What is a right anyway?

And what difference does it make? Well, think about this —

A right is the idea that you have sole authority over yourself. That’s the whole idea; a pretty small thought with enormous implications.

I Have Sole Authority Over Me

Sole authority for me means that I can do whatever I please, whenever I please, and there is nothing you can do about it. So live with it! I can go and come without having to ask permission from anybody, I can buy and sell and build and tear down and be silent or speak or work or sleep or eat or do nothing at all. Period. The only restriction on me is this: I must allow you the same sole authority over yourself. That means I can’t go around stomping our your sole authority over you.

In today’s world of too big government, it also means it can’t go around commanding me to do this and not do that when such choices pose no threat to anyone else’s rights.

That’s the description of liberty. That’s the cause for which millions of us have volunteered to die. And millions have given not only their substance, but their lives for it.

So How Much is That Worth to You?

Is it worth the sacrifice of part of your substance? Considering the fact that we are presently giving our time — which is our lives after all — to earning a living and to working at bettering ourselves or our circumstances, we have to realize that we are already giving our lives to those things. Meanwhile, we have to remember that our liberty allows us to exercise our rights to have sole authority over what we do and what we think. The point is simply that if we lose your liberty we have lost your life.