We use the word “rights” a lot but we no longer think about what it means. We treat rights like the sun that comes up every morning and is just there. But rights aren’t just there and, unlike the sun, they haven’t existed long before the human civilization. They are a concept invented historically very recently by a specific culture for this culture’s internal, situational uses.
For “rights” to exist, somebody has to a) grant them and b) guarantee them. In the deeply Christian worldview that gave us the idea of universal human rights, God is the entity that grants rights. Once we’ve accepted that God created us in his likeness and endowed us with rights simply because we are human, somebody will have to actually provide these rights and defend them. The US was created specifically for the purpose of guaranteeing these God-given rights.
What happens, though, when we take God out of the equation? What happens when we leave behind the idea that rights are given by God to whom we owe many onerous duties in return?
What happens is that we begin to invent rights. Interest groups battle each other to make the rights that each group invents at a rapid clip reign supreme.
Philosopher John Gray, the author of The New Leviathans, says that our reliance on a poorly understood concept of rights is creating unsolvable problems. Does the right of a man to be called Susan trump my right not to call him that? Does the right of a fetus to come into existence as a person trump the right of a woman to control her own body? Does the right of a female convict not to be raped by a male prisoner who claims he’s a woman trump the right of a female-looking convict not to be raped by male prisoners? Does the right to choose where you live trump the right of other people to a meaningful concept of citizenship? Does the right to education or healthcare automatically negate other people’s right not to pay for your education and healthcare?
Every individual has an answer to these questions based on their own understanding of what matters. But there’s no way to come up with an answer that will be acceptable to everybody. As a result, we have doomed ourselves to an endless struggle to cram our understanding of rights down other people’s gullets.
The whole idea of rights that can mushroom into infinity is flawed. Rights cannot be the most important thing that defines our life in society, says John Gray. In the West, we are so trapped by this concept of rights that we are dismantling everything that works in our civilization and dooming ourselves to impoverishment and insignificance.
Clarissa's Blog 
Interesting topic… I feel you mix too many things together, and not just because someone else is mixing all “rights” together.
Some “rights” that may be called divine are also pretty vague and can be defined broadly. Like the right to “pursuit of happiness”.
Some other “rights” are not divine at all, but just a result of people agreeing on something, in the context of some particular period, development of the society, etc. Once upon a time people have decided that collective defense / offense (aka military) is worth being paid for by taxpayers money. Then law-enforcement. Then k-12 education. Then some public infrastructure, like highways… There is nothing fundamentally different about the healthcare, for example, people can just decide that it is worth no less than law-enforcement.
I really encourage everyone to imagine what would happen if law enforcement was treated as healthcare is treated in the US. No law-enforcement insurance? The police will come save you in case of emergency and then will bill you and if you will not pay up, collecting agencies will be after you… Run out of insurance in the middle of a police investigation of a crime against you? Some lawyers or expert witnesses out of your insurance network? Some CSI methods not covered by your insurance? Law enforcement insurance depending on you doing high-risk behaviors, like working in a bad part of town? Any deductibles?
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My friend. What you describe already exists. Did you see the posts about the murdering migrants who just can’t be deported no matter how many times they get arrested? Eric Abrams, the very left-wing mayor of NYC, is pleading for the permission to hand over violent felons to ICE. He can’t do this right now. Law enforcement has already been sacrificed to the “right ” of people to cross borders freely.
Leaving aside the immigration question, I live 20 miles away from East St Louis, one of the most dangerous places on the planet. It’s been like that for decades. And the police is not coming.
As for healthcare, what can we possibly decide when we now have over 10% of the population of the country living here illegally, and that number is growing? Who are the deciding”we” when welfare protections are being shredded to bits in front of us? When schools are filled with kids who don’t speak English, somebody is supposed to teach them in some way, and the only person who even mentions the enormously serious language problem in public education is Trump.
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Thanks…
To me these still are two different things:
a) people agree that something is worth of a degree of solidarity that requires redistributing taxpayers’ money, but then it does not work properly…
b) people do not agree in the first place that something is worth this degree of solidarity.
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We could say, “everybody should have healthcare because it’s the right thing to do, it’s the moral thing to do, it’s horrible to watch sick people suffer.” Once we put it this way, we can talk about whether we all agree and whether there’s enough solidarity.
But once we say “it’s a right”, we have moved the discussion into the legal sphere. It’s become institutionalized. Guaranteeing rights can’t possibly be my or your purview. Our agreement becomes unnecessary because rights stem from and are provided by entities that are completely outside of us.
In the US, for example, both abortion and gay marriage were turned over to the legal field precisely because people were overwhelmingly against. They had to be positioned as “rights” and the old Constitution had to be tortured to accommodate these newly invented “rights” because the majority didn’t want them. As a result, it’s at the mercy of a small group of SCOTUS justices and their personal beliefs. We have painted ourselves into this corner because right means might, and might is fickle. “Reproductive rights” have always and only meant “the right to an abortion.” Now the time has come to pay the price of this high-handedness, as it always does.
People keep whining, “now Obergefell is at risk.” But they are the ones who put it at risk because they preferred the easy road of cramming invented “rights” down people’s throats instead of going the hard way of convincing and explaining.
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I wonder why no one is commenting on this post.
The Empire of Rights is the main reason – or else, if not THE main one, the most significant of a number of reasons – that explains why we are in the mess we are in.
Enlightenment universalism going hand in hand with Romantic emotionalism are the main culprits to point the finger at if we want to understand why Western society is undergoing such a rapid and unnecessary decline and, more importantly, if we want to find effective solutions in order to stop such a decline.
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Yes. We need to step away from our fascination with “rights” and start thinking about things differently. Maybe bring the concept of duties and obligations back into use.
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“step away from our fascination with “rights” and start thinking about things differently”
When I was younger you didn’t just talk about rights but also about responsibilities and to a lesser extent privileges. For example the right to vote depends (at least partly) on a person fulfilling their responsibilities of being a good citizen and not committing crimes. Being able to drive a car was a privilege earned by fulfilling normal citizen responsibilities and passing certain tests (physical and mental).
One thing the left has done is consistently attacked the idea of responsibilities, arguing that convicted criminals should be able to vote (no… just no) and turning ‘privilege’ into a dirty word.
When rights are balanced by responsibilities things clear up a bit…
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