N.Y. Journal: Intrinsic rights

The Magna Carta, the document signed in 1215 that first limited the rights of kings, is paying a visit to New York City for just the second time in 800 years. I went to see one of the 41 original copies at Fraunces Tavern Museum, and found at the end an illustration of how muddled our idea of rights has become.

The Magna Carta's language---penned in a cramped, faded Latin script---is fresh since we rarely hear it today: "To no one will we sell, to none will we deny or delay, right or justice." The phrase is so beautifully blunt. While the Declaration is a message from the citizens to the government, this is a pledge from society's powerful people to its weaker members, from the government to its citizens: We promise we will not make you pay us for justice.

The exhibit traces traced the development of the idea of rights through history---not just leaping straight from the Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution as we usually do, but also showing that the ideas were there in other documents and sometimes in surprising ways.

For instance, in the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, the inhabitants of what is now Queens petitioned Gov. Peter Stuyvesant to lift his ban on Quaker worship. None of the signers were Quakers themselves, but as Christians they said they could not in good conscience enforce his ban.

This document in particular---one of the most forceful and far-reaching because it extends rights also to "Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam"---shows how Christianity motivated them. "Love peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus," they wrote Stuyvesant, "condemns hatred, war and bondage." They said they wanted to see God in their neighbors (no matter their theological differences) and do unto others as they would have others do unto them. So they could not in good conscience lay violent hands on their neighbors.

The final point of the exhibit is that we are all sons of Adam, that these rights are intrinsic and don't depend on being a certain kind of person or believing a certain thing. So at the end of the display, what have people learned about rights?

The museum invited audience participation, providing a stack of Post-it notes and some pens with directions to write down which disenfranchised group deserves its own Bill of Rights. There were unsurprising notes: the unborn, gays and lesbians, American Indians, women, and atheists. There was expected class bitterness: Someone wrote, "White Middle Class People!" and someone else scribbled "Amen!" at the bottom.

There were a few surprising ones, however. Someone wrote "Every Decent Person." Another said, "Just Loyal Americans." These were the strangest---where rights are somehow predicated on being "decent" and "loyal." The whole point of the exhibit is the idea that rights are inherent in being human, not in being an especially decent human and especially not on being a patriotic human. The point is that rights don't have qualifications like this.

Yet these Post-it notes fit with the rest of the Post-it notes, too. The Post-it notes show a divide. One type of Americans considers himself "loyal" and "patriotic" and another type considers himself "rebellious" and "progressive" and both feel disenfranchised by the other. The people writing the Post-it notes are really writing them to each other.

They are also writing the next chapter of history and whatever definition of rights comes next---and hopefully with the memory that we are all "sons of Adam" who are "glad to see anything of God" in each other.