How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps

by Ben Shapiro

It is unsurprising, therefore, that Disintegrationists deny the very notion of individual rights, too. The founders believed that because human nature existed, that because human nature was rooted in reason, and that because reason had to be protected, human beings were inherently granted the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by Nature and Nature’s God.

Rights, in the Disintegrationist view, are an obstacle to societal happiness, and limit our greatest tool for achieving human transformation.

Karl Marx similarly saw rights as a corrupting influence on the development of man. Individuals are by nature unequal; rights enshrine this inequality by positing that force cannot be enacted on someone against their will, despite that natural inequality. Therefore, “to avoid these defects,” Marx concluded, “right, instead of being equal would have to be unequal.” Rights should be overridden in favor of the collective: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”35

Woodrow Wilson was even more explicit: he tore the Declaration of Independence to shreds. Wilson explained in 1911, “If you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface.”37 Wilson was even more explicit in a 1907 speech: the opening sentences of the Declaration of Independence, he said, “do not afford a general theory of government to formulate policies upon. No doubt we are meant to have liberty; but each generation must form its own conception of what liberty is.”

What is the basic nature of the rights we must respect and defend? As we have seen, the founders believed that rights preexist government, and adhere to you by nature of your existence; rights represent a claim you have against the world, based on the principle that others may not harm you. You have a right to life, because others have an obligation not to kill you.

You have a right to free speech, because others have an obligation not to meet speech with violence. Legal rights only exist as protections against those who violate your rights. This includes the government. These rights, as we have discussed, were typically termed “negative” rights, in that they were rights articulated against the government.

So far, so good. But there are also actions we want others to perform to which we do not have a right—actions that, in our fuzzy thinking, we often suggest we have a “right” to demand. These “rights” have been termed “positive rights.” Positive rights are not rights at all. They are demands that violate someone’s negative rights. So, for example, if I demand that you serve me on my terms, I am not acting on my rights. I may be morally correct that you should serve me on my particular terms. But I do not have a right to your services. That would violate your right to control your own labor—a right you do have a...

Now, rights alone do not guarantee virtue, as we have seen—it certainly was not virtuous to bar black students from lunch counters, or to march wearing white hoods through Skokie. And indeed, a society that promoted such activity without any cultural checks would quickly collapse into disunion and failure. Unionist culture suggests that rights must be balanced by a culture that promotes virtue. Virtue lies in our nongovernment social fabric. The founders were deep believers that duty lies in the morality and religion taught by strong social institutions. They recognized that rights are an excellent bulwark against tyranny, but they don’t provide a strong framework for decency. Rights mean that we leave each other the hell alone, which means we can live together. But if we hate each other, those rights won’t last for long. That’s why, as the founders understood, our rights were balanced by duties. Americans historically like to cite Moses’s cry to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”