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of perceived subjectivity of determining our “proper ends,” we should be instilled with a sense of deep respect for and complete deference to those immutable yearnings implicit in the order of things. It is no more sensible to reject the natural law for its lack of objectivity than to disparage the field of physics for the cryptic behavior of subatomic particles, and thus revert to the belief that all things are made up of earth, wind, water, and fire because it is easier to understand. Subjectivity has absolutely nothing to do with truth, merely the ease and certainty of determining what those truths are.

Our politicians should be terrified at the prospect of encroaching upon our natural rights, and thus interfering with the natural order of things, especially because of their subjectivity, just as we would be terrified to take some experimental medicine about which nothing was known. And as we shall see, even someone who does not believe in the philosophy of the natural law must accept that, if properly followed, it avoids all of the crimes against humanity which we have seen government commit throughout human history. I speak not just of the truth of Natural Rights, but their capacity to foil tyranny.

However, the concept of rights does not in reality have to be complicated at all. Rather, all rights, and indeed all tenets of libertarian philosophy, can be traced back to one single right: The right to own property. Although we traditionally think of this as the right to control tangible, external things (and that is the understanding adopted by the chapter in this book on property rights), it really begins earlier, with a property right to one’s own body. If we acknowledge this application of the right in conjunction with the nonaggression principle, then we also recognize free speech, freedom of association, freedom of travel, and a right to privacy. As Murray Rothbard explains in his book The Ethics of Liberty,

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A person does not have a “right to freedom of speech”; what he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. He does not have a “right to freedom of the press”; what he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away to those who are willing to accept it). Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. There is no extra “right of free speech” or free press beyond the property rights that a person may have in any given case.4

If we, however, extend this property right beyond the body and acknowledge that humans must retain control over tangible things external to them, then we also recognize the ability of one to do business and freely contract with others. Moreover, it declares government initiatives such as taxation and the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies as illegitimate and in contravention of the Natural Law. And, as we shall see, some government initiatives, such as war, violate this property right in nearly every single form it can take. Thus, although one may fairly say that libertarians share general principles such as nonaggression and “free markets,” among others, the common denominator within this philosophical movement is simply that there are certain spheres of this world which belong exclusively to the individual. We have dominion over these spheres by virtue of being human, and for that reason, they are natural rights which do not rest on any government for their existence.

Human Law

The key difference between the Eternal Law, the Natural Law, Natural Rights, and Human Law, is that the last of these is not implicit in the order of things, but is actually promulgated by humans. Nonetheless, if lawmakers are to create the best society, they must be informed by human nature. Professor Barnett notes the role that man-made law plays in the scheme of Natural Law:

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Once these [natural] rights are identified, it is a somewhat, but not entirely,