A solid foundation for American foreign policy.
Last month, Marco Rubio’s State Department executed a sweeping restructuring plan to implement an America First foreign policy. Although many offices were eliminated or combined, a few new ones were created. Among them is the Office of Natural Rights.
Its name has provoked predictable harrumphing from establishment commentators who feel “human rights” is the only acceptable term of art for diplomacy. While they are right that the terminology is significant, they are blind to the vital reality the State Department has recognized: without human nature there are no human rights. If our rights are not grounded in a shared nature, they are founded simply on the will of the government. If the government grants us more rights at one moment, it may arbitrarily retract them at the next.
The Trump Administration has observed this phenomenon with great alarm. JD Vance argued that this is Europe’s greatest threat in his now-famous Munich speech, and the State Department weighed in with an official article shortly thereafter. U.S. officials are rightly concerned about natural rights abroad, not because they are Republicans, but because they are Americans. The recognition of natural rights is the foundation of our own government.
Our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to uphold the truth that all men are created equal and are endowed by God with inalienable rights. Today, the Founders’ fledgling nation is the oldest constitutional republic on earth, and the foundation of a peaceful and prosperous world order. While conflict has not been eradicated, and never will be, America stands as a beacon of liberty due to our being a natural rights republic.
A right is a powerful thing. It is an absolute claim that cannot be questioned or curtailed except in the most dire and limited circumstances. Any law that denies a natural right is unjust on its face. Politicians who threaten natural rights threaten society itself.
Nonetheless, over the last several decades, the concept of rights has become untethered from its grounding in human nature, leading to an inflationary crisis of rights. Today we suffer from violent clashes over the pecking order of a multitude of conflicting rights people wish to claim for themselves, often at the expense of others. Without reference to the inherent limitations of our shared human nature, the argument over rights becomes a mere yelling match, devoid of moral content and determined by sheer power. That is why the fiercest proponents of novel rights always attempt to force them upon society through angry protests and public shaming rather than true debate.
This situation poses a threat to the free exercise of genuine rights in our societies. True natural rights are, like the rest of nature, ordered and mutually compatible. They rarely conflict, and do so only at the margins. The introduction of so-called human rights destroys that balance, and often pits new “rights” directly against the old.
Free speech in particular has been trampled in many countries in order to make room for an oppressive and dictatorial version of “tolerance.” Just ask the 12,000 Brits imprisoned for “hate speech” every year. The rights to person, property, and self-defense, so basic to a functioning society, are likewise under threat from DEI fanatics who are eager to enact judgment on the basis of race rather than character.
Therefore, we urgently need to distinguish between true natural rights and the imposter rights being pushed on us by fractious groups pursuing their own ends. Although different formulations could be used, there are three good criteria for determining a genuine right: functional universality, necessity by nature, and corresponding duty.
First, functional universality means that the right can be secured without vast government interference. Free speech is universally attainable; free college less so.
Second, necessity by nature means all people must be free to do what nature has designed them for—working to provide for themselves and their children and associating freely with others for the purpose of mutual support, inquiry, and worship. Though just government is built on the recognition of man’s nature, it cannot promise to all what cannot practically be provided to all.
Finally, all authentic rights have corresponding duties. The right to private property implies the duty to respect others’ property as well. Any right with no corresponding duty is just a handout by a different name.
By applying these and similar criteria, the Office of Natural Rights will bring crucial clarity to our foreign policy and end the tyranny of special interests masquerading as human rights. So-called rights that do not fit this framework might involve good and desirable ends for individuals and society—but they cannot be allowed to claim the mantle and privileges of a natural right.
The American Mind presents a range of perspectives. Views are writers’ own and do not necessarily represent those of The Claremont Institute.
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