Endowed by both nature and the Constitution created by their fellow Americans, Americans have the right to decide what kind of life we wish to live. This unique social contract is the envy of much of the world without such rights in the societies in which they live. It is unique also to the history of humans. Let me enumerate those rights we all enjoy:
The right to govern ourselves: Our Constitution and nature both grant us the right to decide how we govern ourselves and who governs us. Not some privileged, grievance ridden despot who decides for us. That has been tried throughout history and those governments and despots failed because their interests were served but not the interests of those they governed. We also have the right to freely and peacefully dissent from the policies and leadership of our elected government. This right includes electing our leaders, providing a secure vote to do so and the ability to amend the laws protecting our rights and our Constitution and changing that leadership through our vote.
The right to decide whom we choose to love and what kind of family we wish to create together. That right has recently been removed from us through the interference of a despotic Supreme Court giving government the power to decide if, when and how we wish to create our family. We can take that right back with laws we create and amend and our vote.
The right to a fair unabusive economic system through which we support our families. We decide through our vote what is a fair price for our food, housing and transportation and how fairly we are paid compared to our fellow working citizens. And the right to fairly share in the tax contributions we make with our fellow citizens in order to receive the public services necessary to have a good life. This includes services to help elderly, disabled, unemployed and retired older persons with whom we share this country.
The right to justice and equality in a free society. Our Constitution guarantees a right to seek fair treatment from our peers when we are accused to violating the laws of our country. This is called due process. And we are guaranteed the right to be protected from the violation of our rights and physical security by fellow citizens and their organizations which are required to treat us all as equal human beings. This includes the right to freely socialize in public through our public and private spaces, including our educational institutions without fear of physical harm from anti-social citizens and to have protection from such harm and remove those persons from society until they reform their behavior.
The right to education and health. These are rights all humans should enjoy from a society to which they contribute because education and health are necessities to a just and well-functioning social order. Uneducated and poorly educated citizens are not able to make adequate contributions to society. Citizens with health problems that can be mitigated by science and good care are in a better position to fully contribute to that society.
The right to not be a white Christian. Many of us citizens and many more in the future are non-white. And many of us are neither Christian nor religious. We have a right to be that way because that is how we are born into life without a choice. Our ethnicity makes us no less equal in our human rights and as history and science has proven, no less capable as citizens that white persons. Some of us decided we were created by a deity and chose to pay homage to them. Some of us decided otherwise and choose not to pay homage to a deity. That makes us no less human or a good, productive citizen. This social diversity makes all our lives much more interesting.
The right to an unspoiled environment. We need clean air, water, and a climate that we can exist in. We have the tools and knowledge about how to provide these to a livable society and how to prevent fellow citizens from fouling them for their own selfish benefit to the detriment of fellow citizens.
The right to peace and the absence of destructive conflict. This is with both external societies and factions within our own society that threaten our physical safety. Humans have the mental capacity to resolve conflict through negotiation and forgiveness for wrongs done to us rather than physical harm and destruction.
In America, these rights provide us the freedom to prosper and enjoy a productive and satisfying life. All of us. Not just a few of us. It is called democracy.
