ȃȄȃ Partʺʺ: Politics and Philosophyby his parents or each party’s right to performance by the other party to
a contract. Ļe rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are
negative rights, rights to forbearances, rights not to be coerced or victim-
ized by other persons, notably including agents of the state. One reason
why negative rights are especially stringent is that they are relatively easy
to honor—simply by not interfering.
Rights, being moral entitlements,presupposean ethical system or tra-
dition and cannot provide its very grounding. On what principles or intu-
itions provide the basis of rights, “the rhetoric of rights sheds no light
whatever” (HareȀȈȇȈ, chaps.Ȇ–Ȉ, p.ȀȈȃ). Richard Epstein finds a utili-
tarian grounding for natural law and natural rights, sensibly interpreted,
and even for the Lockean axioms of self-ownership or personal autonomy
and homesteading or first possession (ȀȈȇȈ, pp.ȆȀȂ–ȆȄȀ,ȆȅȈ–ȆȆȂ; andȀȈȈȄ,
pp.Ȃǿ,ȄȄ,ȅȇ,ȂȀȀ–ȂȀȂ, and passim).
Making natural rights the very foundation of ethics substitutes intu-
ition for factual research and reasoning. Furthermore, some strands of
“rights talk” debase political discussion, making absolutistic and moralistic
demands, and subverting a creative search for mutually beneficial accom-
modations.
In the words of Donald Livingston, interpreting David Hume, cor-
rupt modes of philosophizing are undercutting whatever fragments of
sensus communiscould discipline radical self-determination. Philosophical
resentment spawns
an endless stream of self-created victims. Someone’s self determination is
met with the violent protest that someone else’s rights have been violated.
Ever more numerous rights are generated to protect ever more numer-
ous desires.... “I want”... has become an argument of practical reason....
Ļus a form of the Hobbesian state of nature is renewed in the most
advanced civilization, and society is held together not by the enjoyment
and cultivation of an inheritedsensus communisbut bylegalismenforced
by an increasingly consolidated and bureaucratic modern state. Consoli-
dation must occur as power is transferred from dismantled, independent
social authorities to the center in order to service an ever-increasing num-
ber of antinomic individual rights. (ȀȈȈȇ, pp.ȂȈȇ–ȂȈȈ)As Mises says, declarations about disagreements hinging on irrecon-
cilably and unnegotiably different worldviewsdescribe the antagonism as more pointed than it really is. In fact, for
all parties committed to pursuit of the people’s earthly welfare and thus