Individual Rights are the only form of rights belonging to indivduals that make up a society. A ‘natural right’ is the right to act. A natural right, is (self) control over our faculties, without violating another’s rights. There is no rightful claim to a thing, or some outcome, e.g., to receive an education or health care. We each have the right to seek such, but no right to demand that someone provides it.
Ayn Rand
A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.
Ethics, morality and our ‘right to action’ are intimately related to consciousness. Our ability to act ethically and morallly confirms our individual rights
Observe what that means in practice.
- When our actions preserve other people’s right to life, our own rights are guaranteed.
- Conversely, actions that violate other’s rights, forfeit our own.
Individuals may associate, cooperate, and collaborate, but no associative dealing can negate our free and unalienable right to life. When individual rights are upheld, everyone’s right to life is protected. Moreover, just as there is no collective lung, heart, or digestive system to be sustained, no group rights are possible.
Unalienable and inalienable rights
Contrary to popular belief, the words ‘unalienable’ and ‘inalienable’ do not mean the same. Because this inane ambiguity persists today, I have differentiated one from the other — elsewhere explained.
Now observe the outcome.
- Unalienable rights deny all authoritarian rule. All trespass, violation or denial of our right to life are thereby outlawed.
- Inalienable rights deny confiscation of our lawful property. An item, or product, can be aliened, but our (labour of love) right to it, cannot be taken. Theft, and eminent domain, are outlawed thereby.
One’s individual right to life-sustaining action, and right to the fruits of their labour, cannot ever apply to dead (fictional) legal entities, because they cannot action anything.
Present-day societies deny individual rights. Permissions preside, per Article 29(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UDHR, which states, ‘these rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.’