1. Defining The Terms of Freedom

	Rights have been debated back and forth since before the United States was founded.  The first modern limitation on the rights of a monarch, England's Magna Carta, was drafted around the rights of the English nobility.  John Locke described the right of revolution in the seventeenth century- just in time, as it happens, to justify the overthrow of Britain's Stuart dynasty in favor of the joint rule of William of Orange and his wife Mary.  In the nineteenth century states' rights had their champion in John Calhoun, while the rights of slaves were proclaimed by William Lloyd Garrison and, in a more moderate way, Abraham Lincoln.  The twentieth century saw Wilson's Fourteen Points, FDR's Four Freedoms, civil rights, equal rights, parental rights, the right to privacy, the right to abortion, the right to work, and the right to die, all vigorously supported or opposed by various parties.
	At the dawn of the twenty-first century, America's discussion on rights has turned to look at what rights actually are.  People compare negative rights (things which a government allows a citizen to do) with positive rights (things a government provides for its citizens).  Politicians debate tradeoffs between civil liberties (things people are free to do) and public security.  The resulting confusion in the public is understandable, of course, because somewhere in the two hundred and thirty year history of the American experiment, schools and government have stopped teaching the people what rights actually are, where they come from, and how they can best be defended.
	Those three questions, of course, are the subject of this book, and the best way to begin the book is to define just what this book is talking about when it mentions rights.  In fact, the concepts which we refer to, in everyday life, as 'rights' fall into three categories.  So that readers will understand which category is which, this book refers to them as: powers, rights and privileges. 
	First, the dictionary definitions of these words.  Look at them once and then write them off, because they are not quite the same definitions we're going to actually use.  They are convenient labels for concepts, and it's easier to understand the concepts using these pre-existing terms than to make up nonsense words to apply to them.

	power: ability to act, to do, to perform, to produce; strength, vigor; one who possesses great strength, ability or authority.

	right: moral good; a just claim, as to property, power, privilege, etc, under the law; that to which one has a just claim.

	privilege: a right, immunity, benefit or advantage granted to some but not to all; a civil right guaranteed by government.

	So much for Webster.  Now for the definitions we're actually going to use in this book.

	Powers are abilities individual beings have to do things, without the assistance of others, in the wild.

	Rights are powers which are guaranteed and protected by a government or society, usually as a trade-off for giving up certain powers.

	Privileges are not powers- they are special rights created by government or society, requiring the cooperation or coercion of others for their fulfillment.

	To give an example of each:

	You have the power to shout, at the top of your lungs, "VOTE FOR ROGER SMITH!"

	In the United States, you have the right to say, print, write, and record any message you please supporting Roger Smith for office, provided that you don't lie or slander anyone, and provided you say nothing obscene or outrageously offensive. 

	In the United States, you have the privilege of equal airtime, on any broadcast medium, with any other campaign, no matter how much money they may have to spend on their campaign.  (However, if you have more money than anyone else, you can't buy more ads; if you're a broadcaster, you can't favor one candidate over another; and if you don't have enough money to be considered a 'legitimate candidate', you don't get this privilege.)

	As you can see by the example, there is a distinct difference between the three categories.  Powers are unrestrained, except by the ability of the user.  Rights are restrained, but along with that restriction comes the guarantee of freedom to use them.  Privileges don't always apply to everyone, and some people have to give up their rights or property to grant the privileges to others.  All of these are represented in or society, in one manner or another.
	Now for a more detailed rundown of each category:

POWERS

	Powers are abilities.  They are anything you can do, by yourself.  You have the power to breathe, to walk, to eat (if you have food).  You also have the power to lie, to murder, to rape, should you choose to, and should you prove stronger than your intended victim.  Powers do not recognize moral right or wrong, nor do they respect the powers of others; they simply are.
	Powers are rights in the raw, in a state of nature, without the mitigating influence of society.  Of course, since humans are social creatures, a true 'state of nature' has never existed, so for our examples we shall look not to a caveman, but to a lesser creature- a tiger, for instance. 
	Tigers have powers, as do all living creatures, limited only by their strength and abilities.  A tiger, alone on his solitary prowl for prey, has the power to growl or roar as loudly as he wishes.  He can walk wherever he wishes to.  He can fight to defend himself from other tigers, hunters, or other threats.  Insofar as a feline can hold opinions, he can; it is his mind, as his paws are his own, as his voice is his own.  No one controls his actions but himself.
	These actions may not always be positive, from a moral point of view.  The tiger is also free to hunt and kill, either for food, to defend his territory, or merely for his own pleasure.  The tiger may hunt his prey to extinction in his hunting area, depriving himself of future food.  The tiger has the power to mate with a female, willing or not if he proves stronger than she is.  What is moral- or even what is good for long-term survival- has nothing to do with the question of power. 
	Powers, in the wild, are limited only by the ability of the possessor to defend them.  Our friend the tiger may prowl where he wishes, but when he invades the territory of another tiger he may have to fight for his free passage.  The tiger may growl, but if a hunter hears that growl and has good aim, the tiger may find himself silenced permanently.  Although he has the power to fight his enemies and to defend himself, his victory is anything but certain.
	Furthermore, possessing these powers is not always enough to satisfy the needs of life.  A tiger has the power to eat, but he can rely on no one to provide him food; he must seek it out on his own.  A mate is most unlikely to present herself to him for his pleasure; he must establish a territory and patrol it, seeking out females wandering through.  If there is a drought, or a die-off or migration of prey animals, despite all the power the tiger has it will likely go hungry or thirsty.  The tiger may claim territory, but he must defend that claim from invaders constantly.
Finally- and most critically- if a tiger meets another tiger stronger than he is, then it is the other tiger's powers which hold sway.  The weaker tiger is always at the stronger tiger's mercy. 
Obviously freedom is not merely an issue of powers; in the wild, only the strongest is truly free, and the weaker have their freedom only at the whim or neglect of the stronger.  For animals, this state of affairs is the only way; for a human society, it is unacceptable, and in the long run it can have disastrous consequences.

