the Roman Catholic Church, but the inevitable conservatism of such ideas has
made it hard for those of other political persuasions to continue accepting what
might otherwise be an intellectually attractive position.
Natural Rights
Natural rights are those human rights or entitlements which are held to stem
fromnatural law, whatever definition may be given to the latter concept. One
can probably divide natural rights into two broad categories, as they are
encountered in legal and political theory. One group consists of those rights,
seldom specified, that a person would hold, even if not enforce, in the
theoreticalstate of nature—rights, that is, that are fixed by divine law or
by the very nature of man and the universe. These have often been incorpo-
rated into various declarations ofhuman rights, and include those such as the
right to life, to property, to family life, and in general to do anything, in total
freedom, so long as the similar rights or person of others are not damaged (see
libertarianism). The second group would consist of the more procedural
rights that most legal systems find logically necessary if they are to be fair and
efficient, as characterized by, for example, the English doctrine ofnatural
justiceor, in America,due processof law. What is definitional about natural
rights is the contrast between their absolute and extra-governmental nature,
and other rights which depend only on state policy, as, for example, with
welfare rights stemming only from social policy legislation. Whatever natural
rights are, they are held to exist independently of what any government does or
says, and not to be capable of being legitimately over-ridden by any govern-
ment, however often they may be ignored in practice. (See alsocivil liber-
ties.)
Neo
A wide range of political and philosophical concepts are prefaced by the word
‘neo’. This can either be to give an idea or theory respectability by tracing its
roots back historically, or to discredit it by linking it to some previous theory
which is now consensually disapproved of. Thus, for example,neo-corpor-
atismis a label given to the modern tendency for government, industry and
trade unionsto come to common understandings about running a sector of
industry. But this label is used mainly by those who disapprove of the tendency,
the aim being to link it with the unfashionable corporatistpolicies of
Franco’sSpain andMussolini’sItaly. Family resemblances between concepts
or theories are often more misleading than helpful, and the addition of a ‘neo’
prefix gives an often spurious sense of temporal development. Usually the base
concept,conservatism, for example, was never homogenous, and the parti-
Neo