Primary Principles

We are fortunate in America to have a set of documents, our founding documents, from which to derive those principles: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Taken together, those documents speak at bottom to a single idea. Freedom, the right of each of us to plan and live his life as he pleases, provided only that we heed the equal rights of others to do the same. We see that idea right in the Declaration of Independence, with the famous passage that begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” With that simple phrase alone, Thomas Jefferson was making an essential point. He was placing us in the natural law tradition. The tradition that holds that there is a higher law of right and wrong, from which to derive the positive law, and against which to judge the positive law at any point in time.  The propositions that followed were asserted not as mere doctrines, but as 'truths', 'self-evident' truths, or truths of reason. What are those truths? They begin with a premise of moral equality. 'All men are created equal', then define that equality with reference to our rights to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Notice that Jefferson did not mean that we are all equal, in fact, something he could hardly have believed. Each of us, rather, is unique. Naturally, no one is equal to anyone else except with respect to his equal moral rights, which means simply that no one has rights superior to those of anyone else. That was Jefferson’s basic point. Notice too, that our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are essentially rights to be free. The right to plan and live our own lives, free from the intervention of others, provided only that we respect the equal rights of others to do the same. Among other things, that means that each of us has a right to practice his liberty, which is his property. By procurement of property in the world, either originally or through contract with another who acquired it originally or through contract. In fact, it is by going out into the world, acquiring, and improving property, either alone or in association with others, that we create over time that complex institution we call civilization or civil society.

Notice finally, that to this point Jefferson has said nothing at all about control of state, for the idea is that we have our rights not by government grant, but 'by nature.' The states purpose, then, is not to give us our rights, but simply to secure the rights we already have, as Jefferson goes on immediately to say: 'That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.' Civil society comes first, government second. Indeed, whatever rights or powers the state legitimately has arisen, is only because we give it those powers. Government gets its legitimacy, thus, from the people, as Jefferson makes clear when he concludes his magnificent statement by saying that governments derive their 'just powers from the consent of the governed.'