Have you noticed lately that the phrase "my right to..." has appeared with increasing frequency in our conversation, and that some of the "rights" people claim aren't really rights at all? I did a brief web search on the topic and found that people are claiming to have some rather interesting, sometimes ridiculous, and often conflicting "rights". Read through this list:
The right to free speech... The right to remain silent... The right to consult with an attorney... The right to stop answering questions at any time... The right to be heard... The right to life... The right to die with dignity... The right to health care... The right of health workers to refuse to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs... The right to abortion on demand... The fundamental right of children to be loved, guided, educated and nurtured equally by both fit and willing parents... Parental rights... A right to child-free spaces... The right to “have a kid”...
The right to vote... The right to say no... The right to be called a nutritionist... Fat people have rights... The right to freedom of worship... The constitutionally-guaranteed right to express beliefs in the workplace... The right to work... The right to a religion-free workplace... The right to up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave on the birth or adoption of a child, to care for seriously ill family members or to recover from your own illness... The right of employers to refuse paid vacation or sick leave to employees... The right to mash-up, remix, annotate, augment, and otherwise modify Web content for my purposes in my browser using any tool I choose...
Can anyone in their right mind truly believe that all of these are fundamental rights... rights that no one should be denied? And can anyone explain why the number of "rights" people claim seem to far outnumber the number of "responsibilities" they recognize (at least on the web)? Isn't it time to at least try to achieve some balance between the rights we claim and the responsibilities we take on?
I like what John Paul II had to say on the topic:
Every believer knows that liberty is a gift which must be properly understood, if it is not to be a stumbling block to human dignity. To think of liberty as moral permissiveness or the ability to infringe the law, is to twist its true nature. Liberty, in fact, consists in the ability of the human being to acknowledge he is responsible.
What do you think? Have we achieved the proper balance between our rights and our responsibilities?
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I can add one to your list, Sue. Some years ago there was a case brought by residents under the Heathrow Airport flight path, concerning the noise of night flights. The case went to the European Court of Human Rights, who decided that people did have a fundamental right to "a good night's sleep". Yeah...
ReplyDeleteWouldn't the world be a better place if the only rights people fought for were other people's, and the only responsibilities we claimed were our own.
I think that rights predicate responsibility. For example, having the right to vote is closely linked to the responsibility to vote. In a sense you cannot have a right unless there is a responsibility that goes along with it.
ReplyDeleteI think people fight for their rights because there are so many other people who don't care about people's rights - except their own.
ReplyDeleteRemember when women couldn't join the military or go to certain colleges? At one time we didn't even have the right to vote. If we didn't have the right to freedom of worship, there would be persecution as there is in middle eastern countries.
I agree it can get ridiculous, but I'd rather have too many rights than too few.