Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Origins of Liberty: Uncovering America's Natural Rights Philosophy
Natural rights form the cornerstone of American constitutional democracy, establishing that all individuals possess unalienable rights endowed by their Creator that no government can legitimately take away. Dr. Paul Carrese explores how these rights originated from philosophical traditions from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment and explains why they remain relevant to modern citizenship.
• The Declaration of Independence directly articulates America's understanding of natural rights
• "Unalienable rights" include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - rights no authority can legitimately remove
• Natural rights philosophy draws from John Locke but substitutes "pursuit of happiness" for his emphasis on property
• The "laws of nature and of nature's God" connect to ancient Greek philosophy through medieval Christian thought
• Natural rights blend with English common law traditions to form America's understanding of individual liberty
• The Bill of Rights further specifies and protects these natural rights within our constitutional framework
• Ultimate standards of justice come from nature and divine reason, not human will or political negotiation
• Every citizen has a responsibility to participate in self-government to ensure rights are protected
• America's system allows for perpetual debate about rights while providing mechanisms to protect them
Join us in understanding how these foundational principles establish your equal dignity and why meaningful citizenship requires active engagement with these ideas that make self-government possible.
Related Episodes:
The Declaration's Golden Promise: Life, Liberty, and Happiness Explored
Equality in America: Unpacking "All Men Are Created Equal"
Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!
School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Welcome back to everyone. We have our fearless leader back with us today, Dr Paul Carice, and today we're going to talk about natural rights. So, Dr Carice, our question today is what are natural rights and where do they come from?
Speaker 2:Thank you, liz, another terrific question that you've proposed. This is one of the central, foundational concepts of America's constitutional, democratic, republican political order. What are natural rights and where do they come from? Terrific, so everyone out there, get your pocket constitution and particularly your declaration of independence. This is the focal source for the American understanding of natural rights. So, liz, actually if you would read this, the second paragraph, probably the most famous paragraph of the Declaration, those first two sections which feature this idea of natural rights, yes, and I do want to say for our listeners, we have specific podcast episodes that Dr Kreis has gone over and really gone over.
Speaker 1:when I'm about to read, I will make sure that they're linked in our show notes, but I did want to throw that out there because I love those. 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 power from the consent of the governed.
Speaker 2:Terrific. This says that natural rights is the foundational principle for deciding how to organize a government and what a just government is, and therefore it's the basis for the question do the Americans who've now met this is 1776, they've now met in two continental congresses do they need to declare independence from Britain? And the argument is they do because this British government in the imperial center, london, the parliament and the king have persistently violated principles of natural rights. Now there's more that they violated and we'll talk about that. So this is the central question of the revolution and 250 years later it's still the central question. It should be the central question of American politics, american government. It's not the only question, but it should be a central guiding question. Are we in our political order, our constitutional order, federal constitution, state constitutions? Are we understanding and abiding by these principles of natural rights? So that's a big point. Now what does it mean? So these are unalienable rights endowed by our creator and all men, all human beings, have them equally. We talked about that in an earlier episode. And what, more specifically, are these unalienable rights? Unalienable meaning no one can take them away from you. A tyrant, a despot, a dictator, whatever can crush them and you can't really enjoy them, but they are yours as a human being. No one can take them away from you, right? And what are they? Well, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So it's these three. Every human being has a natural right to life, to liberty that's complicated, but just what does liberty mean? And to the pursuit of happiness, even more complicated, and we talked about those in earlier episodes, but also among these. So there are more. Now an obvious source for the American understanding of these ideas in the early 1770s through 1776, as the imperial crisis between the American colonies and Britain is brewing, the obvious source of this is John Locke, the English philosopher. John Locke, most focally his second treatise on government, which talks a lot about these individual natural rights. He uses the phrase of life, liberty and property as the three main natural rights that all human beings have from nature and from a creator. So it's interesting, the Americans substitute pursuit of happiness all human beings have from nature and from a creator right. So it's interesting, the Americans substitute pursuit of happiness. But it's not like property is not there In the Declaration as a whole. We can talk about this more. Violations of the right of property are listed as the charges against the king of parliament. Okay, and then one final point here.
