Politics & Rights

Open immigration does not mean that government must let in criminals and terrorists. And our alternatives obviously are not limited to letting in criminals and terrorists or keeping out rights-respecting people who want to move here. The alternative consistent with individual rights is a policy under which immigration is open to all and only rights-respecting, non-rights threatening individuals.

What the left has pragmatically (and temporarily) “learned” about Americans on this count is consistent with polls that show a healthy majority of Americans still revere the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and value the individual’s inalienable right to pursue his personal goals, not the collective’s alleged “right” to throttle individual achievement for the so-called “common good.”

Uber car ride service has a problem. The problem is not that the company lacks customers eager to use its services or investors eager to finance it: Uber now operates in 70 cities, and recently it raised $1.2 billion from investors. Uber’s problem is that various state and local governments are seeking to throttle it.

The proper solution is for government to start protecting the rights of all individuals to act on their judgment, which means (among many other things) the right to operate their businesses as they see fit and to voluntarily contract with others—or not to do so—as they see fit.

America came as close as any society has ever come to establishing an exclusively rights-protecting government. Americans were almost fully free to live their own lives, by their own judgment, for their own sake. This is the moral ideal we should embrace and redouble our efforts to achieve.

Women who get birth control via insurance either pay for it via higher premiums, or, if their insurance is legislatively subsidized, get it for “free” only in the sense that others are forced to pay higher premiums (or higher taxes) than they would otherwise pay. In that latter case, the birth control is still not free.

Rights-respecting foreigners have a moral right to move where they choose and to seek work where they choose, and Americans have a moral right to hire and otherwise associate with such people. These rights are instances of the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

Many methods of food production or preparation involve some risks to consumers . . . but it is properly up to consumers to evaluate those risks and make their shopping decisions accordingly. If people wish to consume raw fish or raw milk or hamburgers grilled rare or cheese aged on wooden boards, they have a moral right to do so . . .

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) was a 19th-century British political philosopher and a member of Parliament, who recognized that each individual has inalienable rights to direct his own mind and body, and to keep and use the product of his own effort. In defense of these rights, Herbert advocated a strictly limited, voluntarily funded, rights-protecting government.

A ban on drones is a patent violation of Americans’ rights to liberty and property. Farmers have a moral right to employ the latest technologies. . . . There’s no reason to suspect that flying drones at low altitudes over uninhabited, private crop lands would subject anyone to any substantial risk, much less that doing so would violate anyone’s rights.