FOUNDERS CORNER

   
America's Founders and Founding Principles

Natural Rights

Natural Rights are those rights individuals possess simply because we live.  We are born with many natural rights - the right to live, to be free, to own property, to govern our own affairs and more.

These rights were recognized in the first line of the United States Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which have connected them with another and
to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the
Laws of
Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them...
"

We do not gain our rights from any government, the state or any other man. Our rights are our own and no man, government or state can take them away.

Our rights are "Unalianeable". In other words, they are part of us and we can no more voluntarily give away our  our natural rights than we can give away our own breath.  Though we may seek to give away our rights, they are still ours and can not be dispossesed - they can't be alienated from ourselves.

Thus no man can claim our rights without attempting to enslave us.

While we have our rights, we also have responsiblities to live a moral life and to not violate the rights of others.

Since men are not angels and do tend to violate the rights of others, "GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG men" - with one purpose in mind:

TO PROTECT THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL MEN AND WOMEN.