A Bit On Rights

This post by Megan McArdle is only very obliquely related to what I'm about to write, but did prompt it.

Without conceding the truth that God exists and that He granted rights to man it becomes extremely difficult to explain where rights come from. The Founding Fathers didn't just pull "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" out of their collective asses. No, they read the large body of philosophy based upon logic and reason built up over the centuries and derived from Scripture. The most concise of which is probably this passage from Locke's Second Treatise:

for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our's. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

Many liberals, who are often uncomfortable with the existence of God, simply assert the existence of rights. An article in The Hoya during the presidental campaign exemplifies this:

like food and water, all of us have the right to be healthy.

At the time I questioned whether anybody has a right "to be healthy" as opposed to "health care," but even leaving that aside for now, the right is simply asserted. No justification is provided. No explanation of where this right can be found in the text of the Constitution. No explanation of any other basis for this assertion. It simply is, and presumably only the stupid or evil who question it.

Now, I certainly wish conservative rhetoric on the health care debate was more intelligent and sophisticated than simply asserting that Obama is a socialist on talk radio, but at least if you asked most of the callers where our rights come from they would say God or the Constitution. Not that it's much consolation to me in light of the fiery, illogical rhetoric, but still. Liberals have difficulty coming up with a basis for the origin of rights.

When pressed, most will admit that they believe rights are socially constructed. We simply agree that we have a right to something, and therefore we do. I have a ton of problems with this, most notably that if we decide that we don't have a right to something, then we no longer do. In this view rights are simply glorified laws. Perhaps more securely codified, but laws nonetheless.

Perhaps I'm ignorant of some fantastic liberal logic on rights, but I haven't seen anything. Rawls, for example, talks about mostly about principles, not rights. Anyway, a world where rights remain inalienable, even if they can be and sometimes are violated, is far superior to a world where rights are just social constructs.