Do you want to know where you stand lawfully as the government attempts to coerce you into wearing a mask, being isolated at home and being vaccinated? Do you want to be free and live in a moral society that supports human flourishing? If so, you must understand the concept of rights and be able to defend the idea in conversation. Similarly, do you value all the wonderful technological products that are available today and the wealth you enjoy to be able to buy them? If so, to preserve these things you must know that the recognition of individual rights by governments makes them all possible.

We live in an age where the recognition of individual rights is being constantly eroded and things we have come to take for granted are threatened such as our freedom and our prosperity. Rights are such a new concept in human history that few of us really understand what they are. But without the knowledge of what they are and why we need them, we are vulnerable to losing them.

So, what are rights?

Rights are a moral concept. Morality is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions that determine the purpose and course of his life. We have already discussed the fact that man needs morality because he is not omniscient or infallible, and he is not born with instinctive knowledge. men have to figure out what to do and how to live. Thus, we need a code of values to guide us.

A right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning man’s freedom of action within a social context. On a desert island where there is no one else to hinder ones freedom of action, the concept would not arise. We can see, therefore, that rights protect the individual’s freedom of action from any interference by others or by a group, or government.

Where do rights come from?

Traditionally rights have been attributed to one of three sources

1.A gift from God: The early advocates of individual rights such as philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) as well as others, did not defend the concept of rights from the rational perspective that we can today (thanks to Ayn Rand). They claimed that rights came from God. The argument is that because God has given them to men, no man should take them away. But we cannot defend the concept of rights or rationally explain why we need them on this basis. There is no evidence for the existence of God, so how could they have come from this source? The truth is of course that rights do not come from God, or any other mystical or supernatural source.

2. A gift from Society: The second attributed source of rights has been that they come from society or the group, the collective, or the government. But this is not a rational explanation for their origin either. A group does not exist as such, in and of itself. It is an abstraction, an idea, a concept. Concepts cannot enjoy rights. Only individual men exist and can have rights. Also, the group cannot give what it does not possess.  A government cannot give what it does not possess. A government is an idea, an institution, or a pile of paperwork created by men. Men came first, not governments. Governments can create legislation and pass laws. They can also grant ‘benefit privileges’ and they can withdraw these benefit privileges, but they have no power to grant rights. Rights pre-exist the concept of government. So we can see that this argument falls apart on many levels.

3. Natural Rights: This theory holds that rights are a self-evident or natural phenomenon. It claims that rights are intrinsically ‘out there’. This is not a sufficient argument to support such a crucial concept with so much depending on it. In truth, rights are not intrinsically ‘out there’, in our bodies, or in anyway self-evident. The concept of rights must be grasped conceptually. One must use reason,