What rights do citizens have?

Answer 1

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More directly, the rights described and listed in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights are known as "natural rights." These rights are given to us by our Creator and thus beyond the authority of any government to bestow or revoke. It follows, then, that they are not the rights of American citizens exclusively; rather, they are given to every human being, everywhere.

They include the rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness;* the right to form a government that safeguards those blessings and that derives its power from the consent of the People; and the right (and the duty) to overthrow that government if it should one day hold itself above the law and unaccountable to the People.

Many additional examples are found in the Bill of Rights. Picture a circle labeled "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Now add circles to the diagram, one for each and every clause of the Bill of Rights, in radial orbit around the first. They would say, "free exercise of religion," "free speech," "free press," "freedom of assembly," "freedom of petition for redress," "freedom to keep and bear Arms," etc.

All of these answer the question, "Exactly how do you safeguard Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness? How do you know when your Liberty is being infringed or when your government has acquired too much power?" The loss of any of these orbiting circles makes it easier for the government to usurp your natural rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

* The pursuit of Happiness is similar to and derived from the ideas of English philosopher john Locke. He described the most basic human rights as "Life, Liberty, and Property (or, 'Estate')." Locke used "estate" or "property" to mean the sum total of a person's lifetime of labor, but Jefferson thought the expression misleading. In order to avoid the pitfall of seeming to promise every human being a certain acreage of land, he changed it to "the pursuit of Happiness" - meaning whatever labor that person chooses to undertake. In Europe, the course of a person's life was more or less laid out by his or her father's economic class, occupation, and reputation. But no more. Each of us is free to choose our own path.