The natural rights of all persons consist of areas of human behavior for which we do not need and will not accept the need for a government permission slip. We all expect that the government will leave us alone when we think, speak, publish, worship, defend ourselves, enter our homes, choose our mates, or travel. The list of natural rights is endless.
We expect this not because we are Americans, but because we are persons and these rights are integral to our nature. We expect this in America because the Constitution was written to restrain the government from interfering with natural rights.
When these first principles are violated to advance a political cause or to quell public fear, those whose rights are violated because of an immutable characteristic of birth, not because of personal culpability, become the victims of ugly public indifference or official government repression. The American history of government treatment of Africans and their offspring and the European history of government treatment of the Jewish people are poignant and terrible examples of this.
Today, the potential victims of public indifference and government repression are Hispanics in America. Hispanics here without documentation are being demonized because of the politics of nativism. Nativism—we are exceptional; we are better people than they are; we were here first—is very dangerous and leads to ugly results.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution underscore the truism that all persons have the same natural rights, irrespective of where their mothers were when they delivered them.