RIGHTS

Rights come into existence when a society or government recognizes certain powers and protects the citizen's free usage of those powers.  These rights are usually universal in theory but restricted in practice, because their very existence is dependent upon the willingness of the majority to allow them to continue.  The fundamental difference between powers and rights is that rights are defended not by the strength of the individual, but the will and consent of the group, which is usually stronger than any individual.
Of all the nations which have instituted protections for rights, to greater and lesser levels, no nation has made a more determined stand in its statute law for the individual than the United States.  As an example for other nations, and as the ongoing experiment in which the very concept of rights is continually tested, it will serve as the source of our examples.
American citizens have, in the federal Constitution and in the various state constitutions, enumerated bills of rights listing specific powers which the government is expressly forbidden from interfering with.  The federal constitution even has a pair of lines- the Ninth and Tenth Amendments- which specifically says that a right need not be listed in the Bill of Rights to exist, and that the federal government has no power over those rights.  On paper, at least, these powers should have no limit.
However, the trade-off here is that, in order to guarantee some powers in the form of rights, other powers must be given up.  The right of justice under the law, for example, requires obedience to that law.  The right of self-defense costs the individual the power to murder.  The right of property requires that others respect it, and give up the power to take without asking.  In all these cases, the powers being given up are those which would violate the freedoms of others.
Even where powers are protected as rights, they are not left limitless.  Freedom of religion may be guaranteed, but not if your religion involves raping young children or dismembering live animals.  Freedom of speech does not extend to telling outright lies about another person.  You may be free to own property of your own, but this does not necessarily give you the right to turn your backyard into a toxic waste dump or a rat farm.  As a general principle, actions which cause harm to others are not protected as rights.
There are two major difficulties with rights.  The first, and more obvious one, is that the restrictions on rights vary according to how harm is actually defined.  A dictatorship may define anything which threatens the stability of the current government as harm to all the people, and thus restrict it.  Even the most lenient, loose democracy may decide that one person's right to a high property value overrides the right of other people to do certain things with their property.  The slippery nature of how harm is defined means that rights, even those enumerated in the highest law of the land, may have hidden limits.
The second problem with rights is that, by themselves, they are inadequate to the operation of a working society.  The right of property means little without effective enforcement.  The right to learn does not guarantee that an education will be available.  The right to trade does not mean that a currency of exchange will exist for you to trade with.  To cover lapses like this, and many others besides, the third class of rights exists.

PRIVILEGES

A privilege, in the sense this book will use the word, is a right which would not exist except for the existence, action and coercion of government.  Privileges are provided by the government through tax money, fines, fees and tarriffs, and other citizens are paid or forced to provide them.  Privileges are provided by government because, for the most part, the citizens are unable to enjoy them without the assistance and cooperation of others.
Many of the things which Americans take for granted as rights are actually privileges.  How many courts would exist without the force of government?  How stable would the dollar be if issued by hundreds of private banks instead of a single government authority?  Would a private school be available in your hometown which you could afford if the public schools vanished tomorrow?  Such things are fundamental to our current society... but they are creations of government, not natural rights.
Other privileges are easier to spot.  Social welfare programs, such as the dole, Social Security, Medicare, disability, and the like, are privileges.  Public housing projects are privilege; so is government funding of scientific research, government sponsorship of foreign trade, and the like.  Testing of food and drugs for purity, safety, and efficacy; these also are privileges, instituted to protect the people when rights, by themselves were insufficient.
There are three basic problems with privileges.  The first, and more dangerous, is the simple fact that there is no guarantee that privileges will be provided to all constitutents of the government.  Indeed, most privileges do not apply to all.  How many high schools permit thirty-year-old dropouts to drop back in?  Do middle-class people get to live in government-built, low-rent housing projects?  When was the last time your aunt's Avon sales received a government grant for advertising?  Even in a country built on the principle of universal equality under the law, it may seem proper to provide special services to some, but not to all.  
The second problem is that allowing government to institute privileges can lead government into areas that government really isn't very good with.  The classic example of this problem is communism, where government attempted to provide equal opportunity by controlling all industry, and instead only managed to provide equal poverty.  This poverty, of course, did not include the lawmakers, who enjoyed... privilege.

In an ideal system, free people with various powers at their disposal sacrifice some in order to obtain the protection of others in the form of rights.  They then go further to institute a number of privileges, with the goal of making life easier for all the people.  The three in combination- powers, rights, and privileges- combine to make a system geared to provide the maximum amount of freedom for all.
Unfortunately, the ideal system bears no relationship to what actually did happen.  History has been anything but ideal, and historical figures anything but idealist.  To understand the difference between the ideal and the real, we must first look back to the distant past and understand how civilization, government, and rights developed.