The Unity of Rights: Why Economic and Civil Liberties Cannot Be Separated

Drawing from James Valliant's insights on a recent episode of The Capitalist Corner.

The Supreme Court has it backwards on rights. Dead wrong.

For decades, our highest court has treated the Bill of Rights like a shopping list – discrete items that can be picked apart, weighed against each other, and balanced in some cosmic scale of competing interests. Your right to free speech here. Your right against unreasonable searches there. Property rights in this corner. Privacy rights in that one. All separate. All potentially in conflict.

This approach isn't just intellectually bankrupt. It's dangerous. And recent events – from the FDA pressuring YouTube to censor critics, to antitrust threats silencing tech companies – prove exactly why treating rights as separate entities destroys them all.

As James argued in a recent episode of The Capitalist Corner, this fragmented approach to constitutional rights is destroying the very freedoms the Bill of Rights was designed to protect.

Rights Form a Conceptual Unity

James's core insight cuts straight to the heart of constitutional interpretation. As he explained, "All rights must be understood as a unity." The Supreme Court's approach of treating the Bill of Rights as "separate discreet rights" that "are never the twain shall meet" is fundamentally wrong.

When you read the First Amendment – freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to peaceably assemble – these aren't separate guarantees that might conflict with each other. As Jim noted, freedom of assembly "implies a right of association, a freedom of association. It implies as the Supreme Court has correctly come to understand a right of privacy."

The connection is clear: "Privacy, it cannot be... dissociated from my freedom of religion, my freedom of speech, my freedom to peaceably assemble, neither can my privacy right."

The Privacy-Speech Connection

Take the recent push for "chat control" in Britain, where the government wants to monitor private communications to "protect children." Officials claim they're only interested in preventing child abuse, not violating free speech. But as Jim pointed out, that's a false distinction.

"The violation of privacy in itself would be a threat to free speech," he argued. "The violation of my privacy in itself would be a threat to my freedom of speech."

He emphasized that "my freedom to privately communicate with you is part of my freedom of speech and the privacy of my communication with you is part of that freedom." When government agents can monitor private communications, they've already compromised free speech by making genuine private communication impossible.

His analysis reveals how totalitarian systems develop: "You either combine it with the hate speech laws that Britain has... then you either combine it with the hate speech laws that Britain has. Right. There's that Irish guy who got arrested the other day." The building blocks come together – surveillance capability plus hate speech prosecutions equals thought control.

Economic Regulation as Censorship

Here's where the analysis gets particularly sharp: "You cannot separate property rights and civil rights. You cannot separate economic freedoms from personal freedoms." This insight demolishes the artificial distinction between economic and civil liberties that has plagued constitutional interpretation for decades.

As he explained, "When the FDA is pressuring YouTube, that is censorship." The government doesn't need to pass speech laws when it can use economic regulatory power to achieve the same result. "Each and every economic regulation provides the foothold for them to violate free speech."

This is precisely what happened when the FDA pressured YouTube to remove neurologist Jonathan Howard's channel for criticizing government health policy. No speech law was violated. No direct censorship occurred. Instead, regulatory agencies used the threat of enforcement action to achieve political compliance.

The Antitrust Weapon

The analysis of antitrust laws reveals their true nature as arbitrary weapons rather than coherent legal principles. The entire framework is nonsensical: charge more than competitors and you're exploiting monopoly power; charge less and you're engaging in predatory pricing; charge the same and you're obviously colluding.

As he put it, "No matter what you charge, you violated the antitrust laws." This isn't law – it's a weapon.

The real damage happens behind closed doors. When tech executives get called to government meetings, they know their lawyers will advise compliance with whatever the government "suggests" because the alternative is potential criminal prosecution and corporate destruction.

"The mere existence of antitrust laws allows the government the ability to threaten, extort, blackmail private companies into engaging in the kind of political speech that they find acceptable," Jim warned. We never see the private meetings where censorship is negotiated. We never hear the conversations where corporate executives decide it's safer to comply than resist.

Property Rights and Free Speech

Further insight cuts to the foundation: "If the government owns all the radio stations, we have effective censorship." Private property provides the material foundation for independent communication.

This principle has played out historically in ways that Mark Pellegrino highlighted in another episode. When Roosevelt created the FCC, he used it to pressure radio stations into supporting the New Deal. Radio stations that criticized government policy found their licenses in jeopardy.

This historical example perfectly illustrates James's point about how government control over communication infrastructure inevitably leads to censorship. Whether through ownership, regulation, or the threat of prosecution, when the government controls the means of communication, it controls the message.

Why the Supreme Court Gets It Wrong

James's critique of the Supreme Court's approach is devastating. The justices "look at the Bill of Rights as a discreet set of a list of specific, discreet, separable, different rights, rights that can be in conflict with each other."

This creates the framework for constitutional destruction: "Your rights can be in conflict with mine. We've gotta have balancing tests between rights. There's this right over here that's in conflict with this right over here."

But as James argued, "The Supreme Court's whole approach to rights is wrong. We have to look at the Bill of Rights as a conceptual unity." Rights don't conflict when properly understood – they support and reinforce each other.

The Building Blocks of Tyranny

James's analysis reveals how seemingly separate government powers combine to create totalitarian control. Economic regulations provide leverage for political compliance. Privacy violations enable thought monitoring. Hate speech laws criminalize dissent.

"This is how you build the building blocks of a totalitarian state," he warned. Each regulatory power seems reasonable in isolation. Each limitation appears modest and targeted. But together, they create the apparatus for comprehensive control.

"The game's over when there's real censorship," James observed. "There's no peaceful means of changing things" when the government controls communication. Representative government becomes meaningless when people aren't free to speak, organize, and challenge authority.

The Solution: Constitutional Integration

James's prescription is clear: we need courts that understand rights as flowing from human nature rather than government grants. "Rights are rights," he explained, just as "gravity existed before Isaac Newton." They don't change at borders. They don't disappear when governments refuse to recognize them.

This means recognizing that economic freedom and personal freedom are the same freedom. It means understanding that property rights and speech rights protect the same underlying human capacity to survive and flourish through reason.

And it means dismantling the regulatory apparatus that makes political control possible. As James argued, this requires "the complete abolition of antitrust laws, the abolition of the Federal Trade Commission, the abolition of the antitrust division of the Justice Department."

Rights Are Rights

James's fundamental insight bears repeating: you are "a creature that can only thrive in a social context of freedom. That is my nature." When the government violates property rights, it destroys your capacity to act on your judgment. When it violates speech rights, it attacks your ability to think and communicate. When it violates privacy rights, it makes genuine human relationships impossible.

These aren't separate violations. They're different aspects of the same violation: the destruction of your fundamental right to exist as a rational, choosing human being.

Until courts understand that freedom is indivisible, every economic regulation will remain a threat to every civil liberty. Every expansion of government power will erode every constitutional protection. And every compromise with individual rights will move us closer to the totalitarian control that becomes possible when rights are no longer understood as an inviolable unity.