Quotes from Timothy Sandefur

If political leaders choose which rights to give citizens, then there must be a caste of leaders who enjoy greater freedom than do the citizens who are the recipients of these "rights." That is, the rulers must stand on a higher plane from which they can hand down judgments about what rights are to be given to or withheld from the people below.

To hurt in any degree the interest of any one order of citizens, for no other purpose but to promote that of some other, is evidently contrary to that justice and equality of treatment which the sovereign owes to all the different orders of his subjects."40 Changes

brings to mind the tribulations of those groups—blacks in the 19th century, women in the 20th, gays in the 21st—who have learned through struggle that freedom is not given, only claimed.

to presume that some people are fundamentally entitled to decide how much freedom others should enjoy. What Would It Mean if the State Did Create Freedom? The danger of confusing the state's protection of prepolitical rights on one hand, with its creation of rights/privileges on the other, becomes clear when we ask whether the state creates, say, a woman's right not to be raped.

Robert Bork used the same example to make just this argument. In a democracy, he argued, the majority has a boundless power to outlaw whatever conduct it finds objectionable, including conduct that takes place in private, harms nobody, and is not witnessed or overheard by anyone else.

Beat and cuff the slave, keep him hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like a dog," but "give him a good master, and he wishes to become his own master."1