Your Inalienable Rights

Your rights

We the people hold inalienable natural rights that stood for thousands of years before man-made rules. For most of human history—roughly ninety-nine percent of our time on earth—people lived in cooperative, non-coercive, non-hierarchical, self-organising and self-governing tribal communities.

If our Creator endowed us with reason to govern ourselves, it makes no sense for distant seats of power—whether London, Rome, or any capital—to claim unrestrained authority over us.

When rights are placed under unlimited power, respect for natural law and natural justice collapses, and rational self-government becomes impossible.

What is sovereignty?

Do we, the people, work for government—or does government work for us?

“Sovereignty itself is… not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law… while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts.” — Justice Thomas Stanley Matthews, Yick Wo v. Hopkins.

Sovereignty stays with the people. All government exists and acts by them and for them.

Unalienable rights

Unalienable rights are Creator-given natural and sovereign rights. They existed before man-made rules. No agency of the State can change, diminish, or commodify them. They cannot be stripped by contract or waiver except, if at all, only after a fair hearing among equals and peers.

Among these rights are:

• the right to life, freedom, and happiness;
• the right to trade freely without hindrance;
• the right to a fair exchange for the sweat of one’s labour;
• the unlimited right to contract—or not to contract;
• the right not to be treated as “human capital,” nor pledged as such;
• the right to travel freely without hindrance;
• the right to be presumed innocent, free from arrest, detention, harm, or loss of private property before a fair trial;
• the right to establish the truth as the indispensable foundation of any dispute;
• the right to be informed of all subject-matter and jurisdiction;
• the right to challenge the jurisdiction of any court;
• the right to a fair trial in a community court free from private bar monopoly;
• the right to a fair trial before equals and peers;
• the right to a fair trial under principles of restorative justice;
• the right to true justice that seeks reconciliation, not retribution;
• the right to use natural law and natural justice as a restraint against tyranny;
• the right to equality as a people under un-enacted law of the land;
• the right to be free from any and all legal fiction;
• the right of liberty, and never to suffer the indignity of detention or imprisonment fit only for slaves—slavery having been abolished;
• the right to withhold consent to harm or loss;
• the right to educate and inform all people as to their rights;
• the right to any belief and religion, and to keep it private;
• the right to have offspring and family, and to clothe, feed, protect, and shelter them;
• the right to claim custodianship of land one lives on and works, without trespass;
• the right not to be forced to pay merely for the use of land;
• the right of every community to self-determination and self-governance;
• the right to lawful resistance against economic apartheid, colonial domination, alien occupation, and racist regimes;
• the right to lawful self-defence when self-preservation is at risk;
• the right to place law-of-war under law-of-peace to prevent invasion;
• the right to peace, and to be left alone when law-abiding and peaceful;
• the right to declare and establish any further right we deem fit for the protection of our unalienable rights.

The law does not protect those who sleep on their rights.

What is government?

“What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” — James Madison

No corporate jurisdiction over the natural man. A long-cited line of American authority holds that government is an artificial person—an abstraction, a creature of the mind only—and therefore interfaces with other artificial persons. The imaginary, having neither actuality nor substance, cannot attain parity with the tangible. In that framing, government and its agencies concern themselves with corporate, artificial persons and the contracts between them, not with living men and women as such. (See the discussion often linked to early Supreme Court era sources such as S.C.R. 1795 / related citations in popular education materials.)

Government, properly understood, is a legal fiction created to protect people’s rights, property, and natural resources, and to provide services—not to lord over the people.

Ask yourself: how can a piece of paper rule a people? It cannot—except by our consent. It has no jurisdiction over the tangible without that consent, as the line of reasoning above affirms.

“If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” — Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States.

The real problem is government

A useful question, long posed by writers such as Doug Casey, is simply: what useful purpose does government actually serve? The question shocks, then amuses, then confuses—because most people never ask it. Institutions are accepted because they have always been there; existence is confused with necessity and right.

Government sponsors vast waste, criminality, and inequality in every sphere it touches, returning little of value. Its common contributions include wars, confiscations, persecutions, taxation, regulation, and inflation. That pattern is not limited to a few bad regimes; it is characteristic of government as such. Governments can be more dangerous than the mobs that birth them—the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution remains a warning.

Everyone should be able to comprehend the law

Real law is not manipulation and procedure for specialists alone. Every form of law has boundaries and limits—in legal speak, jurisdiction. To understand our rights, we must know basic principles of law: who claims authority, over what subject-matter, and by what consent.

Once authorities and governing institutions are seen clearly, belief in unaccountable authority fades—and with it much of the power predatory figures hold. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Holders of power deserve no favourable presumption that they can do no wrong; if there is a presumption, it runs the other way.

Liberty defined

Liberty means exercising human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as that exercise does not interfere with the rights of others. Above all, it means keeping government out of our lives. That path unleashes the human energies that build civilisation, provide security, generate wealth, and protect people from systematic rights violations. Only liberty truly wards off tyranny—the great and lasting foe of mankind.

The crisis of our age calls for an intellectual revolution already underway. Ideas of liberty developed over centuries are still debated and refined. The goal is liberty. Its fruits are the things we love—none of which government can finally supply. We must be free to provide them ourselves as individuals, families, societies, and nations.

