Group rights are rights held by a group rather than by its members separately, or rights held only by individuals within the specified group; in contrast, individual rights are rights held by individual people regardless of their group membership or lack thereof. Group rights have historically been used both to infringe upon and to facilitate individual rights, and the concept remains controversial. Group rights are not straightforwardly human rights because they are group-differentiated rather than universal to all people just by virtue of being human.

In Western discourse, individual rights are often associated with political and economic freedom, whereas group rights are associated with social control. This is because in the West the establishment of individual rights is associated with equality before the law and protection from the state.^{[citation needed]} Examples of this are the Magna Carta, in which the English King accepted that his will could be bound by the law and certain rights of the King's subjects were explicitly protected.

Ayn Rand ( /ˈaɪn ˈrænd/; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1905 – March 6, 1982) was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism.

Born and educated in Russia, Rand moved to the United States in 1926. She worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood and had a play produced on Broadway in 1935–1936. After two initially unsuccessful early novels, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-known work, the philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward she turned to nonfiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own magazines and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.

Rand advocated reason as the only means of acquiring knowledge and rejected all forms of faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism, and rejected ethical altruism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and opposed all forms of collectivism and statism, instead supporting laissez-faire capitalism, which she believed was the only social system that protected individual rights. She promoted romantic realism in art. She was sharply critical of the philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her besides Aristotle.

Joseph M. "Joe" Arpaio (born June 14, 1932) is the elected Sheriff of Maricopa County in the U.S. state of Arizona. First voted into office in 1992, Arpaio is responsible for law enforcement in Maricopa County. This includes management of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, county jail, courtroom security, prisoner transport, service of warrants, and service of process. Arpaio styles himself as "America's Toughest Sheriff." He is well known for his outspoken stance against illegal immigration. Arpaio has become a flashpoint for controversy surrounding Arizona's SB1070 anti-illegal immigration act. He is also known for his investigation of President Barack Obama's citizenship.

Arpaio was once widely popular among voters in Arizona. His popularity has waned since 2007, notably by independent and Republican voters but still has a 57% positive job rating among Republicans; he has been re-elected five times.

Arpaio was born Joseph M. Arpaio in Springfield, Massachusetts on June 14, 1932, to Italian parents both from Lacedonia, Italy. Arpaio's mother died while giving birth to him, and Arpaio was raised by his father, a grocery store owner. Arpaio completed high school and worked in his father's business until age 18 when he enlisted in the United States Army.

Ray Comfort (born 5 December 1949) is a New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist. Comfort started Living Waters Publications and The Way of the Master in Bellflower, California and has written a number of books.

Comfort was born to a Jewish mother and a father who he described as "a Gentile [who] was open to the things of God". According to Comfort's autobiography, his parents put "Methodist" on his birth certificate because his mother feared the possibility of "another Hitler", but he was given no religious instruction as a child. After finishing high school at 17, he worked in a bank, and began a successful business when he was 20. He became increasingly religious, and at 22 began seven years training at a local church, after which he was ordained as a full-time pastor. He then spent three and a half years pastoring in Christchurch, New Zealand, and 12 years preaching open-air in the city's Speaker's Corner. Beyond this, he has no formal training or theological degree. In his mid-20s, he began receiving invitations to speak internationally. In 1989, he accepted an invitation to join the pastoral staff at the non-denominational Calvary Chapel in Southern California. Ray Comfort nonetheless identifies himself as a Jew.