He said on T.V.: “Our rights do not come from God, your honor, and you know that. They come from man… That’s your faith, that’s my faith, but that’s not our country. Our laws come from collective agreement and compromise.”

Cuomo is wrong, dead wrong. Rights are a natural attribute of each person. Some people believe and accept that Rights come from God. Cuomo is correct so far as those who do not believe God created Rights but incorrect because Rights are grounded in creation.

“The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully—and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives—the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.”Ayn Rand.

It’s important to correctly locate the source of Rights because your very life depends on it. For those who haven’t thought much about “Rights” here’s the source of the concept.

“The Declaration of Independence stated that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Whether one believes that man is the product of a Creator or of nature, the issue of man’s origin does not alter the fact that he is an entity of a specific kind—a rational being—that he cannot function successfully under coercion, and that rights are a necessary condition of his particular mode of survival.

“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational.” (Atlas Shrugged). For a brilliant exegesis on Individual Rights and their importance to your own life see: Ayn Rand’s essay: “Mans Rights”.

So Cuomo was correct but for the wrong reason. That’s only slightly less dangerous than being wrong.

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