The Enlightenment view of the individual's relation to government is based in a concept called natural rights. For details, I recommend reading Rousseau's three treatises (On the Arts and Sciences, The Origins of Inequality and The Social Contract). This idea also comes from Locke, who is even more influential on American thought on this matter. The key phrase of the Declaration of Independence is practically plagiarized from Locke:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Note that Jefferson, the author of the Declaration, also says that rights come from a "Creator," elsewhere referred to as "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God." In any case, natural rights come from a higher authority than the government. The government, in Jefferson's view, is merely an instrument "instituted among men" for he purpose of "securing" those rights. Nowhere does Jefferson state that rights originate with the government. A more recent American Constitutional scholar, Mr. Alberto Gonzales, held to the idea that such rights do originate with the government. A brief outline of Mr. Gonzales' ideas may be found
here, in a discussion of the Senate judiciary committee concerning the right of Habeas Corpus. Please note that Mr. Gonzales and I do not see eye-to-eye on this matter. In fact, I think that Mr. Gonzales' ideas on this matter are more consistent with another post-enlightenment idea,
fascism.
Mr. Ryan and I certainly agree on the concept of natural rights as being something that governments do not create but are merely instruments to protect. I suspect that Mr. Ryan agrees with Senator Specter, as I do, that Mr. Gonzales' ideas on this matter "violate common sense."
Where Mr. Ryan and I don't agree is on the matter of owning private property as a natural right. In a nutshell, he believes not only is it a natural right but it the foundation of all other rights. I do not. First of all, I believe that when we start talking about private property, we are discussing a human state well beyond a state of nature. Insofar as owning property is a right of any kind, it would have to be derived from a natural right found in human societies unburdened by modern, urban culture, that is to say in hunter/gatherer societies. We don't find
private property in those societies.
Personal property, like the sirt on one's back, yes, we find that, but not
private property, which is something that is posited by industrialization. While I don't see owning private property in and of itself as a violation of any natural right, there are ways the owner of private property may use his wealth that do violate the natural rights of man. For example, if I deposit money in a savings account, then my expectations are that the money will compound interest and grow; the bank may use that money, but that which I have deposited is mine, the interest that the money has earned is mine and after the bank is through using it, that which is mine is still there. There is no natural right that allows the bank to use my money in a reckless and irresponsible way and lose it and not replace it. (Am I getting through to you, Mr. Dimon?)
I also disagree with Mr. Ryan's concept of natural rights as expressed in his budget proposals. This will create a social inequality of critical levels such that civil unrest becomes a natural response to very unnatural deprivation. That will necessitate either the alteration or abolition of a government that has become destructive to natural rights, or the establishment of a police state that in and of itself must be abolished.
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