What rights are his that dare not strike for them?
Jus postliminii=--The law of recovery of forfeited rights.
In the twenty-first century the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk on which were phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. The brilliance of this new type of authoritarianism is that instead of simply oppressing opposition, as had been the case with twentieth-century strains, it climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd. One moment Surkov would fund civic forums and human rights NGOs, the next he would quietly support nationalist movements that accuse the NGOs of being tools of the West. With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime.
I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to believe that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly without a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible abstract or concrete "rights" or property of any description. If a foot was not set upon me at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded, that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I may have fairly earned my day's wages for my day's work, and may justly call them my property--yet, without that organization of society, created out of the toil and blood of long generations before my time, I should probably have had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent hut to call my own; and even those would be mine only so long as no stranger savage came my way.
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. Kelso, Louis O. [From “Karl Marx: The Almost Capitalist,” American Bar Association Journal , March 1957.]: Error No. 2: Marx’s Failure to Understand the Political Significance of Property. Before examining Marx’s second critical error, it may be helpful to take note of what the concept “property” means in law and economics. It is an aggregate of the rights, powers and privileges, recognized by the laws of the nation, which an individual may possess with respect to various objects. Property is not the object owned, but the sum total of the “;rights” which an individual may “own” in such an object. These in general include the rights of (1) possessing, (2) excluding others, (3) disposing or transferring, (4) using, (5) enjoying the fruits, profits, product or increase, and (6) of destroying or injuring, if the owner so desires. In a civilized society, these rights are only as effective as the laws which provide for their enforcement. The English common law, adopted into the fabric of American law, recognizes that the rights of property are subject to the limitations that (1) things owned may not be so used as to injure others or the property of others, and (2) that they may not be used in ways contrary to the general welfare of the people as a whole. From this definition of private property, a purely functional and practical understanding of the nature of property becomes clear. Property in everyday life, is the right of control. Property in Land. With respect to property in land, we need merely note that the acquisition of an original title to land from a sovereign is a political act, and not the result of operations of the economy. If the original distribution of land unduly favors any group or type or persons, it is a political defect and not a defect in the operation of the economy as such. A capitalistic economy assumes and recognizes the private ownership of land. It may, as under the federal and state mining laws and federal homestead acts, encourage private ownership of land by facilitating private purchasing of mining, timber, agricultural, residential or recreational lands. Property in Capital. In a capitalistic economy, private ownership in all other articles of wealth is equal in importance to property in land. From the standpoint of the distributive aspects of a capitalistic economy, property in capital–the tools, machinery, equipment, plants, power systems, railroads, trucks, tractors, factories, financial working capital and the like–is of special significance. This is true because of the growing dependence of production upon capital instruments. Of the three components of production land is the passive1 source of almost all material things except those which come from the air and the sea, while labor and capital are the active factors of production. Labor and capital produce the goods and services of the economy, using raw materials obtained, for the most part, from land. Just as private property in land includes the right to all rents, the proceeds of sale of minerals and other elements or substances contained in land, private property in capital includes the right to the wealth produced by capital. The value added to iron ore by the capital instruments of a steel mill becomes the property of the owners of the steel mill. So in the case of all other capital instruments. Property in Labor. What is the relationship of the worker to the value which he creates through his work? It has been said that no one has ever questioned the right of a worker to the fruits of his labor. Actually, as was long ago recognized by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, the right of the worker to the value he creates is nothing more than the particular type of private property applicable to labor. Each worker, they said, has a right of private property in his capacity to produce wealth through his labor and in the value which he creates.
No man's conscience can tell him the rights of another man.
Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence.
Pour soutenir les droits que le ciel autorise, / Abime tout plutot; c'est l'esprit de l'eglise=--To maintain your rights granted by Heaven, let everything perish rather than yield; this is the spirit of the Church.
The religious Right went wrong by forgetting its religious and moral roots and going for political power; the civil rights movement was proven right in operating out of its spiritual strength and letting its political influence flow from its moral influence.
Personal attachment is no fit ground for public conduct, and those who declare they will take care of the rights of the sovereign because they have received favours at his hand, betray a little mind and warrant the conclusion that if they did not receive those favours they would be less mindful of their duties, and act with less zeal for his interest.
Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted right… Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. [ Divini Redemptoris, Op. cit. , §30, 1937.]
This term [property] in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.” In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandise, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. [March 29, 1792.]
We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Private property in the instruments of production is an institutional device both for dispersing power and for securing effective organization of production. The only simple property system is that of a slave society with a single slave owner — which, significantly, is the limiting case of despotism and of monopoly. Departure from such a system is a fair measure of human progress. The libertarian good society lies at an opposite extreme, in the maximum dispersion of property compatible with effective production…. Basic to liberty are property rights in labor or personal capacities. The abolitions of slavery and serfdom are the great steps toward freedom — and, by the way, are striking reconciliations of apparent conflict between productional and distributional considerations. Property in one’s own services, however, is a secure, substantial right only where there are many possible buyers. It thus implies private property in other resources and freedom of independent organizations or firms. It also implies a distinctively modern institutional achievement, namely, the separation or dissociation of the economic and the political — a political order that sustains formal rights and a largely separate economic order that gives them substance….a society based on free, responsible individuals or families must involve extensive rights of property. [ A Political Credo , pp. 27-28.]
