Read John Locke's Two Treatises on Government, published in 1690.
Locke believed that people possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property at the time they lived in a state of nature, before governments were formed. People contracted among themselves to form governments to protect their natural rights. He further stated that if a government failed to protect these natural rights, the people could change that government.
Locke denied that people were born with an obligation to obey their rulers, a revolutionary concept in the age of monarchs. In his Second Treatise of Government, rather, Locke insisted that:
"Freedom of [people] under government is to have a standing rule to live by...made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow [one's] own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another..."
Government, therefore, was legitimate only so long as it respected the rights of its citizens and the citizens continued to consent to it.
Expanding on Locke's ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson stated that men had been endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. In order to protect these rights, governments were created, deriving their authority to rule from the consent of the People. Jefferson also stated that,
"...when a long train of abuses and usurpations,...evinces a design to reduce them (the people) under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
If we are to take the writings of Locke and Jefferson at face value, we must conclude that a right is something that cannot and must not be taken away from the people, as opposed to a privilege which can be taken away. The Founding Fathers understood perfectly well the difference between the two. That is why some of them insisted that a Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution in 1789. The rights listed in the First Ten Amendments were meant to be inviolable and were considered to be essential to the preservation of liberty within the United States.
Most Americans undoubtedly agree with the above statements. Now, if it weren't for that embarassing Second Amendment...
Regards, Shuckins
