Wevets
I appreciate your invitation to come here and share my view of where rights come from. I see that several people have already made passionate declarations — everything from rights are divine to rights don’t exist. I think that the very broad range of opinions might indicate the very broad range of different definitions that we all have for rights.
Some people see rights as permissions. As such, they must of necessity come from someone else. If I am to be given permission to do something, there must be a giver — a person or entity with the authority and the wherewithall to confer rights upon me. It seems to me that people who see rights as permissions might readily hold that rights come from the Constitution, or from the Founders, or from society, or some other authority. So for example, if I have the right to worship, then it means that I have permission to exercise my faith. In order to allow me to worship, someone must intervene.
Others see rights as an attribute of property ownership. As such, rights do not come from an authority, they are an authority — the authority to make decisions with respect to the property owned. These people are likely to hold that rights come from birth. Ownership of our bodies confers upon us the right to life, and ownership of our minds confers upon us the right to give or withhold our consent. It is from these rights that we may derive all others — we come to have rights with respect to what we acquire through the use of our original property, our bodies and minds. (Note that a theist will credit his birth to God, and an atheist will credit his birth to nature; therefore, you will hear phrases like “God given rights” or “natural rights”.) So for example, if I have the right to worship, then it means that I have the intrinsic authority to exercise my faith. In order to stop me from worshipping, someone must intervene.
There are other views in political philosophy, but those two are the most popular here, and the most likely to butt heads.
The main complaint that I hear against the natural rights theory is that it confers upon some people more rights than others. Well, in one sense that’s true, but in another sense it isn’t. In one sense, if Mr. Smith has 10 things and Mr. Jones has only 5, then there are indeed 10 things over which Mr. Smith has authority, and only 5 things over which Mr. Jones has authority, suggesting that Mr. Smith has more rights than Mr. Jones. The problem with examining rights in that way is the fact that it is merely a snapshot of a circumstance that might easily change. If Mr. Smith is a poor steward of his things, then he might lose 7 of them, and end up with fewer things than Mr. Jones. Or if Mr. Jones is more clever than Mr. Smith, then he might use his things to triple their number, and end up with more things than Mr. Smith. This snapshot method of examining and comparing rights fails because life is not a snapshot, and any attempt to create a sort of rights parity by extending to one or the other enough things to make them equal makes only the snapshot equal. In other words, even if Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones start out with 10 things each, on any given day thereafter, they might not have an equal amount. Maintaining parity becomes a never ending task of gathering information about Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, and constantly evening them out. The more kinds of things there are, the more people there are, and the more complex society is, the more difficult it becomes to maintain an equality of rights. The logistics alone can become nighmarish.
But in the other sense, Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones have exactly the same right — namely, the right to make decisions with respect to the things they own. Either one may increase or decrease whatever the number of things is, but how each one’s right is defined remains identical. All that is required to maintain parity is to make certain that both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones are free from the willful and initial interference of others. If each is protected from thieves and muggers and con men, then each still has the same rights as always: authority over what they own. Mr. Smith is protected from decisions about his own property being made by Mr. Jones, and vice-versa. The more kinds of things there are makes no difference. The onus upon government is the same. The more people there are in the society, the more people government needs to ensure noncoercion. It seems to me like a far easier task than the other sense requires.
I’ve also heard people say that Mr. Smith will have certain advantages over Mr. Jones because of having more to work with. Possibly true. However, there is certainly no guarantee of that, not without the interference of someone else to hold back Mr. Jones in case, say, Mr. Jones is more clever than Mr. Smith. It seems to me that the things, in and of themselves, confer no intrinsic advantage on anyone. Of far greater importance are other factors — volition, creativity, work ethic, desire, and so on. Mr. Smith might enjoy an advantage anyway if, say, he is more handsome than Mr. Jones. Studies show that people grant more favor to good looking people than to plain looking people. Thus, even if you force a snapshot parity on the two, if one has real intrinsic advantages over the other, he will soon upset the artificial equality in any case.
Anyway, that’s how I see it.