Individual rights

Individual rights are the rights needed by each individual to pursue their lives and goals without interference from other individuals or the government. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as stated in the United States Declaration of Independence are typical examples of individual rights.

Definition

Individual rights are those considered so essential that they warrant specific statutory protection from interference. While the U.S. Constitution, for example, divides and restricts the powers of the federal and state governments to check their own and each other’s power, it also expressly ensures and protects certain rights and liberties of individuals from government interference. Most of these rights, such as the First Amendment’s prohibition of government actions that limit the freedom of speech and the Second Amendment's protection of the right to keep and bear arms, are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Other individual rights, however, are established throughout the Constitution, such as the right to trial by jury in Article III and the Sixth Amendment, and the Due Process of Law Clause found in the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment.

Many individual rights protected by the Constitution deal with criminal justice, such as the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable governmental searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment’s well-known right against self-incrimination. Other individual rights are established by the U.S. Supreme Court.

History

The doctrine of individual rights was first formally expressed in the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, as applying to "all free white men", more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. While the Declaration’s primary purpose was to detail the reasons the thirteen American Coloniescould no longer be a part of the British Empire, its primary author,  Thomas Jefferson, also stressed the importance of individual rights to a free society. 

The purpose of government is to secure and ensure the God-given inalienable natural rights of the people. In return, the people are obliged to obey the laws set down by their society, and have various other responsibilities to society. This moral contract is the very foundation of any society.

In afascistsystem. Society is neither above, nor below, the individual. In an individualist society, the individual's needs and desires have priority over the collective. In a communist society, it is the collective that has priority over the individual. In afascistsystem, the individuals are society. they are one and the same. This is achieved by respecting that individual rights come with duties, responsibilities, and obligations to society.