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Last week I attended a portion of The Americas Roundtable on Poverty Reduction: Politics and Strategies (part of the Biennial of the Americas) at which Tom Farer, retiring Dean of DU’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies gave opening remarks.

One line from his short speech struck me in the cortex. He said, “A right is a duty that the State owes to its citizens.” I could not believe my ears.

I looked around the Ellie Caulkins Opera House auditorium to see if anyone else was visibly bothered by this amazing, dumbfounding, outlandish claim made by a Princeton and Harvard grad with a long and distinguished career. No one was, at least that I could tell.

Now, I recognize that I might be getting a little theoretical here, but bear with me because this stuff is important. In the traditional understanding of rights in this country and through many of the greatest thinkers in Western philosophy and academe, a right is understood in negative terms: It is an individual’s moral or legal entitlement to keep others from interfering in his life. The fundamental rights, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, are the the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (The pursuit of happiness is commonly understood to be a generalized description of the right to own property.)

Moreover, the Declaration acknowledges these rights as “unalienable.” That is, no one can take away an individual’s rights unless that person has by his own actions surrendered such right. For example, if you draw and point a loaded gun at me with the intention to shoot, the police can justifiably shoot you. Even if the police kill you in this circumstance, they did not offend your right to life. You, by your actions, surrendered (or “alienated”) your own right to life.

This negative conception of rights is a wonderful, liberating thing. In a society of any size, it means that I can do anything whatsoever that I want (we call this “freedom”) provided that I do not offend anyone else’s rights (we call this “responsibility”). Freedom and responsibility, together known as “liberty,” have made this country the greatest on Earth.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men . . . .

And yet. And yet some people see fit to meddle in other people’s lives…because they just know better. They come up with nonsensical ideas, and they try to redefine words of long standing, with the result that we now discuss “rights” as if they are impositions of duties on the State owed to its citizens. The only duty of a State with respect to individual rights is to enforce them—that is, to keep people from, or to punish people for, infringing on the rights of others (that is why we have police forces and courts).

If we assert that “rights” impose broader duties on the State, how do we articulate these rights? Do we say that the State shall provide a living wage to its citizens, regardless of individual employment status? Do we insist that health care is a “right,” i.e., a duty of the State to provide? Shall we make the State responsible for each citizen’s happiness and comfort? The answer, unfortunately and grotesquely, is yes. That is indeed how we articulate these fraudulent “rights.”

But where, may I ask, does the State obtain the resources to provide a living wage, to administer health care, to ensure comfort? Why, it must tax its citizens, of course! In other words, in order to enforce one citizen’s “right” to health care, it must offend another citizen’s rights to liberty and property.

And here we see the evil in this doublespeak about rights: The State picks and chooses which rights to enforce, which rights to honor, and which citizens are winners and which ones are losers. The State, in the end, takes away any notion of individual rights, replacing it with a social one that morphs and grows and changes over time in accordance with the whims of the majority of those in power.

Mr. Farer joked in his remarks that his views would be considered socialism in Colorado Springs. His concept of rights may not exactly be socialism, but is that oldest of evils: Tyranny.