A right is the trump card an individual holds against the world — a justified claim so strong that even the government and the majority must honor it, the idea that a person is owed certain things simply as a person. It is among the most powerful and the most contested moves in all of politics, splitting into deep arguments over where rights come from (nature, law, or social agreement) and which claims rise to that status.
To say you have a right to speak is to say something startling: the public may not silence you even when silencing you would be useful and popular. A right is a kind of trump card. It defeats the ordinary math of politics, the counting of heads and weighing of benefits. The majority may want one thing, the government may find it convenient, and still the right stands in the way and says no. That is its strange power. It draws a line around a single person and tells the whole collective, however good its reasons, that it may not cross. Almost every cause in the modern world is now pressed as a right. Yet no one agrees on where rights come from, or on which claims deserve the name. The card is played everywhere, and its source is still unknown.