Articles: Founding Principle of the United States of America: Individual Rights

Our country was the first and only country in history that was founded on a brand new idea, the idea that people have rights. These rights are:

• the right to one’s own life (which includes that which one has worked for)

• the right to one’s own liberty (freedom to live the way you want provided you don’t hurt anyone else)

• the right to pursue one’s own happiness (not everyone else’s—yours)
When America was created, there was another new idea -- the idea that the only legitimate purpose of government was to protect these rights, to make sure no person violated the rights of another. Government was not there to tell men what to do, or how to live their lives, or to take by force what each man has earned by his own efforts to give to another. Initiation of force was banned from human relationships. The only proper use of force was in retaliation against those who had initiated force or fraud against another. Force was only used as a means of defending rights through three branches of government: the police, the military and the courts. And that’s it.  The purpose of government was to only do that one thing and nothing else.  It was to protect individual rights.

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Articles: Founding Principle of the United States of America: Individual Rights