An Assertion of Right
An Assertion of Right is a philosophical defense of the individual as a sovereign moral being. It begins from a simple, uncompromising premise: a human being must act in order to exist, and therefore the freedom to perform the fundamental acts of existence cannot legitimately be granted, revoked, or managed by any external authority. Rights are not permissions. They are assertions rooted in the nature of being alive.
From this foundation, the book reconstructs liberty from first principles-thought, will, action, and consequence-showing how personal agency gives rise to responsibility, property, self-defense, and social cooperation. It challenges the inherited assumptions of Hobbes, Locke, and modern political theory, rejecting the idea that authority originates in fear, tradition, or collective will. All legitimate power, it argues, is delegated by individuals and remains bounded by them.
Through analytic argument and illustrative narrative, An Assertion of Right exposes the quiet ways coercion enters human life: through benevolence, expertise, urgency, and moral language. It draws a hard boundary between friction and harm, between persuasion and force, between society and sovereignty. At its core is a claim both radical and ancient-that no institution, ideology, or consensus outranks the individual's authority over her own existence.
This is not a book about how to govern others.
It is a book about what must never be governed away.
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