Honest People Have Rights Too: Article by L. Ron Hubbard

Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free – he is his own trap. When his own deeds cannot be disclosed, then he is a prisoner; he must withhold himself from his fellows and he is a slave to his own conscience. Freedom must be deserved before any freedom is possible.

To protect dishonest people is to condemn them to their own hells. By making “individual rights” a synonym for “protect the criminal” one helps bring about a slave state for all; for where “individual liberty” is abused, an impatience with it arises which at length sweeps us all away. The targets of all disciplinary laws are the few who err. Such laws, unfortunately, also injure and restrict those who do not err. If all were honest, there would be no disciplinary threats.

There is only one way out for a dishonest person – facing up to his own responsibilities in the society and putting himself back into communication with his fellow man, his family, the world at large. By seeking to invoke his “individual rights” to protect himself from an examination of his deeds, he reduces, just that much, the future of individual liberty – for he himself is not free. Yet he infects others who are honest by using their right to freedom to protect himself.