Which rights are based on the idea that everyone should be treated with respect?

Answer 1

Like do onto others as you would done unto you. So I tell my kids especially my son, if he teases or hits his sister. Do you want someone to tease you and hit you? He says no. Than I tell him than treat other children especially your own sister the way you want to be treated.

Answer 2

Referring to the Rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, the more appropriate question would be, "What concept are the rights based on?"

For about 1,000 years, most Europeans lived under the presumption of the Divine Right of Kings, which said that only God could judge the acts of a king - and therefore the people had no right to oppose or overthrow him. By the 1600s this had also become known in England as the Natural Rights of Kings. Englishman John Locke is credited among the first to reject this idea, publishing works espousing the Natural Rights of Man. ("Man" in this sense referred to all of humanity, and collectively to every individual member thereof. It did not refer to males exclusively of females.) In his view, God bestowed certain independent rights on every human being, including life, liberty, and estate - or property - by which he meant the sum total of that person's labor.

These ideas would influence the thinkers of the Enlightenment for more than a century, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the rest of the American Founding Fathers. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." (Again referring to all mankind, not merely to rich white males as is often mistakenly supposed.)

The "pursuit of Happiness" is similar to and derived from Locke's right of estate but avoids the pitfall of seeming to promise every citizen a certain acreage of land. As Locke's "estate" meant the result of an individual's labor, Jefferson defined the pursuit of Happiness as any labor that person chooses to undertake. The days of the father's occupation determining the son's were over.

Other Natural Rights are listed (or "enumerated") in the Bill of Rights.

Returning to the original question, it is because these Natural Rights are ours by virtue of being born human that all people are to be treated with respect.