Ultra vires=--Beyond the powers or rights possessed.
The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor…. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property…. We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism…. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. [“Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech delivered at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910. History as Literature (1913).]
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. [ The Rights of the Colonists , 1772.]
Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
If the world is made to furnish each individual with the means of livelihood and the instruments for his growth and progress, each man has therefore the right to find in the world what is necessary for himself. The recent Council reminded us of this: “God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people. Thus, as all men follow justice and unite in charity, created goods should abound for them on a reasonable basis.” All other rights whatsoever, including those of property and of free commerce, are to be subordinated to this principle. They should not hinder but on the contrary favour its application. It is a grave and urgent social duty to redirect them to their primary finality. [ Populorum Progressio, Op. cit. , §22, 1967.]
As long as I am mayor of this city the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, 'That man is a Red, that man is a Communist.' You never hear a real American talk like that.
We are in agreement with the desire of workers to increase their income…. However, we insist that most of the increased income should be derived from ownership of capital.… If property can confer dignity, material comfort, and security upon the few, it can do the same for the many.… We suggest that the perennial emphasis of the Church on the right of individuals to own property deserves reaffirmation at this time and that we should consider bold new steps to enable the vast majority of God’s people to become owners of property which will constitute for them a source of a second income. We maintain that this will help reduce poverty and restore human rights and dignity to millions. [Statement by the Executive Committee of the National Catholic Rural Conference, Des Moines, Iowa, June 19, 1968.]
Respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, ... and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.
As far as the earth is from the stars, and fire from the sea, so is the useful from the right. Power over men perishes completely if justice begins to be observed, and respect for individual rights overcomes strongholds. ( Sidera terra ut distant et flamma mari, sic utile recto. Sceptrorum vis tota perit, si pendere iusta incipit, evertitque arces respectus honesti .) [ Pharsalia , VIII, 487.]
Preserve the rights of inferior places, and think it more honour to direct in chief than to be busy in all.
As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending.
By this point in history—after the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and in the midst of layers of ecological crises—free market fundamentalists should, by all rights, be exiled to a similarly irrelevant status, left to fondle their copies of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in obscurity.
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. [ The Wall Street Journal , June 23, 1983.]
It appears from the evidence that where the property is not held under a voting trust and where the stock has its voting rights a small fraction is able to control a corporation if the holdings are widely scattered, and that this is due mainly to the supineness and absence of initiative of stockholders in protecting their interests. Unlike other countries, this condition is proverbial with us. None of the witnesses called was able to name an instance in the history of the country in which the stockholders had succeeded in overthrowing an existing management in any large corporation, nor does it appear that stockholders have ever even succeeded in so far as to secure the investigation of an existing management of a corporation to ascertain whether it has been well or honestly managed. [ Report of the Committee Appointed Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigate the Concentration of Control of Money and Credit, February 28, 1913 , pp. 145-146.]
The only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respect for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.
By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man's nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts.
Nullum tempus occurrit regi=--No lapse of time bars the rights of the crown.
O these naughty times / Put bars between the owners and their rights.
Liberty is closely connected with property; this is true philosophically, not only in our bills of rights. It is common theory that the idea of property follows immediately from the idea of person. It is philosophically a necessary consequence of it. The right to property is simply an enlargement of the person, and the right of liberty is realized in the right of property. Therefore the institution of property, the suum as related to things, is presupposed by the legal order. The bills of rights do not create it, even as they are not competent to destroy it. The institution of property is like a dowry of the personality. Today this truth is easily proved. Where the institution of property is completely abolished, as in Soviet Russia, man has ceased to be a person and has become a mere tool of the superstate, a mere cog in a non-personal machine. Rightly, therefore, Leo XIII ( Rerum Novarum ) speaks of a slavish yoke that has been imposed on the propertyless modern proletarian. (1) It is morally impossible to exist as a free person without property. The sphere of freedom increases directly with the sphere of property, or contrariwise, as Linsenmann (2) so ably put it, the man who has no property easily becomes himself the property of another man. (3) It is, therefore, a conclusion from the principle of natural law that the institution of property ought to exist. The positive legal order guarantees the pre-existent right to property; it may regulate the use of property; it may constitute certain things to be public property, and so on. The capitalist and the feudalist property orders are but transitory; the institution of property is perennial. We may thus see that there exists a perennial kernel in the concept of suum which precedes its concrete determination in positive law. “Natural Rights of the Person and of the State”, The State in Catholic Thought, St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company, 1947, I.vii.ii, pp. 188-189.
Old men lose one of the most precious rights of man, that of being judged by their peers.
The "rights" of men in any form are not worth discussing; the grand point is the "mights" of men--what portion of their "rights" they have a chance of getting sorted out and realised in this confused world.
As though there were a tie And obligation to posterity. We get them, bear them, breed, and nurse: What has posterity done for us That we, lest they their rights should lose, Should trust our necks to gripe of noose?
The people of Central America — and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world — need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions; that free enterprise is not just the province of the rich, but a system of free choice in which everyone has rights, and that business, large or small, is something in which everyone can own a piece of the action. [Speech on Project Economic Justice, August 3, 1987.]
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,--entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigour, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; . . . freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected,--these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
'Tis always a delightful thing to see the human understanding following its imprescriptible rights in spite of all hindrances, and hurrying eagerly towards the utmost possible agreement between ideas and objects.
Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again.
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.