Reclaiming the the Human Rights Tradition
The Ben Franklin Fellowship Working Group on Human Rights just published a short white paper that is worth the read. It offers a vigorous defense of the natural rights foundation of the United States’ political order, situating the Declaration of Independence within the broader Lockean and Stoic traditions. It emphasizes that governments exist not to create rights, but to secure those unalienable ones—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—through which human beings attain flourishing. The analysis distinguishes natural rights, which are universal, permanent, and binding, from positive rights, which emerge through political processes and may lack grounding in human nature. In doing so, the article critiques progressive reinterpretations of freedom as mere voluntarism, contending that such conflations weaken authentic human liberty and diminish the rule of law. Extending the argument globally, it highlights the ways in which America’s natural rights tradition informed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, instruments that remain vital standards in international accountability. Moreover, the essay frames the promotion of human rights as a U.S. national security imperative, linking respect for rights to stable governance, economic growth, and reliable alliances. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it urges a reorientation of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), advocating that its core offices—particularly a newly envisioned Office of Natural Rights—should safeguard the integrity of rights discourse by defending natural rights against ideological inflation, while also integrating fair labor, principled foreign aid, and careful reporting into a coherent, America-first vision of human dignity. Here is the paper:
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