The presumption of liberty

Pre-existing rights arise from the nature of man under natural law. That law carries a presumption of liberty. The purpose of law is to protect the rights of society, carefully tailored so it does not restrict pre-existing rights further than necessary to remedy perceived harm.

What is a “man of straw”?

Unbeknownst to most people, government systems create another kind of “citizen”—an ALL-CAPITALS NAME that sounds like a family name but is not the living man or woman. That legal construct is often called a strawman or artificial person. The living being and the registered NAME are not the same entity. This pattern appears across countries; it is part of a commercial legal system, not merely one nation’s quirk.

We live amid a cult of “personality” in which much has been fictionalised and “alter egos” created. Even names have been duplicated and traded as assets under law-of-the-sea commerce.

A name—or a NAME?

Names in ordinary form (for example, John Mark Doe) are pressed into dual service: on the land and at sea. On the land they function as trade names. At sea they are treated as foreign situs trusts. They look identical on paper, which is why registration schemes can obscure the switch.

Certificates and assumed-name devices often fix a “permanent domicile” for the Name on land and then claim the same Name in maritime and admiralty jurisdictions. In those commercial jurisdictions the Name represents corporate or incorporated entities. On the land the living name may be unincorporated; in admiralty and maritime frames it may be treated as corporate or incorporated.

Visually the pattern is: trade name on the land; foreign situs trust on the high seas; ALL-CAPS commercial trust in commerce. Jurisdiction must be stated clearly at every step—whether you stand on dry land as a living man or woman, or are being pulled into a commercial vessel construct. Without that clarity, others claim standing to “administer” the trust however they please. Keeping ownership and character of the name as belonging to the living civilian is the practical point of understanding certificates, registrations, and assumed-name devices.

Recording, registration, and the estate

From birth, systems often seize upon a given name and establish a false commercial claim on it—treating it as the name of a debtor to a corporate structure. An account is set against the GIVEN NAME; claims are addressed to that NAME for life; private bar associations operate tribunals under colour of law as collection machinery. That is the essence of the daily fleecing many describe.

What should happen is that a child’s name is recorded as a land asset—a recording of an event, testimony, or ownership interest. A recording is a public record. A registration, by contrast, involves international commerce and often surrenders ownership interest in the asset registered. The living child is holder in due course of name and estate. When a franchise “state” registers the name instead, the child is cast as a ward of the state—property of the corporate state rather than of the parents. Unless that presumed political status is corrected at majority, the person remains a dependent chattel and the state claims the benefit of name and estate.

This de facto process of undisclosed bondage has been practised widely. In promoting it, those responsible violate both international norms and the constitutions people are owed at birth—and they infringe common-law copyright interests long recognised in early copyright statutes such as the Copyright Act of 1790 in American tradition.

Emancipation and reclaiming the estate

Educational materials in this tradition outline processes to claim name and estate—sometimes called emancipation—adapted for different nations. The common theme is the same: separate living standing from the registered commercial NAME, and restore the living man or woman as beneficiary rather than silent surety.

Just law and unjust law

We the people in every country know from hard experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. There are two types of laws: just and unjust.

We advocate obedience to just laws. People have moral responsibility to obey just laws—and moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Non-violent, non-compliant disobedience of unjust law has been taught as a sacred duty by figures from Gandhi to the tradition attributed to St. Augustine: an unjust law is no law at all.

Disobedience is a lawful recommended remedy to arbitrary, unreasonable, or unjust law, grounded in natural law—the foundation on which nations and constitutions were claimed to rest. Natural law provides a basis to resist tyranny that can be argued in any honest forum.

The creed of freedom (summary)

• Intrinsic nature of rights. Only individuals have rights, not the collective group. Rights are intrinsic, not granted by the state—for if the state may grant them, it may deny them, which is incompatible with personal liberty.
• Supremacy of the individual. A great threat to freedom is allowing any group, by mere numerical superiority, to deny minority rights. Just government protects each individual from the greed and passion of the majority.
• Freedom of choice. Desirable social and economic aims are better reached by voluntary action than by coercion of law. Tranquillity and brotherhood grow from tolerance and persuasion more than from force. Those in need are better served by charity freely given than by seizing others’ money through coercion.
• Equality under law. All should be equal under law regardless of origin, race, religion, gender, education, wealth, or opinion. Preferential treatment by class is itself inequality under law.
• Proper role of government. Negative, not positive; defensive, not aggressive. It is to protect, not to provide. When the state takes power to provide for some, it must take from others—and power once granted is sought for advantage, leading to legalised plunder and loss of freedom. Government powerful enough to give everything can take everything. Its proper function is to protect lives, liberty, and property—nothing more. That government is best which governs least.

How you lost your rights—and how you get them back

Writers in the natural-law remedy tradition teach a succinct theory of law and step-by-step procedure for applying it: identify jurisdiction, refuse silent joinder to artificial persons, require injured parties and verified claims, and stand on pre-existing rights. The practical path is education, verification, and peaceful assertion of living standing—not violence, and not sleep.

Related study on this site: Unalienable Rights, Your Sovereignty, Your Consent, What Is a “Person”?, When You Are Born, Jurisdiction Is the Key, and Rebut the Presumption.