What Are Rights? This Is What the Founders Believed
In 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that everyone is endowed with “unalienable Rights.” Years later, the Bill of Rights elaborated on those rights. Subsequently, the rights of many (although not all, tragically and atrociously) Americans were secured...
Of the Natural Rights of Individuals
Do people exist for the sake of government? Or is it the other way around? That’s the question James Wilson attempts to answer in his 1790 work, “Of the Natural Rights of Individuals.” A signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the...
The New Human Rights Paradigm
There is a powerful physical basis for the natural rights claimed by the words “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights” found in the Declaration of Independence. My intent is not to remove the creator from our rights, but to show how that...