It is popular for Americans and people in general to cherish their rights. It's only natural. Rights are an important part of every society, free or otherwise. The abundance or lack of rights lie at the very core of any community large and small. However, at times the source of these rights becomes exaggerated. A peoples' rights take on an almost divine aura. Many will claim human rights are a gift from a god or some divine force. It's a comforting notion, but ignores reality. Rights are a complicated concept because their so abstract, but without a firm understanding of what rights are and where they come from the people are ill-equipped to defend them.

First and foremost, rights don't come from god or anything supernatural. They never have. They are and always have been an abstract concept of society. Their main source is law. Without law there is no order and without order there are no rights. Now law is a far more complicated concept than rights. There are so many different legal traditions across history, cultures, and countries that to explain one and apply it to all would be utterly meaningless in any argument as to the source of rights. But rights as most people understand them do have a basis in certain aspects of law, namely those meant to protect individuals and communities and ensure order.

Now it's impossible to talk about the source of rights without the source of the law. Throughout history law has come from many places. Ancient Egypt and the vast empires of history had rulers who dictated what the law was. Kingdoms and city-states had oligarchs, councils, or community proceedings that brought forth the law. It wasn't always logical. If a ruler was mentally ill, then the laws would not be very reasonable. Men like Calligula of Ancient Rome, Ivan the Terrible or Medieval Russia, and Pol Pot of Cambodia all had clear symptoms of serious mental illness. Yet being the rulers of their country, they were the law and that law was what the people had to live under. Needless to say, the people didn't have very clear or logical rights.

The problem with law and rights as always been that people were constantly debating the laws and bending them to their whims. That's where some of these irrational traditions come from. That's where barbaric systems like the Spanish Inquisition, Stalin's secret police, or Adolph Hitlers SS come from. It is only when those educated in reason and humanities come together that the source of natural rights take shape. The logic follows that all human beings, being of the same flesh and blood as anyone else, have an intrinsic worth. It is a concept that spans all religions and cultures to some extent, even those with ridged hierarchies. Thus, the law must protect each individual worth from the whims of other individuals and the only way to do this is through law.

This presents another problem. Law is not always forged in peace. As such, rights are not always forged from peace. When dealing with oligarchs and tyranical rulers, it often takes force to obtain the legal framework for these rights. That's why there had to be an American Revolution. That's why there had to be uprisings amongst populations in Europe and other Western countries to reshape the power structure in favor of defending rights rather than debating them. It also helps when the population becomes more educated and aware of their state. It was difficult in pre-modern times because there were so few connections between communities. Now with advanced understandings in law and reason, rights can take shape.

This is where limited government comes in. Starting with concepts like the Magna Carta, the state's role in rights shifted from being a giver of rights to a defender of rights. This was the reasoning behind the republic, which has it's roots back in Ancient Greece and Rome. Here, it is a fixed body of laws that limit the power of the state to maintain it's role as a protector of rights. This was what the founding fathers followed as they understood that rights could only be protected if the government was limited by law. So when people start assuming their rights are coming from somewhere else besides law, they ignore when the law is usurped and thus their rights are usurped.

The belief that rights come from some holy, god-given source has distracted people from the real problem with rights. They need to have a basis in law and at times there needs to be force behind it. Here's the situation. Government has grown a great deal in the last 100 years, expanding it's power and intruding on the rights of the citizens, sometimes overtly and sometimes covertly and sometimes completely unintentionally. Yet these violations aren't confronted because the people don't understand the government's role. They think their rights were with them when they were born or they come from some invisible deity. So if that's the source, why bother with the law?

It is dangerous and flawed thinking. It's the kind of thinking that causes complacency in a population. It gives people an excuse to sit around while their government continues to ignore the law and strip at their rights. It is only when the people demand through force that the government respect the law and the rights they protect that the free society prevails. At the moment, however, not enough force is being applied and too many people are not willing to step up.

For more reading on the source of rights, please consult the following academic paper by Brian Tierney:

The Idea of Natural Rights