Many of the ubiquitous challenges in today’s contemporary politics and culture stem from our inability to think or speak intelligently about rights. In February 2024, Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla made headlines, stating that only “Christian nationalists” believe rights come from God rather than from the government.
Equally disturbing are the many “conservative” writers, such as Alisdair MacIntyre, Allan Bloom, Patrick Deneen, and others who denounce the framework of government based upon rights. I am convinced that this broad disarray, found on both the Left and the Right, stems from confusion on the conception of rights. To examine this issue thoroughly would require great length, but I want to briefly propose a few clarifications that can help us understand rights more appropriately.
The Nature of Rights
To say something is a right is to acknowledge that it is what is owed to someone. The Latin ius can be translated as “the just” or “the right” or even “what is right” or “what is owed” to another. As Thomas Aquinas argues in the Summa Theologiae, justice aims at ius, the right — at what is right for someone or something. Yet, how do we determine what is right for someone or something? We must first understand something’s nature before we could know what is good for it. In this sense, it is impossible to intelligently speak of rights apart from a conception of natures; thus, natural rights are derived from the natural law. By natural rights, I mean merely those which belong to a thing (or a man) by its nature, prior to any human institution, convention, or civil law.
It is helpful to conceive of rights in the Aristotelian language of capacities. By this, I mean the faculties or potencies that a thing possesses naturally, and which allow it to engage in certain activities natural to it. Every creature has capacities proper to it by its nature, and it fulfils its nature by exercising these capacities excellently in accord with its purpose, or telos. For example, every living creature experiences vitality and engages in activities oriented toward its preservation and sustenance; thus, every living being has, in a sense, a natural right of self-preservation. However, only rational animals (i.e., men) can understand and speak of rights. It is not intelligible then to speak of natural rights for sub-rational creatures (i.e., rocks, plants, beasts, etc.), even though they also have the same natural inclination toward self-preservation.
By presenting rights as capacities of one’s nature, we assert proper limits to our understanding of what a “right” is and also subordinate our understanding of rights to the rule of reason, which discerns nature and the order of the cosmos. For example, humans could never have a “right to fly” because — unlike birds — we lack the natural capacity to do so.
Rights properly understood must be in accord with one’s nature, not contrary to it. More than that, rights must be ruled by reason, which discerns the moral order created by God. For instance, man by nature is naturally inclined toward sexual union with the opposite gender. Yet, this does not mean he possesses a natural right to every possible sexual encounter. Right reason teaches us that sexual union, though natural, must be guarded within the institution of marriage. As scholar Thomas G. West puts it in the Political Theory of the American Founding, “Natural liberty exists only within the moral limits of the law of nature.”
Natural and Civil Rights
Another sine qua non — or essential condition — for considering rights is to distinguish natural rights and civil rights. Natural rights are those inferred or derived from our nature. Among natural rights are the right to life, to liberty, to self-defense, to property (i.e., the right to possess exclusively what one acquires through one’s own skills and industry), and more. These rights exist prior to any imposition of civil government, and they would continue to exist even if government were to break down, dissolve, or collapse. Civil rights, on the other hand, exist by convention and the institution of men in society who have ordained a legitimate government for themselves. Some civil rights include the right to vote in elections, to carry on business or trade in the commonwealth, to sue in civil cases, to receive due process protections if accused, and more.
Properly understood, civil rights are derived from natural rights in the same way that all arts derive from and perfect natural capacities and features. Civil rights thus build upon and support more fundamental natural rights. For example, the right to vote in elections cannot exist without a commonwealth conducting elections; yet, it derives from man’s natural equality and his natural right to be free from the rule of others without his consent. Similarly, due process rights (such as habeas corpus or right to a jury trial) cannot exist without a civil society governed by laws; yet, they derive from the natural right to life and liberty. From these, reason deduces that it is unlawful to deprive a man of life, liberty, or property unless a sufficiently just and reasonable process is undertaken to ascertain his guilt or innocence and thus settle the claims of justice. Some civil rights, such as due process, are derived closely from nature and are thus guaranteed to all people in the commonwealth. Other civil rights, however, can be qualified, such as restricting voting laws to adults or restricting the right to drive to adults who show a good record.
Rights and Citizenship
It is equally important to distinguish between natural rights and civil rights when considering citizenship within a particular commonwealth or nation-state. Natural rights are owed to all people because they derive from man’s nature; thus, it is always wrong to unjustly put someone to death, commit sexual assault, steal someone’s goods, and so on. The moral evil of these offenses remains regardless of whether the victim is a citizen of a commonwealth or not. However, civil rights do not exist strictly by nature, and thus it is not immoral or unjust to restrict certain civil rights only to the citizens who make up a commonwealth. Consequently, no one has the right to enter or reside in another nation without that nation’s consent, as expressed through its laws. No country or commonwealth is by right obligated to grant entry, residence, or privileges to non-citizens.
While natural rights are universal and grounded in unchanging human nature and the moral order of the cosmos, that does not mean that every government exists to secure the natural rights of all men everywhere (i.e., globalism). Rather, each commonwealth or nation-state exists to protect the natural rights of those citizens who comprise it.
