Rights in the Declaration of Independence, rights as God-given and pre-governmental, universality of rights, and the crucial distinction between natural rights and civil rights.
The Declaration of Independence describes rights as 'unalienable' — meaning they cannot be given away or taken away. They are endowed by the Creator, not granted by government. This is a radical claim: it means that government does not create rights, it merely recognizes and protects them.
Natural rights are those rights that exist prior to and independent of government. They include the right to life, liberty, and property. Civil rights are those rights that are created and defined by government — the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, etc.
The Founders believed that natural rights were universal — they applied to all human beings by virtue of their humanity, not by virtue of their citizenship. This is why the Declaration says 'all men are created equal' — not 'all American citizens are created equal.'
The modern concept of 'group rights' is fundamentally different from the Founders' concept of individual rights. The Founders believed that rights belonged to individuals — not to groups. The idea that a person's rights depend on their membership in a particular group is incompatible with the principle of equal treatment under the law.
Frederic Bastiat observed: 'Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.' Government exists to protect pre-existing rights — not to create new ones.
The semantic shift in the meaning of 'rights' is one of the most significant changes in American political discourse. When 'rights' come to mean entitlements — claims on the labor and resources of others — rather than freedoms from government interference, the constitutional framework is fundamentally undermined.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.