Rights

Rights
Over the past little while, we have been hearing a lot about rights: the right to live somewhere, the right to a democracy, the right to clean water, the right to do what you want with your own body, women’s rights, men’s rights, children’s rights. The list goes on.

So I thought I would devote some time to this subject. I enjoy a number of these rights; I get to choose my own government, and occasionally the form of it. I get to drink clean water, eat clean food. I’m reasonably sure, without checking, that I enjoy all of the rights outlined by the United Nations.

What, however, gives me these rights? Well, the UN would argue that I obtain these rights merely by being born. But what gave me the right to be born? Honestly, I am not sure that there is an answer to this particular question, but born I was, and here I am now, exercising another of my rights, that of free speech. Now this one I think is probably one of the most misunderstood and widely abused rights that we have.

It’s an interesting one, the right to free speech. It is largely cited by those protesting something, those who are unhappy with the status quo or the injustices they perceive that the current rules or laws or system have against them. What is notable about such people is that they often have no allowance for others to enact their same right to free speech if it is opposing the former thought.

And this gets to the heart of what it is that I wish to speak of this evening. The primary problem with rights is that they assume you are given something without needing to give anything back. But the problem with that theory is that all things must come from somewhere. If I have a right to speak, it implies that you must be silent; if I have a right to clean water, it means that someone must clean it for me; if I have a right to an internet connection (it’s a thing, check it out here), then someone must provide it for me.
What I mean to say by all this is that rights are not ours without cost. While the UN may say I have a right to this or that and the founding document of the country I live in may say I have rights to other things, and that these rights are free for me, they ultimately must cost someone something at some point. Now, with this in mind, I think you can take the position that to give a right to one person you must take a right from someone else, in one form or another.

I realise that this will be an unpopular thought for some, but what I am trying to do here is not to strip rights or belittle them, but merely to get the thought process moving. To think about what we take for granted, to question not necessarily the system, laws or rules, but what we demand from them.

Think about what it costs to enact the rights for some trumpet to sound as loud as it pleases and in doing so show great disregard for every other trumpet that may wish to use that same right. For example, I have a right to clean water, but if I open a fire hydrant and drain the mains supply, others may take offence at their sudden inability to take a shower. All I am doing, however, for the purpose of the argument, is exercising my right to clean water.

Who is in the right in this case? Have I denied others their right by claiming my own? Can you allow me my rights at the expense of yours? How far would you go to protect my rights? At what point do you start to claim your rights over mine? What can be done and whose right is more right?

That’s what it comes down to in the end. When the chips are down, when what I want, and am guaranteed, impinges on what you want, where are you going to side?