Today I recorded my reading of Sophocles’s Antigone into my iPhone’s voice memo app so that I could have a working audiobook for my humanities students. It is one of my favorite Greek tragedies as it not only deals with the inseparable pair of Justice and Mercy, but it concerns our most dear possessions, natural rights. As Antigone is defending her choice to bury her brother Polynices against the corrupt law that forbade it, or rather, her tyrannical uncle, Creon’s law, I was reminded of the presentation I made to a group of amazing women in the Historic Provo Library recently. In preparing and paying the price to learn about rights, duties, the proper role of government, and Entitlements, I am astonished at how these ideas and principles have informed my thinking. I can find them now in my reading, in listening to the news, in raising my children, and in observing people and circumstances all around me.
That day in my presentation, I defined and explained the four terms for the moms, and then we practiced together how to recognize rights and duties in the family rules. We then moved on to some social issues plaguing our system and looked at whether they pertained to rights, duties, or were they entitlements and what was the proper role of government in the issue. It was a satisfying experience for me as a bunch of moms discovered how to look at family and social issues considering the true principles of proper government.
Come with me as I briefly define these terms and explain them. I defined rights as God-given things “which justly belong to one.” Samuel Adams and James Madison said that the four basic rights are life, liberty, property, and conscience. Just to clarify each one, the right to life means that each individual has the right to stay alive. The right to liberty means that no individual will be in bondage to another. The right to property is that each has the right to their things, purchases, and things they’ve made or received. Finally, each individual has the right to believe, live, and talk according to their conscience. So that which justly belongs to you and me is our right. No one can take them from us. We had them at birth and we will always inherently have these God-given rights, no matter what. People may try to take them from us, but we’ll still have a right to them.
These four basic rights make up the framework of our society. Ayn Rand said, “Individual rights are moral principles identifying the social conditions required by man’s nature for his proper survival.” She is saying that these rights lay down the foundation of our social condition and all laws are and should protect these rights. Look at little children and how they inherently know what is theirs. Observe two toddlers playing with toys and one takes the toy from the other and contention arises. The other defends his “property” and pleads his case to his mother, or he might breach the right of the one by hitting and kicking him. Mom steps in and gently teaches the right to life and the right to property. It is a natural tendency to protect rights whether you are two years old or 92.
Long ago there was a big debate at the founding of our nation about whether we should put our God-given rights into the constitution. You can read more about this debate in the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers. The Anti-Feds wanted the rights set forth so the government would know what rights to protect. The Feds debated against them, saying that people might think it limited us to only those rights. There was a lot of back and forth in the compromise, and they all finally settled on a Bill of Rights listing 10 of them. Everyone agreed that these 10 were natural rights no matter what. The last one stated that all other rights not listed in the Constitution belonged to the states or the people.
You will notice when you look at the Bill of Rights each one of them falls under one or more of the basic rights. For instance, the right to worship falls under the right of conscience. We can believe how we desire to believe as long as we do not breach the right of any other person. You might see that this same right could fall under the right to liberty, meaning that you have a right not to be in bondage to another because of your beliefs. To summarize, the Bill of Rights became an extension or delineation of the four basic rights that each of us inherently has.
Now, let’s move on and define Duties. Duties are that which a person owes to another; that which a person is bound by a natural obligation to do. Our duties are in two parts: first, we are to help other people when needed to defend their rights, when we can (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.) Second, we have a duty to not breach other people’s rights. The 1828 dictionary says we are to forbear “that which is forbidden by morality or justice.” Thomas Jefferson said of duties, “God has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own.” And Richard Maybury said, “Do all that you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on other people’s persons or their property.” By virtue of being a human, I have these four basic rights and my duty is to recognize that all other people do too; I am to defend rights and not breach the rights of others. Rights require duty, they are inseparable. Rights are basically a check on another person, they tell you what you can and cannot do to another.
Now, when people want to be protected they form a society and grant power to the government to protect those rights. The Proper Role of Government is that it protects the rights of the people. The people who have created the government can only give power to the government from the powers they have themselves. What power do we give the government? Well, I have my rights and duties, and my duties are to protect rights. That power of protecting rights is the power I give to the government.
Ezra Benson, a former US secretary of Agriculture says in his book, The Proper Role of Government, and I will paraphrase, said:
“The early pioneers found that much of their time and energy was being spent… defending themselves, their property and their liberty in what was called, ‘the lawless west.’ In order for people to prosper, they cannot spend all their time constantly guarding the family, the fields, and property against attack and theft.
“So, they join together with their neighbors and hire a sheriff. And right then, Government is born. Each individual citizen delegates to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The key is: The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves—nothing more.
