The Right to Life

Mr. Tuccille is a free-lance writer in New York City.

Is the war in Vietnam the major issue confronting us here in America today? Or is it perhaps the malignant spread of crime and violence in our streets? Then again, maybe it’s the race ques­tion? — or the growing concern over an urbanized society? — or birth control? — or abortion re­form? — or education?

The true answer lies at the root of all these issues. For the above are merely the symptoms, the ef­fects, the natural by-products of a deeper fundamental issue which lies at the heart of virtually every malady that faces us today. This root cause can be stated concisely in a single phrase: the deteriora­tion of individual freedom.

Either an individual born into society has the right to his own life, or he does not.

Either he has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap­piness, or he does not.

Either this fundamental right is his by nature, by the very fact of his existence, or it is an arbi­trary gift which can be granted to him by society, or revoked by that society according to the whim of the moment.

Either an individual’s life be­longs to himself alone, or it is an object of public domain which can be manipulated by and sacrificed to any group that puts a claim upon it.

It is my assertion here that there can be no such thing as civil rights, or human rights, or econ­omic rights, or any other kind of “rights” unless there is first and foremost an understanding of the true nature of individual rights. Unless we understand and affirm the principle that each and every individual is born a free agent into society, that this freedom is a natural right and is not granted to us by governmental decree, and that this basic right entitles the individual to use his life as he sees fit, to aim it in whatever di­rection his reason and ethical judgment advises him to — as long as he does not interfere with the same right of his fellow human beings — there can be no such thing as peace on earth, no such thing as respect for law, no such thing as racial justice, no such thing as harmony in our cities, no such thing as satisfactory education, no such thing as morality in our personal lives (for morality presupposes freedom of choice). Unless each and every individual is free to direct his own life, free to make the decisions that are necessary for his own welfare and survival, none of us is totally free.

It is important to remember that, for every individual whose rights are sacrificed for the “gen­eral welfare,” there is someone at the receiving end of each coercive sacrifice — someone is collecting sacrificial offerings dictated by the state. And just as the state may demand that one individual be sacrificed today for another, so to­morrow it may change the rules and today’s recipient may become tomorrow’s victim.

There can be no such thing as peace on earth as long as the state is permitted to draft its citizens from private life into the ranks of an internationalist police force.

There can be no such thing as order in our streets as long as people do not recognize and re­spect the right of other individu­als to own and maintain property, to walk the streets without threat of physical attack — in short, as long as people do not respect the right to life itself.

There can be no such thing as racial justice as long as we insist on categorizing individuals as members of a particular collective — as Jew, as Negro, as Wasp, and so on ad infinitum — rather than judging a person according to his worth as an individual.

There can be no such thing as “decent education” as long as the state is free to authorize a public curriculum, and then make every citizen support it through taxes regardless of whether or not he believes in it and wants to make use of it for his own children.

There can be no such thing as freedom of religion as long as par­ticular religious sects organize lobbies to pressure for govern­mental favors, thus dissolving the barrier between church and state which was the direct cause of re­ligious freedom in the first place.

There can be no such thing as morality, itself, unless each in­dividual is free to make decisions that affect his own personal life —indeed, the most personal elements of his life.

The most important issue con­fronting us here in America today — across the entire face of the earth for that matter — is the at­tack by the collective mentality on the freedom of the individual. It is an attack on the right to life it­self, and only by recognizing this fact and meeting it head on will we achieve the freedom and jus­tice that is so dearly cherished by all rational men.