To try to be right has two meaning:
One to insist that right is what one does or believe, so it is post fact justification.
Second is to search for what is right and trying to adhere to it.
The first way is not commendable but very common, comfortable and used by the multitude, The second is a narrow and rocky and not many bother to go there.
Really, now. From where did America's Framers get those "self-evident truths" they wrote into our Founding documents?
If there are no self-evident truths, then human beings have no "God-given rights" that must be protected.