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These are protection from what gov–
ernment can do to you: You have
the right to life, liberty, and security
of person; freedom from slavery
and servitude; freedom from tor–
ture; the right to own property ;
freedom of religion; etc. The com–
mon denominator of these rights is
that they exist independent of the
existence of any government.
Articles 22 to 27 cover economic
and social rights. These define bene–
fits the government should provide
for
you. They include the right to
social security, the right to work. the
right to a standard of living ade–
quate for health and well-being. as
well as the right to a compulsory
public education. These rights re–
quire the existence of government
and deal with its duty to provide
its citizens with material bene–
fits.
Finally, the rest of the Declara–
tion states that everyone has the
right to an "international order" in
which he can enjoy his other rights.
There are two very serious fiaws in
the U.N. Declaration of Human
Rights. The first is that the economic
and social rights of one man may
necessitate the deprivation ofthe po–
litical and civil rights ofanother. For
example, ifyou have the right to own
property, does another man have the
right to have the government take
sorne ofthat property away so that he
can have a "standard of living ade–
quate for health and well-being"? Or
take perhaps a more glaringexample:
Ifyou believe in rearingyourchildren
to respect God.what happens to your,
and their, freedom of conscience and
religion if the government compels
them to go toa school where they are
taught an evolutionary world view
while God is never mentioned in the
classroom except in profanity? And to
make matters worse, what ifthe gov–
ernment takes sorne ofyour property
in order to finance teaching your
children what your conscience ab–
hors? (lndeed, it was Thomas Jeffer–
son who said that to compela manto
pay for the promulgation of beliefs
which he opposed was tyranny.)
But the other ftaw is even more
serious: T he U.N. Declaration of
Human Ríghts. as the noted writer
Carl F. Henry has pointed out. is
"silent on the themeofthesource and
sanctions of human rights." In fact,
30
the implication is that the United
Nations itself is the source of your
human rights. But what the U.N .
giveth. it may take away.
Inalienable Rlghts
and Nature's God
There are two other great human
rights documents in the history of
ideas: the French Declaration of the
Rights ofMan ( 1791) and the Ameri–
can Declaration of lndependence
( 1776). The French Declaration con–
tains 17 articles. which promulgate
the idea that man has certain natural
and inalienable rights with wbich he
is born-namely. liberty, prívate
property, and the inviolability of the
person-and that the sole purpose of
government is to protect those rights.
The Declaration of lndependence
also states that there are certain "in–
alienable rights." and that meo form
governments to protect those rights,
but it adds one more important idea:
Those inalienable rights are derived
from "nature and na ture's God" and
are so "self-evident" that any reason–
able man will recognize them.
The idea that man is
born
with
certain innate "natural" rights has
an illust rious history going as far
back as the great Roman orator Cí–
cero and later jurists of the Roman
Empire. Most of the thinking about
"natural rights," however. has been
done in more modero times. The
concept's premier expositor was
John Locke. Locke used as his start–
ing point a conception of how men
would be without government and
asked what rights men would have
in that situation. He concluded tha t
if men had certain
rights
before .they
formed governments. they retained
those rights afterwards also. French
philosophers who had similar ideas
were Rousseau and Voltaire. Mo re
recent ly, the idea of natural rights
has been developed by Robert Noz–
ick in a 1975 book which won na–
tional recognition. entitled
Anarchy.
State, and Utopia.
Nozick starts with
the same assumption as Locke: Men
are bom with certain natural human
rights which they have before they
ever form a government.
The Shlfting Sands
of Human Rights
But the Lockean idea that ·man is
born with natural human rights can
be attacked at its base. Just the as–
sertion that one is born with certain
human rights does not make it so. In
fact, many philosophers have re–
jected this notion. Jeremy Bentham.
for example. said the idea of natural
human rights was "nonsense upon
stilts." Apparently. it just isn't some–
thing which is self-evident.
In fact, a modern-day supporter
of Locke, noted English barrister
and economist Arthur Shenfield.
has admitted this problem and has
even gone so far as to state that "it
may be that no absolutely firm
philosophical basis for natural rights
can ever be found."
No absolutely firm philosophica l
basis! In our day of the Gulag Ar–
chipelago, política! torture, the
widespread confiscation of prívate
property, the arbitrary arrest of po–
tential política! opponents. and the
proverbial "knock on the door.' '
there
had better be
a firm philosoph–
ical basis for human rights.
T he irony is that the basis has
been there all along. acknowledged
as it was by J efferson. How ironic
that in an era in which we prostrate
ourse!ves before "human rights.' ' we
reject the only firm philosophical
basís for those ríghts: God.
The Fountainhead of Human Rights
The hard truth is that man is the
created being of God. made in His
image. While there may be better or
worse ways of organizing human
government, unless man has certain
rights from God. he has no
abso!ute
rights at all, and everything he has
is at the merey ofsociety.
Only God can be said to be the
o riginal source of human rights. lf
they come from nature. what "na–
ture" says is subject to arbitrary in–
terpretation. l f they come from
"society," society can just as easily
revoke a right as give it. l ndeed. the
whole idea of human rights. as the
great twentieth-century political
philosopher Leo Strauss has said, is
that there exists a law
above
society.
Th is idea has been seconded by the
evangel ical intellectual Francis
Schaeffer. who points out that if
there are no absolute standards
"above" society. then society is ab–
solute. And if society is absolute,
then it can take away everything
(Continued on page 44)
The
PLAIN TRUTH August 1978