This one was much harder, and I’m not sure I’m getting my point across. It’s in response to a comment I got (more like a discussion) on my website in response to the first essay (The Metaphysical Error). I’d like to get some feedback from you all here before I post it as to what it’s flaws are and how I can possibly go about correcting them. I am trying to cover so much information but all of seems essential because I am writing to a non-objectivist audience. Ok, well, thanks again in advance 
As I began to explain in The Metaphysical Error, it is the foundation, or premises that men have accepted through out the centuries which have undermined man’s rational faculty to the extent that he does not even know where his own individual rights come from.
Individual rights are not some intrinsic quality, some divine gift; nor are they some arbitrary agreement among the collective hordes, decided by majority vote centuries ago, never to be questioned.
To understand Individual Rights one must take existence as a primary. One must accept the observable world as reality. And one must accept reason as man’s tool of cognition. In other words: existence exists; the metaphysically given is absolute; A is A. (For a more thorough discussion of the steps leading up to this point I refer you to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand)
Man is a being of volitional conciousness. This means that what sets men apart from the lower animal species is his ability to choose. All living organisms act for the purpose of sustaining their own life, but only man can choose to shut down his mind, to take actions purposefully that harm him, and to end his own life. Man does not have “instincts” as animals have. Man must choose the course of action that is most suited to him and his environment, given the context of his purpose. Even when a man acts without purpose, he first had to make a choice, even if the first choice was a refusal to choose, or to think.
This volitional conciousness is something people bemoan as an undue burden, and constantly try to abnegate their responsibility by either granting a “higher being” power over them, or claiming subservience to “society”. This is the beginning of the mind-body dichotomy.
When an individual gives up his rational faculty, and places above it “divine revelation” or the “common good”, he has given up the right to his own life. He is now at the mercy of the priests or the pollsters (who are simply other individuals).
In reality, the individual is sovereign. The individual must sustain his own life by a process of constant action, beginning with thought. Another individual may bring him water, but he can not drink it for him. Another individual may bring him food, but he can not digest it for him. Another individual may know how to read, and to write, but he can not force him to understand it.
A man can survive alone, he does not need society to survive. Society can and does provide a great many benefits, but a society is only a collection of individuals, and can only function to the extent that it’s individual members do. If each individual member is expecting some entity called “society” to provide for them, if each individual member stops producing and merely waits for “divine revelation” or “welfare”, what will become of society?
A productive society must respect the individual as it’s sovereign. Without the individual, society ceases to exist. This is where the concept of “individual rights” comes in. Rights are man’s moral code, his means of survival, put into law. As such all rights are neccessarily individual. Group rights only mean that some individuals are given (wrongly) special rights over other individuals. They are neccessarily illegitimate.
All rights stem from the need for the individual to maintain his own life. Hence we have the “right to life”. The right to life does not mean that a man must live, only that no other individuals may deprive him, by force, of his means of survival, which are: his body, the products of his labor (his property), and his cognitive tools (right to free press and free speech).
A fundamental aspect of the “right to life” is the right to control the functions of one’s own body without interference. In this day and age of organ donors, feeding tubes, assisted suicide, abortion, and even drugs, there is much talk of “responsibility”. The only true “responsibility” is the responsibility to maintain one’s own life. This requires that he not deprive another individual of their ability to maintain their own, if he does then he has violated the law of reality and has nullified his claim to his own life.
Once a fetus becomes an individual entity through the process of birth, he gains protection by the rights granted to other individuals. This means that after birth a parent may not deprive an infant of the ability to sustain it’s own life, either by abuse, or neglect. There are places established where parents may abandon unwanted children or give them up for adoption.
Prior to birth a fetus has no ability to sustain it’s own life, and so has no individual rights (it is not an individual entity). Before birth there is only one individual, the mother, and she has sovereign control over her own body.
There is no “responsibility” to potential. Responsibility applies only to actual contracts. There is no contract (explicit or implicit) inherent in entering society. However, there is only one moral code that a society may rightfully adopt as it’s law, and subsequently determine it’s rights from. That code is reality.
but it can easily be misinterpreted as implying that rights are all there is to morality, i.e. that you could be a drug addict or a Mother Theresa or something like that and still be moral as long as you don’t violate the rights of others. Hmm, I’m thinking about how you could best clarify this … it’s not easy to fit it in … perhaps you could leave this part as it is and add the clarification further down, after the paragraph about the responsibility to maintain one’s own life, confirming that yes you ARE morally responsible for your own life, even though not legally required to maintain it.