“Now we come to the moment of truth. Suppose pioneer Bob wants another horse for his wagon, He doesn’t have the money to buy one, but since pioneer Dave has an extra horse, he decides that he is entitled to share in his neighbor’s good fortune, Is he entitled to take his neighbor’s horse? Obviously not! If his neighbor wishes to give it or lend it, that is another question. But so long as pioneer Dave wishes to keep his property, pioneer Bob has no just claim to it.
“So, If Bob has no proper power to take Dave’s property, can he delegate any such power to the sheriff? No. Even if everyone in the community desires that Dave give his extra horse to Bob, they have no right individually or collectively to force him to do it. They cannot delegate a power they themselves do not have.”
We need to remember that the government’s purpose is to protect rights, and that government is a force. Frederic Bastiat says that Law is a force. Why is he saying that? Because he is saying that anytime we make a law we have to put force behind it. That is what Law is. Why make a law if we will not enforce it? Whether it’s “drive the speed limit on the roads” or “what kind of marriage you can have,” they are all laws that humans make and they are enforced.
Now, it is wise to differentiate between governmental force and natural force. Governmental force is that each law has legal force behind it. Legally, you are held accountable to obey the laws or you receive the consequence. Natural force, on the other hand, is the consent of the governed. For example, laws around killing and taking property have my and your consent. When laws are outside the framework of Natural Rights, they don’t have a natural force anymore. We don’t feel compelled to obey them. When a law follows natural rights, the governed feel the law inherently in their hearts and they know it follows natural rights and it is obvious they want to obey it.
Another thing we need to consider while we think about the proper role of government is to differentiate between governmental principles and spiritual principles. We need to distinguish between what God is asking us to do and what the proper role of government is and what the government really has the power to do. For example, consider whether being loved is a right. If it were a right, then the government would have to pass laws around it and force people to love each other. If my husband did not love me and I had a right to be loved, he would be forced, by law to love me. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? Of course, being loved is not a right. However, it is a need, and it is something that God is asking us to do. Therefore, we separate our needs and our godly mandates, and we do not give power to the government to enforce those godly mandates.
Now that we have defined and explained rights, duties, and the proper role of government, let’s talk about the counterfeit of rights, which are entitlements.
Entitlements are the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment; unearned privileges that they don’t have a natural right to. A very easy example comes from our American history. Some Founders owned slaves and yet they knew slavery was against natural law and natural rights. The government they had formed was legally stating that slavery was okay. The whole business of it was complex because slavery was heavily intertwined into that society. Many were okay with it and thought they needed it. Many weren’t. Jefferson consistently spoke out against the international slave trade, and he outlawed it during his presidency. Step by step, it was eradicated and as you know the Emancipation Proclamation finally made slavery illegal. From then on, the progression continued to be a messy process until we got to where we are today. And we still have repercussions because of that horrible breaching of the four basic rights in our history. You can see from this example that the law gave privileges to men they had no natural right to. They forced the slaves to give up their natural rights to become property to their masters.
Government Entitlements are any laws or programs that violate one’s God-given rights in giving unearned privileges to another who has no right to it. Sometimes we and the government get confused and instead of the government protecting rights, it declares that people can take the property, take a life, or take away liberty, or legally force people to pay into a storehouse for redistributing. The tricky part is that entitlements surround us now. We even benefit from them and do not realize we are harming another’s rights.
In the same way that abolishing slavery was complex, entitlements in our day are equally complex. Our welfare system is huge and complicated and has created a lot of dependence. Since its nature is to redistribute wealth, it is an entitlement. It gives special privileges to others who do not have a right to them. We will not sort this out in this article, but what we have discussed today has given you the tools to discern rights, duties, and entitlements and to know what the proper role of government is.
Back to my study of Sophocles’ Antigone: she was devoted to Zeus. She had a right to conscience and believed in the laws of Zeus and not the tyrannical laws. The Ancient Greeks knew that each person ought to have a proper burial, but when Creon prohibited it, Antigone had a choice before her. Would she obey the tyrant or would she obey Zeus, who does not “ordain such laws for men”? Antigone confronted her contemptuous uncle accusing him of overriding the gods. Her courage and braveness to defend her rights was of no use; her right of conscience was breeched. Creon banished her from the kingdom to die an ignominious death.
Oh, it gets me each time I read that play. I want to defend her rights; I want to stand up and make a case for her God-given right to conscience. But I can do better than that—we are not fictitious characters living in a fictitious world. We can learn these tools and observe how they are working in our lives. We can stand up and defend the rights of others, we can restore the proper role of government to the government and we can think of better ways to help our fellow man than resorting to entitlements.
Do you realize the power you hold within you to understand and defend natural rights? The Founders understood and under the influence of the Great Creator, they established the most perfect union ever created on this earth, and all of it around the natural rights and natural laws of God. Discover them, apply them in your homes and in your communities, fight for them and watch the power that is in you to change the world for good!
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