Rather than attempt to enumerate the rights which we retain under the American Social Contract--which includes our Constitution--I am going to borrow a basic idea from the past. Moises Maimonides was probably the premier Jewish philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages, respected by his own people and the Muslims under whose rule he lived.
Maimonides proposed that human beings could never--with certainty--say what God was, only what God was not. As an example, you cannot say that God is "good,"- only that God is not "evil."-
So I shall borrow from Maimonides proposal, and enumerate--in a general sense--those "rights"- that we surrender under the American Social Contract.
The first, and most basic, right we give up is the right to create our own "law,"- or take "justice"- into our own hands. As Aeschylus wrote of in The Eumenides, surrendering the right of vengeance in favor of a court of justice, is the first step towards civilization. No vendettas, no feuds, no recovering "what is mine"- at the point of a gun, etc. The simultaneous corollary to this is the implicit and explicit recognition of and agreement to, the existence of every individual member of the larger community's property and civil rights. This includes providing both the individuals and the community with some equitable system for the protection and adjudication of those rights.
The second right that we surrender is a right to unlimited freedom in both the use and expression of our civil rights, and in the use of our property. We cannot use our freedom of speech to slander our neighbors with falsehoods, or incite them to riot against the immigrants on the edge of town. We cannot place a plant to process mercury from our newly discovered cinnabar mine, which lies next to a stream, when a town downstream depends upon the water from that stream for its drinking water.
The third right that we surrender is the right to do nothing. We no longer have the leisure to not participate in the functions of governance, whether at the community, state or national level. We have a solemn duty to participate in the election process beyond the voting booth, in our educational system beyond the payment of taxes, and most importantly, in the justice system--social, criminal, and civil--at every level.
Why, you ask, do I combine the social welfare and justice systems? Because the better the first functions, the less work the second has to do. A prison is--in all but the most extreme cases of the sociopathic or psychopathic individual--an admission of failure by society. It costs far less in the long term to provide programs like Head Start, youth centers, after school programs, extracurricular activities, day care facilities, state supported higher education, public health care for children, and the like, than the $50,000.00+ it costs every year to feed and house a prisoner in our so-called "corrections system."-
The fact that we have three million Americans--one percent of our total population, and twenty-five percent of the world's total prison population--behind bars, shows that our current system is not working. One hundred and fifty billion dollars every year is being used to warehouse human beings, rather than do anything to correct the underlying problems. This amount does not include the additional cost of police, courts, parole officers, or the crimes themselves, that every single one of those prisoners represents.
In addition, as citizens our participation in the justice system must involve far more than serving on a jury, or acting as a witness to a crime. There must also be a proactive component, which includes knowing when to mind our own business and when to report the sound of a child screaming, or something "wrong"- next door. There is also the need to confront and report the abuse of authority by police, civil servants, and elected officials. This last is of utmost importance, because illegal acts, done under the cover of authority, destroys the trust that must exist between We the People and our government at every level, in order for the system to work properly.
Finally, we surrender the right to naïvely believe that by being wealthy, famous, or having a position of respect or authority, somehow gives an individual an extra degree of knowledge or wisdom that is greater than our own. Or, that these advantages somehow preclude them from committing criminal or immoral acts, or should for some reason exempt them from facing Justice. I remember reading an FBI estimate five years ago that "white collar"- crime (embezzlement, stock fraud, etc.) costs the American people ten times what "blue collar"- crime (burglary, armed robbery, etc.) does every year. Bernie Madoff and the current Wall Street scandals demonstrate that this estimate was probably optimistic.
To quote Mario Puzo in The Godfather, "A man with a briefcase can steal more in an hour, than a man with a gun can steal in a lifetime."-
The other rights we might surrender, under certain circumstances, are what I would call "situational"- rights. As an example: our right to own a large hog farm is probably acceptable in the countryside, but it is unacceptable in the middle of a large city. An adult bookstore might be acceptable in a business district that is in an isolated part of town, but not next door to an elementary school. And finally, there is Justice Holmes famous statement, "You can't yell fire in a crowded theatre."-
Having now discussed those rights that we must surrender in order to establish the Social Contract between ourselves, our neighbors, and the larger community up to and including the Federal Government; what rights do we retain, in a practical sense, by the explicit or implicit agreement of those selfsame neighbors, communities, and governments?
The answer, in a practical sense, is all of them.
As I stated above, we all--in theory--have "natural"- rights, which we have a priori, or as Jefferson states, with which we are "endowed by our creator."- We may not always agree what those rights are, in some cases because those presumed rights are self-serving, wishful thinking. A perfect example of this is a male member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, who believes he has the "God-given"- right to have multiple wives.
In a practical sense--and this is the point of this article--we in reality only have those rights which our neighbors, communities, and the government agrees that we have under the terms of the Social Contract. This is the reason our FLDS member does not have the right to multiple wives.
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