On the Square Today

James R. Rogers on rights you can’t give away :

Most Americans know the Declaration of Independence states that God endows people with certain “unalienable” rights. When I ask my students what it means for a right to be inalienable, they respond that it means that government cannot take those rights away. I follow up that modal answer by asking whether that means that government can then take away rights that are alienable . At that point we usually need to pause to consider a bit more rigorously what it means for a right to be inalienable.