The general idea is that since humans are self-conscious and born with innate natural rights, that these are the rights that can never be taken away unless proven guilty of a crime in a court of law (ideally if there&#x27;s an actual victim but this could be argued against).<p>There are some 18th century philosophers who talked about two types of rights but I can&#x27;t remember the analogy.<p>But essentially, you were born with human freedom, even your ancestors and all of our ancestors in Africa.  And these are the rights that existed prior to civilization, government, the Bill of Rights, the UN and the EU.<p>This is why some say they come from God, to distinguish them from the government.  But you might as well say they came from the Higgs Boson because Jefferson et al were Deists.<p>The reason this is important is because why would you want to diminish your own personal sovereignty knowing what we all know about human nature and power?<p>This is why the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make no law restricting Freedom of Speech.  It does not grant or create a right or privilege.  It acknowledges it.<p>The organic law (Dec. of Indepedence) declares this in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Deny this to an Enlightenment-thinker, and prepare for silent revolution.<p>We should resist the utopian temptation to accept the falsehood that rights are privileges.  In the 20th century in the United States, wealthy idealists who often doubled as Marxists created the American Historical Association (historians.org), and promoted the idea that the centralization of power was always a good thing, i.e. collectivism. And to do that, they taught that truth was relative and that natural rights and classical liberalism was irrelevant in the face of supranational political utopias.<p>This is covered in Professor Allen Bloom&#x27;s book, &quot;The Closing of the American Mind.&quot;<p>We are all from Africa and we all have natural rights.  So since the US was the first nation to acknowledge this, and since the EU does not acknowledge natural rights and in fact is a bureaucratic nightmare, then it is fair to suggest that we all are in fact &quot;African Americans&quot;, free and individually powerful since our ancestors lived in Ethiopia and Somalia.