Commentary The concept of human rights, once it attaches to material benefits, has a profoundly damaging effect on the human personality. It persuades many people that they are being denied that to which they are entitled by mere virtue of being alive; it also limits or stunts the moral imagination. If you receive what you think is your due, you are ungrateful because, after all, it is only your due and you were entitled to it; if you do not receive it, you are resentful because you are cheated of what is your due. Ingratitude is perhaps less harmful than resentment, but it is nonetheless a miserable stance towards the world. Once some material benefit is declared to be a right, people cease to think why it might be desirable for other reasons, or of how best to supply it other than by government decree. Moreover, the declaration of a …