From: Jim choate "Rights are the items of a citizens characteristic which are outside the ability of that government to control within its charter. Rights come before a government forms. If they didn't then you would not be able to give it a charter." This is true in the sense that one has the right to exist and to function and in general to be oneself independent of artificial government operations. In Nature, you have a "right" to anything you like, but there may be no one besides yourself there to appreciate that fact and to deliver it. When a group of individuals associate and create agreements/charters, the delineation of rights serves to protect their separateness - their property, their privacy, their character - against encroachments from the group, by defining consciously where the boundary lines are to be drawn - what the individual can expect to keep, in exception to what everyone expects to share. Once a group considers itself an official "society" of like-minded individuals, they often begin to demand "rights" which do not naturally belong to them or their society - or which they have not explicity agreed to share: . the right to have what others have created/produced (like a service which nature does not automatically arrange for delivery - ex: optical cables & the internet at 3200 bps) . the right to access what is not their own (outside of what nature has naturally endowed them with - ex: computers) "Self protection is a requirement in general against another individual and not a society." A society of like-minded individuals can also be a threat to the safety of non-conformists, depending on how the group decides to respond to those who are not exactly like the others. Blanc