Speaker 2:In this opening phrase self-evident what does that mean? We hold these truths to self-evident. What does that mean we hold these truths to be self-evident? What's the source of these natural rights? We understand? We Americans claim by reason that all human beings are created equal. A creator has endowed us with these natural rights equally, and they are life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, property, some others. Self-evident is a principle most obviously taken from a philosopher named Thomas Reed and other philosophers in the 18th century, what's called the Scottish Enlightenment, and Reed authored a common sense philosophy. He called it All rational human beings should be able to grasp these not only logical principles, but moral principles about politics as well as individual moral life, and he used this phrase self-evident truths about human beings and human beings living together. But there's a long tradition of this. A medieval Catholic philosopher, thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, used this phrasing about self-evident principles of moral reasoning and political reasoning. And then there's a longer tradition of natural law philosophy that goes back even farther.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I read from the second paragraph. But the idea of natural law, doesn't it point to another phrase in the Declaration that might refer to, kind of the source of these natural rights of the individuals Is that in the opening paragraph, that preamble.
Speaker 2:Natural rights is one way to understand this fundamental category principle of what justice is for a just form of government, how we organize ourselves in political life. But there's a broader, deeper phrase about natural law that really is the source of the more modern thinking about individual natural rights. So, yes, in your pocket constitution, your Declaration of Independence, the grand opening paragraph of the Declaration, when, in the course of human events, if you keep reading through, you will come to the phrasing with capital letters the laws of nature and of nature's God, right. So the Americans are forced to assume the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. That's what it means to separate from, to declare independence from Britain. Who is this nature's God and what are the laws of nature? So this is the source of the broader source of this particular idea of natural rights. This goes all the way back to Greek philosophy, plato and Aristotle, to Augustine. In the 5th century, a Roman rhetorician and philosopher who converts to Christianity writes about the natural law. Augustine is drawing it from Stoic philosophy and also from Cicero. So there's a very long tradition of this idea of natural law that comes from a divine mind or divine being and one challenge for Americans is to fit this phrasing the laws of nature and nature's God as the source of these ideas of justice With the second paragraph the principles of equal natural rights endowed by a creator, the second paragraph the principles of equal natural rights endowed by the Creator and that also has these two have to be fit with the three other references to a divinity in the Declaration of Independence. We've talked about that in an earlier episode, right? So one idea there, when the in the final you know dramatic conclusion to the Declaration of Independence, when there's appeal to a divine judge and appeal to divine providence for protecting the Americans, that's got to be fit with these ideas of the laws of nature and nature's God. So you could be someone who believes in a religious faith and believes in a God by faith, and you could read those phrases that way. But you don't have to be believing in what we would think of as a traditional religious community Christianity or Judaism or Islam or another traditional religious faith. You could, by reason, think the laws of nature and nature's God and also a God who acts in the world as a divine protector and the judge of human justice protector and the judge of human justice. So let me try and summarize why this matters.
Speaker 2:The larger point in all this phrasing is human beings do not invent the ultimate standards of justice. We don't create them. They're not a product of human will or human politics or power or negotiation. The ultimate principles of human will or human politics or power or negotiation, the ultimate principles of human justice come from nature and, more deeply, they come from a divine mind, a divine being that orders and and even creates nature. So this is the extraordinary argument the Americans are making and it's therefore a universal argument the Americans are making.
Speaker 2:This matters for us, the Americans, and it matters for everybody in the world that there are principles embedded in nature, the reason that's in nature, a divine mind as the source of it, which are the standards that every government must meet. And of course we argue about whether you know just are the standards that every government must meet. And of course we argue about whether you know just what these standards of justice mean and whether governments are living up to them. But that's what governments are meant to do to protect and secure and abide by these principles of natural right. That's the oldest principle.
Speaker 1:The greeks have natural right and natural law, classical and then medieval philosophy, and also these principles of individual natural rights that modern philosophers think of so what would be some other sources, kind of beyond the natural law and natural rights philosophy that guided the American founders thinking about what natural rights meant?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's great because these are very broad ideas Natural rights, natural law, natural rights of individuals. So Locke specifies some ideas. Some other modern philosophers do as well, ideas of natural rights. Montesquieu, who we've talked about in earlier episodes, french philosopher, is very important for American constitutionalism. He has more to say about individual natural rights.