Properly understood, rights imply reciprocal duties. Your right to life necessitates my duty to protect your life and not harm it, and vice versa. One man’s right to private property necessitates the duty of others to honor and respect that property rather than impinging upon it or destroying it. Significantly, in a just regime, the rights of citizens necessitate the government’s duty to respect, guarantee, and protect their rights. It can never be anyone’s right to take advantage of others or acquire what one wants through harm, injustice, or fraud. Thus, the supposed conflict between rights and duties is superficial and relies upon a faulty understanding of both.
When Rights Come Into Conflict
What happens when rights conflict? In the case of civil rights, since those are conditioned and qualified by a civil government for the sake of justice, they could be reasonably curtailed by the demands of justice. Such is the case when we strip citizens of many civil rights, or even of natural rights (such as liberty and even life), when they commit crimes, which are understood as violations of the natural and civil rights of others in society. Even natural rights may come into conflict when, for example, a man’s right to life is jeopardized by an unjust assault upon him which necessitates him to use force – maybe even lethal force – in defending himself. The traditional Latin maxim necessitas non legem coget expresses the recognition that there will be cases in our troubled, fallen world where tragic circumstances require us to do that which would not be justified under otherwise “normal” circumstances, such as taking the life of an attacker, fighting in a defensive war, and so on.
Traditional vs. Contemporary Conceptions of Rights
Lastly, I want to briefly examine the rights posited and defended in the U.S. Constitution (many of which are also posited in the constitutions of several states) within this framework and compare that to the shift in language and thought that has occurred in recent decades.
Everything defended in the Bill of Rights is either a natural right or a civil right closely derived from a natural right. Free exercise of religion and freedom of speech (First Amendment) derive from man’s nature as a rational creature capable of seeking truth and voluntarily worshipping His Creator. The right to keep and bear arms (Second Amendment) derives from man’s natural right to life, self-preservation, and self-defense. The Third through Eighth Amendments posit civil rights that derive from men’s natural rights to life, liberty, and rule by consent of the governed. These civil rights include protection of private property against unjust seizure, protection against unwarranted searches and seizures, the guarantee of due process and jury trial, protection from cruel and unusual punishment, and more. Interestingly, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments effectively indicate that rights do not stop where they are not explicitly listed. Later amendments, such as the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth, have clarified the rights of citizens.
However, due to the rejection of the traditional conception of rights that I have presented, we experience much confusion and distortion when rights are spoken of publicly in the U.S. in our contemporary culture and politics. Many contemporary individuals often view rights as benefits or privileges which the government gives to individuals — such as jobs, material prosperity, education, housing, healthcare, and so on. We can certainly blame some of this on FDR, who famously said in 1944 that we needed a “second Bill of Rights” guaranteeing these kinds of material results to people.
In response, this is where recognizing rights as capacities is fundamental. The right to property, for instance, is a capacity that free, rational agents possess by nature. They have God-given skills to employ themselves and the God-given responsibility to provide for themselves and their families. They can, though, use this capacity (or faculty) well by earning a living and building wealth, or they can use it poorly through idleness and suffer the corresponding consequences. To assert that all men have the right to certain benefits or outcomes regardless of how they use their God-given capacities is to completely distort a proper understanding of rights. After all, why else do we strip away a person’s civil rights in legal punishment unless we assume the belief that civil rights are capacities that men possess as citizens, which can be used well for good, or harmfully for ill, thus carrying corresponding rewards or penalties?
Similarly, we speak irrationally when we claim “rights” to things that directly contradict nature and reason. No woman has a valid “right to abortion” because it is against nature: it inflicts violence on the woman’s own body and reproductive system, and it commits mortal violence against her unborn child. Furthermore, when the American founders affirmed the right to marriage, they understood it as the natural right of every man and woman to consent to a monogamous, heterosexual marriage without coercion (and rejecting the notion of arranged marriages). However, they did not conceive of a right to marriage where marriage is understood as a contract that any persons can enter whatsoever; thus, there is no right to “gay marriage” any more than there is a “right” for a biological man to bear a child.
Likewise, no person has a right to chemical or surgical so-called “transgender” treatments, nor does anyone have a right to physician-assisted suicide. These practices are against nature and the natural goods of life, biological gender, and reproduction. Simply because through freedom of conscience one has the right to believe falsehoods (such as that they are a different gender than they are biologically), no others in society are obligated to respect, support, or affirm that belief (such as through using preferred pronouns,” supporting a “social transition,” or opening gender-specific spaces to them). There also cannot legitimately be a natural or civil right to “non-discrimination,” despite what has been foisted upon us relentlessly since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It belongs inextricably to the nature of rational animals to make choices, which involves discerning and selecting — and thus discriminating upon any number of factors including preference, religion, and other personal beliefs. Lastly, there cannot be a right to a government job or to serve in the military either; these are privileges that the government can bestow and revoke through contracts for merit.
Restoring True Rights
To thoroughly establish a properly grounded framework of natural and civil rights requires careful reasoning and study, far more than can be covered in a brief examination such as this. However, I hoped to demonstrate how quickly public discussion can become muddled when we abandon a traditional understanding of rights: one in which rights are derived from nature and rightly governed by reason. Since God is the Author of creation and the source of human reason, we should never suggest that nature and reason conflict with divine revelation, or posit the false juxtaposition of God vs. nature and reason as conflicting sources of rights. On the contrary, through a healthy reliance on reason and revelation, we can restore a holistic and truthful conception of rights. If we are to preserve a government grounded in protecting rights and liberties and furthering the common good, we must first understand what rights are.
