Natural rights are more than a rhetorical device

Judge Napolitano, an eloquent advocate of liberty, is in fine form here, in his discussion of the relevance of natural law theory to immigration. I was especially pleased with his observation that politicians are at most fair-weather friends of natural law: “This view of the natural law is sweet to the heart and pleasing to the ear when politicians praise it at patriotic events, but it is also a bane to them when it restrains their exercise of the coercive powers of the government.” This is correct- the idea of natural rights, moral rights that are not created by governments, is (for them) a convenient rhetorical device, to be discarded as soon as they perceive that it would be more popular to frame an issue in terms of “practical solutions,” “being realistic,” or “the compromises necessary in a democracy.” Politicians and pundits both left and right do this: on positions they favor, it’s wrong for the government to interfere with the exercise of natural rights, but when the subject is something they oppose, positivism rules. Judge Napolitano surprised a “conservative” talk show host recently by invoking natural rights as a trump against nativist sentiment. Specifically, he argues that “Our fundamental human rights are not conditioned or even conditionable on the laws or traditions of the place where our mothers were physically located when we were born. They are not attenuated because our mothers were not in the United States at the moment of our births. Stated differently, we all possess natural rights, no more and no less than any others. All humans have the full panoply of freedom of choice in areas of personal behavior protected from governmental interference by the natural law, no matter where they were born. Americans are not possessed of more natural rights than non-Americans….” He goes on to show why the government has no right to interfere with freedom of movement. (It furthermore has no right to prevent you or me from hiring whomever we want or selling/renting land to them.) Politicians and pundits on the right aren’t comfortable with the language of natural rights when it comes to issues like marriage or immigration. Their counterparts on the left aren’t comfortable with such language when it comes to issues like self-defense or trading. The Judge gets it. I wonder how the national discussion of rights would go if he had the audience of Paul Krugman, Rachel Maddow, Pat Buchanan.