Speaker 2:But one thing to remember here about the foundational principles of American constitutional Republican government is that the bulk of the Declaration is a list of charges against the king in Parliament and that mostly draws on that long list of charges called the Bill of Indictment by some scholars is the common law, the English or British common law. And this is very characteristic of the common law to blend in ideas of natural law and natural rights with particular historical claims of rights and of law that developed over hundreds and hundreds of years in the English common law, the English common law. For example, a great jurist by the name of Cook his name looks like Coke, like Coca-Cola, but it's Cook and then William Blackstone after him, blackstone, very prominent, important right before the American founding. Both Cook and Blackstone say that the common law embraces and incorporates these ideas of natural law and individual natural rights. So the list of charges in the Declaration gives us some more particular sense of what the Americans understood by important rights, and some of them might be specifying what the right to liberty means and what the right to property means, and even pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2:So then, even more specifically, in the ratification of the Constitution, the argument is that, gee, we need a Bill of Rights. This is the claim of the anti-federalists, those who are opposed to ratification of the Constitution. The argument is that, gee, we need a Bill of Rights. This is the claim of the anti-federalists, those who are opposed to ratification of the Constitution. And the Constitution is not doing enough in this new government that's proposed over the entire American Federal Republic. It's giving powers to government, but it's not doing enough to limit government and say these are the rights that every individual is owed, and the government will. This new federal government will protect them, respect them, etc.
Speaker 2:So I'll give you an example. Right, the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment protects, if you get out your pocket, constitution right Now. This is a tricky thing. The First Amendment was not the First Amendment as proposed. It was actually the third in the list of amendments proposed. So you don't want to make too much of the fact that it's first, but it was near the first and it's really the first in the list of proposed amendments that is about individual rights, about what was it?
Speaker 2:about the size of the House of Representatives being a bit larger. And then the second one was actually ratifies the 27th Amendment long, long, long later about congressional pay. Ok, but what is the First Amendment? It's got to be important. It's the first of the natural rights, you could say the individual rights to be respected by this new federal government of religious liberty. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise of thereof, then, or make no law abridging the freedom of speech or the press and then onward, or the right of the people to please be assembled. Petition the government. Ok, these, this is big, this is right up front.
Speaker 2:Are these natural rights? Well, I would say, if they're not natural rights, they're pretty darn close to natural rights, and the Americans are drawing from ideas of natural rights and also the common law, thinking and judges and jurists and judicial opinions, and so it's kind of this blend, and then just finally, we have a form of government that's meant to protect our right to argue about all this. We sort of Americans agree about all these principles at a very general level. And then we also agree we have have the right to argue, freedom of speech and complicated forms of government where there's always some other branch where you can. You lose in this branch and you go to the other branch and try, and you know, sustain your argument or carry on your argument.
Speaker 1:So, to wrap everything up, you know we talk a lot about, like the founders and the American founding. If I am a high school student right now and I wanted to say, why does this matter to me? Right, the declaration's already been written, like all this stuff's already been written and argued about. Why does it matter to a high school kid in 2026?
Speaker 2:Because you in the, this american understanding, you have been given this great gift by the order of nature and the divine mind that it's the source of nature, which you can understand by reason, by, by study and by argument. You can come to understand this. You have equal natural rights to every other human being you meet, and you are very fortunate to be in this political place, the United States of America, than your particular state or territory, where you are a citizen, or perhaps you're an aspiring citizen and you matter. Government is meant to serve and protect and secure your rights and everybody else's rights, and you are supposed to get in the game, you're supposed to participate. Not just voting, that's not enough, and even voting means you're reading the news and you're studying and you're informed. Right, you're supposed to be really engaged in this activity, this beautiful gift you've been given of self-government, to ensure that your rights and everybody else's rights are being protected and secured.
Speaker 2:And of course we argue about that perpetually. We will never, as long as America exists, we will never stop arguing about it. But there are forms of government and law and protections for minority points of view and dissent, etc. That's why this matters. This is a question of, to use the phrase of the Declaration the pursuit of happiness. You can't have a fulfilling of happiness, you can't have a fulfilling, happy, flourishing life unless you're a free human being under this kind of political order, and that means free to argue, reasonably, of course, in a civil way, with other human beings. Yeah, Wonderful.
Speaker 1:It's still relevant more than 250 years later.
Speaker 2:Dr Cerise as always.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your expertise.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Liz.
