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Rights? Freedoms? Law? Justice? Voltaire once stated, "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms." To that end, the text below represents my efforts to define the underlying premises of such terms, with a specific focus on the nation wherein I make my home: the United States of America.

Authority: the power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge
Force: violence, specificially the initiation thereof

There are only two sources of authority for government: by delegation of authority derived from individual people, or from nothing other than force.

Force is well established as a source for governmental authority, and its track record is one which few free people are likely to defend as desirable.

Governmental authority derived from individuals cannot exceed the authority of a single individual, no matter the number of individuals that make up a the group of people. This is in harmony with the principles written in the Declaration of Independence.

Governments that claim to draw authority delegated from people yet exercise power in areas that exceed that authority are resting on force alone when functioning in those areas.

No matter the number, no group of people have authority greater than a single individual without resorting to force or the threat of force. Stating otherwise is tantamount to claiming that while a lone robber is exceeding his authority, a robbing gang of two, three, ten, thousands, or millions is somehow not exceeding their authority possessed as a body of individuals.

While the Almighty God YHWH establishes authority of governments, those governments are regularly followed with a physical process. God's prophet Samuel annointed both of Israel's first kings with oil; different versions of the United States of America were formed from law written by elected representatives.

The current version of the United States is the third, following the Declaration and the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution of the United States was created by a convention consisting of elected representatives - representatives that claimed authority to create law based upon the authority delegated to them by the individuals who elected them.

The authority of one individual cannot justly trample on the authority of a second; likewise, neither can a government created upon the authority of individuals.

When a single individual's authority is trespassed upon without consent, a crime has occurred. At that point, and only at that point, has a crime been committed. The authority possessed by the individual and delegated to government is then exercised by government in order to provide justice in response to the crime.

-edited on 2015-03-08 to add two definitions