A couple years back, I engaged in discussion with a conservative friend who is very philosophical and very well read. He is extremely good at making me question the assumptions I don’t even know I’m making. This conversation is loosely based on the one we had. *Standard Amateur Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been a philosopher. My exposure to philosophy is minimal at best. I may trample over great discoveries of the past without even acknowledging them, or I may walk into giant bear traps without even knowing. This is a stream of consciousness article with minimal editing.Pensive Boater.jpg

OSCAR: Natural rights are the most important concept in governance. As governments drift further away from recognition and defense of natural rights, they become more evil.

AUGUST: Absolutely, natural rights like free healthcare, abortions, and public accommodations.

OSCAR: Those aren’t natural rights, they’re infringements on natural rights.

AUGUST: Infringements like profiteering, not paying your fair share, and bigotry?

OSCAR: No, those are consensual activities and mere thoughts.

AUGUST: So, mere thinking and consent are the difference between rights and infringements?

OSCAR: Well, no. Those are characteristics of things that are rights, but rights aren’t rights just because they’re mere thoughts or consented to. Rights are consequences of self-ownership.

AUGUST: Self-ownership means you have unassailable natural rights, like the right to life?

OSCAR: Yes, self-ownership includes an unassailable right to life.

AUGUST: You’re saying that, because you have self-ownership, you have an unassailable natural right to life? How do you know this? Does nature somehow affirm this natural right? Or does nature indiscriminately kill you, despite your unassailable right to life? Or is it that people are somehow physically prevented from killing you?

OSCAR: Well, no, none of that. Rights are more about morality than some law of physics.

AUGUST: Oh, morality! Right and wrong! Virtue and vice! So, since people have an unassailable right to life, it’s wrong in all situations to kill somebody, including in self-defense, the death penalty, and war?

OSCAR: There are certainly exceptions. For example, self-defense is the clash of one’s right to life against another’s right to life. In such a situation, the wrong is in the initial aggression that causes the clash of rights.

AUGUST: I see, so it’s okay to kill your boss for the initial aggression of exploiting your labor.

OSCAR: No, of course not. Exploitation isn’t infringing a right. You aren’t forced to work for your boss.

AUGUST: So rights mean that you shouldn’t be forced to do things?

OSCAR: Yes, rights are things you shouldn’t be forced to do without your consent.

AUGUST: So, criminals shouldn’t be forced to respect other people’s rights?

OSCAR: Well, uhm…. rights only extend so far. You don’t have a right to violate other people’s rights. You may only violate their rights when you have their consent or when not violating their rights would cause one of your rights to be violated.

AUGUST: That seems to rely a lot on what a right is. What is a right?

OSCAR (now wary of being corner cased to death): Umm, a right is . . . a right is easier to describe than to define. A right is dependent on the interpersonal interaction. A child has different rights in respect to their parents than in respect to a stranger. A right is also dependent on the specific context. Killing a burglar stealing your wallet from your bedroom in the middle of the night is different from killing a fraudster who stole your money by grabbing your credit card information.

AUGUST: So a right is some undefinable thing that changes wildly with context?

OSCAR: Well, no. Rights change based on the authority relationship. You have no liberty in view of a superior authority, except as voluntarily ceded or compelled by an even more superior authority. See, for example, the town having no authority in view of the state, except where the state or  federal government grants it to the town. In contrast, you have total liberty in view of an inferior authority. A dog can in no way morally restrain you, except for when you voluntarily abstain for the dog’s benefit. It is only in view of a co-equal authority that rights have any meaning. It is the equality of man and human authority that give meaning to rights.

AUGUST: So if rights are based on authority and the equality of man, are you saying that rights are attempts to prevent inequity between men and between man and institutions created by man?

OSCAR: Yes! As with any co-equal relationship, there are certain things solely in the domain of the first, other things that are solely in the domain of the second, and some things that are in an overlapping domain between the two. For example, parenting.

AUGUST: So, in this Venn Diagram description, your domain is your rights with respect to me, my domain is my rights with respect to you, and the shared domain is collective rights between us and conflicting rights between us. While that may be helpful on a theoretical level to be able to categorize things, it leads into the question, how do I know what is in your domain, what is in my domain, what is in our shared domain, and what is in neither of our domains? In other words, what rights are there?


Hopefully this conversation is useful to spark dialogue. From this, you can see that my contention is that rights are the boundaries erected between rightful exercise of authority between co-equal people and immoral abuse of authority between the same co-equal people.

If this type of article has enough interest, I may continue to write in this style in the future, continuing this conversation.