The Right to have Rights
What defines American democracy? In essence, it is freedom and the protection of fundamental rights that cannot be given up or taken away. In fact, our founders declared that the primary reason for establishing our country and our system of laws is to secure these rights against the interference of individuals or the government itself.
And yet, that is not what is happening today. Powerful minority interests and state legislatures are now stripping away the individual freedoms of women, parents, children, and others while granting unrestricted rights to gun owners and special constituencies. Thus, some of the rights that Americans hold most dear – to vote, to learn, to express oneself, or to have control over one’s body – are, in fact, being taken away.
We are now at a fork in the road. Democracy flourishes when the rights of Americans to live, love and be healthy are respected and protected. But, if essential rights are viewed as a zero-sum game of winners and losers, democracy is doomed and so are we.
In short, the right to have rights is what freedom is all about.
The Right to Have Rights: Curbing Gun Violence
The idea of “American exceptionalism” – that the U.S. was uniquely founded on shared moral and political principles rather than shared ancestry and was established as a government where sovereignty belongs to the people – carries with it healthy pride in the freedoms Americans enjoy.
The Right to Have Rights: The Consequences of Denying Reproductive Care
A year after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Rowe v. Wade, these words from the famous American humorist Mark Twain are an admonition to pro-life supporters working to end abortion in America. When laws are so restrictive that people’s lives and and livelihoods are put at risk, the consequences become too painful for society to condone.
The Right to Have Rights: Isn’t There A Right to Live?
Americans across the country feel hopeless and are crying out in pain as the nation’s epidemic of gun violence claims more innocent lives literally every day. Dramatic new statistics show that gun violence has reached crisis levels in the United States.