Liberalism Inverts Human Rights
Liberalism is the political doctrine that securing individual freedom and equal rights is the primary purpose of government. This necessarily results in the proliferation of psuedo-rights and psuedo-entitlements. These psuedo-rights are the perversion or inversion of our fundamental human rights.
A right is derived from our freedom. In other words, if we have a right to something then we necessarily have the freedom to pursue that something. Freedom is the unrestrained ability to pursue the good life. This presupposes an understanding of the common good and more specifically, the theological, cardinal and capital virtues. Thus, political freedom is obtained through policies that allow each individual, family, and free association (e.g. business) to fulfill their natural end or simply their good. A ‘right’ or freedom to pursue sin (i.e. a right to do wrong) is a contradiction. Now we begin to understand how the majority of liberal psuedo-rights are in fact “anti-rights” .1
In his book, Catholic Republic, Timothy Gordon explains three essential rights in which all other rights are derived. We know them from the American Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. However, as Timothy Gordon makes clear, “liberty” and the “pursuit of happiness” are the same right, since liberty is the capacity to pursue the good life (i.e. happiness). The third right, which our Founders also recognized, is the right to property. The liberal regime has inverted all three essential rights.
The right to life is the right in which the other two rights rest on, for without life it is not possible to pursue happiness or own property. Nevertheless, this most fundamental right is under direct attack. The most direct attack is with the anti-rights of abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide. The most fundamental right (e.g. the right not to be murdered or unjustly killed) is inverted as the ‘right’ to murder, at least in these particular circumstances. A less direct attack is the attack on the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms is derived from our right to self-defense or the right to defend our life, liberty, and property. The right to self-defense requires the right to the means of self-defense (e.g. Second Amendment). And obviously, the right to self-defense rests on the right to life. In sum, the right to life is turned upside down into a right of death2.
The perversion of property rights is widespread because of liberalism's acceptance of usury. For a more detailed understanding of usury I recommend reading this ebook.
It is the perversion of the right to liberty to licentiousness that is most responsible for the proliferation of psuedo-rights. Liberty is redefined from the capacity to pursue the good to the capacity to pursue our own desires, preferences, and will.3 It is from this false premise where countless psuedo-rights are imagined (e.g. sodomy, Pride parades, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, pornography, blasphemy, etc.). As Timothy Gordon points out, Pope Leo XIII recognized this in 1899:
These dangers, viz., the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world, have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church’s teaching office than ever before, Lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty.4
The same is true today. As with many good things, liberalism takes what is fundamentally good and distorts it. In this particular case, a right — the capacity to pursue the good — is turned upside down into the capacity to pursue evil.
Timothy Gordon, Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome, (Sophia Institute Press, 2019), 35
Ibid, 39-40
Ibid, 41-44
Leo XIII, Encylical Testem Benevolentia Nostrae: Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, with Regard to Americanism (January 22, 1899).