or reserved to the States respectively as per our constitution. If amendments nine and ten of the constitution bear any weight, then the States are empowered to determine which additional rights its citizens maintain, not the United States Supreme Court.
However, these amendments imply that other rights do exist. And, of course, humans have numerous rights. The right to vote, for example, is implied within the constitution, yet that right was excluded from slaves and women for a period of time. We still exclude felons from the right to vote today thus the right to vote is not an unalienable right. Voting is a privilege. Most people confuse rights with privileges. Driving is a privilege. Shelter, food and clothing are privileges. Sex is a privilege. A job with a certain wage is a privilege. Marriage and having children are privileges. Some of these privileges are extend by God and some are extended by government. To create rights, the Supreme Court often wrongly uses the phrase “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” found in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, a completely separate document from our constitution, . Notice that the drafters of our constitution recognized that our rights do come from our creator, God. But only the right to life and liberty can be protected by government. Happiness is a personal choice. Let’s look at the three. Your “life” depends on when God decides to call you home. But government does try and protect your “life” from a criminal or an incompetent doctor for example. Speaking of life, the right to life (not being killed) begs the question whether an embryo possess a right to life. A civilized, compassionate society would answer in the affirmative. Humans have an unalienable right to “life.” Humans do not have the right to take another human’s life under any circumstance. Liberty is a broad right. Liberty, to the founders, meant freedom from monarch oppression. Liberty today is freedom from government oppression. We are free to move from one state to another. We are free to do what we want, when we want, but many laws, rules and regulations prevent inexhaustible liberty. We cannot commit crimes or we get locked in prison. Notice how the right to life and liberty are structurally underpinned by a moral framework. Happiness comes within extremes. True happiness, one could argue, is based on a perfect morality. Yet some define happiness broadly as any action which does not place a burden on another’s right of self-preservation and happiness. These three rights, life, liberty and happiness, are derived and expressed on some principled basis with a distinction between right and wrong. Are we to use our judo Christian heritage to prosecute its morality? In conclusion, we can see that a good definition of a right is that it is a state or condition that is individual or personal, shared by all humans and can never be taken away by government or other people.
However, these amendments imply that other rights do exist. And, of course, humans have numerous rights. The right to vote, for example, is implied within the constitution, yet that right was excluded from slaves and women for a period of time. We still exclude felons from the right to vote today thus the right to vote is not an unalienable right. Voting is a privilege. Most people confuse rights with privileges. Driving is a privilege. Shelter, food and clothing are privileges. Sex is a privilege. A job with a certain wage is a privilege. Marriage and having children are privileges. Some of these privileges are extend by God and some are extended by government. To create rights, the Supreme Court often wrongly uses the phrase “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” found in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, a completely separate document from our constitution, . Notice that the drafters of our constitution recognized that our rights do come from our creator, God. But only the right to life and liberty can be protected by government. Happiness is a personal choice. Let’s look at the three. Your “life” depends on when God decides to call you home. But government does try and protect your “life” from a criminal or an incompetent doctor for example. Speaking of life, the right to life (not being killed) begs the question whether an embryo possess a right to life. A civilized, compassionate society would answer in the affirmative. Humans have an unalienable right to “life.” Humans do not have the right to take another human’s life under any circumstance. Liberty is a broad right. Liberty, to the founders, meant freedom from monarch oppression. Liberty today is freedom from government oppression. We are free to move from one state to another. We are free to do what we want, when we want, but many laws, rules and regulations prevent inexhaustible liberty. We cannot commit crimes or we get locked in prison. Notice how the right to life and liberty are structurally underpinned by a moral framework. Happiness comes within extremes. True happiness, one could argue, is based on a perfect morality. Yet some define happiness broadly as any action which does not place a burden on another’s right of self-preservation and happiness. These three rights, life, liberty and happiness, are derived and expressed on some principled basis with a distinction between right and wrong. Are we to use our judo Christian heritage to prosecute its morality? In conclusion, we can see that a good definition of a right is that it is a state or condition that is individual or personal, shared by all humans and can never be taken away by government or other people.
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