Individual Rights and Group Rights

“There is a serious lack of concern for individual rights today. The concept of rights has been distorted to such a degree that the authors of the Constitution would not recognize what is today referred to as a “right.” Demands for unearned wealth, based on needs and desires, are now casually accepted as rights… Rights, as understood by the authors of the Constitution, are not an issue of current debate. Rights today are seen as collective and not something individual…groups are now thought to have rights, rather than individuals. The twentieth century has been characterized by the diminishing importance of the individual and the rising importance of the collective…It is commonplace for politicians and those desiring special privileges to refer to: black rights, Hispanic rights, handicap rights, employee rights, student rights, minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, Asian-American rights, Jewish rights, AIDS victims’ rights, poverty rights, homeless rights, etc. Until all these terms are dropped and we recognize that only an individual has rights, the solution to the mess in which we find ourselves will not be found. The longer we lack a definition of rights, the worse economic and social problems will become.

…No longer are rights individual but they are based on demands, needs, and greed…When Lee Iaccoca came before the House Banking Committee on which I sat, he made the “right” of Chrysler workers to keep their jobs the issue, not government largesse for a failing corporation. He explained in his autobiography that the issue had to be workers’ needs or he could not obtain the bailout. Since the concept of rights is currently so inexact, he had no difficulty convincing the Congress. The rights of the small businessman who had his credit “stolen” and was forced into bankruptcy due to the Chrysler bailout was not easily identified and thus ignored.

Careless disregard for liberty allows politicians to promise anything in order to be reelected. Inevitably this leads to a steady increase in spending, forcing higher taxes, more borrowing, and inflation of the money supply.  Government by majority rule has replaced strict protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and property, without concern for the individual producing the wealth…The individual, throughout this century, has suffered greatly from this dramatic change in attitude. The individual who dares to demand to be left alone and to assume responsibility for himself becomes a criminal. Amish farmers have been arrested for not paying social security taxes, though they sought no aid from the government. Any independence from government welfare programs is deeply frowned upon. Those failing to keep financial records for the IRS are promptly imprisoned.

The good of “society” has replaced the notion that the individual has a sacred right to live unmolested by government interference……Until it’s respectable once again to champion individual rights and government, we cannot expect to reverse the trend in which we as Americans find ourselves.    With confusion regarding rights, the end of constitutionally protected liberty cannot be far off.  Society is filled with competing interests demanding their “rights.” Since no serious attempt has been made to define rights and limit government’s power to masquerade as economic equality in equal rights, the confusion gets worse every year.  This is a serious flaw in today’s political philosophy and, unless the nature of the problem is identified, freedom in America cannot survive. A lack of a precise standards for describing individual rights will destroy the American way of life”

Ron Paul in Freedom Under Siege, 1988