In these times of COVID plague, political strife, and tribal warfare, there has been ever so much talk about “individual rights” for Americans. We always begin with those the Founding Fathers identified as inalienable, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But these are very general, and we can’t even agree on precisely what they imply.

When we try to get more specific about our rights and their limits, all hell breaks loose. For example, there’s the “right” to bear arms, but does that include assault rifles, and can you bear them in places where intense disagreements are likely to occur — in courtrooms and other government offices, in churches and dormitories, around kitchen tables? There’s the asserted “right” to health care — but should it really be a right if all of us have to pay for someone else’s bad habits? There’s the “right” to pray collectively in school, but what if that idea puts the teeth of atheist first graders on edge? There’s the “right” of reproductive choice (including abortion), but what if Bible Belt Christians in Texas have heartburn about that? See what I mean!

Obsessed with personal freedom, libertarians repeatedly assert we have the right to do stupid stuff like expose ourselves to deadly disease unnecessarily, but what if exercising that right endangers others unnecessarily? Can you believe the amount of heat generated by reasonable requests to wear face masks and get vaccinated? That, they say, threatens an infringement on their “constitutional rights.”

Obviously, figuring out where our rights begin and end is important, but it’s a boggy acre.

In view of that, I hesitate to introduce yet another perplexing dimension to the “rights” debate, an obscure category of rights little understood. No surprise, I am referring obviously to “your damned rights.”

Since I was a small boy, I knew such rights existed. Not only passionate adults but teenagers as well invoked them heatedly and repeatedly in my presence at crucial moments. “Your damned rights!” they’d exclaim. I could derive little specific insight into the nature of these rights back then, but clearly “damned rights” seemed important, commanding the attention of many elders I respected.

But even now in my old age, I realize “damned rights” are not well understood. There are at least two reasons for this. First, the description of them is brief and damnably (I use the word advisedly) ambiguous, and second, insufficient effort has been directed toward analyzing the complexity of their underlying idea (or ideas). I hope with some little effort here I can assist modestly to overcome this vagueness.

To begin, we must consider whether “your damned rights” are inalienable. With that qualifying adjective, our founders implied that some rights must be merely alienable. Where would Jefferson and Madison and Franklin have placed these? And if they fall in the latter category, who gets to alienate them from us — and on what specific occasions? Alas, the Constitution is vague on these points.

Next, are “your damned rights” available to individuals, or can they be invoked only by groups of one kind or another? We have only the possessive pronoun “your” to guide our interpretation, and that pronoun is damnably ambiguous as to number. What precisely then does “your” mean?

Before moving on from the pronoun, we must acknowledge a variant description, “yer damn rights.” Is that significant? It introduces the possibility that social and educational levels may factor into the availability and application of whatever these rights are. Both Democrats and Republicans may wish to consider how this question relates to their respective constituencies (and how individually they can exploit that for personal advantage).

We move on now to a thorny phase of our assessment. What precisely is signified by the ambiguous adjective “damned”?

Does it mean that these rights, whatever they are, have unfortunately fallen under eternal condemnation in some great moral scheme of things? Clearly, that would be highly unfortunate. It would amount to an effectual blacklisting. Clearly that would justify regarding these rights as deserving of alienability.

But is there a mistake in the text here? Does it really not rather mean “your damning rights,” rights thus entitling the possessor to invoke curses on someone or something else? Wouldn’t those be handy on occasion, rights well worth fighting to secure and protect?

Another mistake in the text is also quite possible, one that legal scholars and editors must address. Should it read, “your dam right(s),” referring specifically to decision-making power about water impoundment on our major rivers. Determining just now who those “dam rights” belong to could resolve the impasse in our region between the irrigators and bargers and power producers who love the dams on the lower Snake River, and the environmentalists, the fish protectors, who want to blast those dams out of there.

From the outset I’ve been using the plural in referring to “damned/damning/dam rights,” but I must acknowledge that not infrequently you hear it expressed in the singular, i.e. “damn right.” Legally speaking, the difference is not inconsequential. In the latter instance, a single, narrow based right may have only limited impact. But the plural implies the likelihood of a plethora of significantly related entitlements with broad-based, world changing possibilities. We need to know for sure, for the sake of future generations, which it is.

As you see, the language in relation to this entitlement remains a puzzlement. Doubtless it will be clear to you that I have only scratched the surface here in my attempt to alert the public to this momentous concern. But given the undeniable, crucial importance of this facet of constitutional interpretation, we must bring our best philosophical and legal minds, minds enlightened and subtle, to bear on this defining task.

Where have you gone to, Mike Murphy, when we so desperately need you and others like you just now?

H. Wayne Schow, a native Idahoan, is a professor of English emeritus at Idaho State University. Schow lives in Pocatello.