Contemporary politicians and journalists often attempt to distinguish between "property rights" and "human rights," with the implication that the latter rank higher than the former, since human beings are more important than property. From a liberal perspective, this distinction is entirely bogus. First, every property right is clearly a human right—specifically, the right of a human being to apply an item of his or her property to personal purposes. Furthermore, careful analysis (to be provided as we proceed) shows that all human rights can be understood as property rights. If human individuals are to enjoy freedom in any significant sense, then they must be able to realize their values in reality and to keep and use those values; that is, they must have the right to property. Without such physical expression, the notion of "freedom" is reduced to a floating abstraction, disconnected from reality. Some special cases are noted here:

One's self, including one's body and one's mind, are included among one's property (cf. p. 4.5:13). In a free society men and women may use their minds and their bodies as they choose, so long as they respect the rights of others.
Ideas, as embodied in books, inventions, software disks, and other physical forms, are among the possible ends of human action. Consequently, they also are items of property, and human/property rights to them can be protected in a free society through copyrights and patents (to be discussed later).