where do "rights" come from? Are they natural or artificial? Think of a classic bent-including the U.S Founding Fathers-took "natural rights" as a basis for human rights. Nature expresses God's intentions, which are not hard to discern. You know instantly and instinctively that it is wrong to crash a jetliner into a building. Life and liberty are natural; therefore, government may deprive people of these basic rights only for good cause. Human rights can generally be formulated in the negative as "freedom from," namely, from various forms of tyranny, the great concern of Thomas jefferson.