I GOTTA RIGHT
Posted by anthonynorth on March 8, 2007
We’ve all got rights. And very good, too. We have the right to life, to liberty, to freedom of speech, of association, of religion. We also have the right to own property …
Property? Hold on. Some say property is theft. And it’s relevant today, because in a rights-based, super-liberal, goody-goody society, everyone should be equal. So if someone owns more property than another, isn’t that theft against the other?
Of course, I don’t believe that for one minute. But if we’re going to have a rights-based, super-liberal, goody-goody society, let’s be consistent, rather than hypocritical. And how far should those rights go? How about everyone having the right to be Prime Minister? Now that would be fun, wouldn’t it?
For some, though, not much is fun. Take the rights of the disabled, and the difficulty they have getting around. The rights-based, super-liberal, goody-goody society do, of course, say every disabled person should be able to travel as easily as the able-bodied. But how practical is such a proposal?
Take, for instance, a small, rural bus, subsidised by the local council, and barely making a profit. If such a bus had to be disabled-friendly, the bus service would most likely go under, and yes, that would mean the disabled had the same rights as the rest. Basically, none of them would be travelling at all. But maybe, in understanding this, we can understand what the rights-based, super-liberal, goody-goody society really is.
As in so many situations like the above, the imposition of rights for a minority destroys the convenience of the majority. Now, whilst I am all for minority rights, such rights must always be weighed against what damage they would do to a majority. But in a rights-based, super-liberal, goody-goody society, a majority is not even identified as existing. Hence, we are all minorities and stuff the rest.
Rather than being rights-based, super-liberal or goodygoody, such a society is actually a form of anarchy. And this is so because the rights-infatuated, super-liberal, do-gooder doesn’t actually have the faintest clue how society works. Usually brought up in a comfortable middleclass home by doting parents who pamper their every whim, they grow up with a fairy-tale view of society, in which good always conquers over bad. But in reality it don’t work like that.
Life is a bitch, with the law and how people live being two completely different things. The day middleclass liberals realise this, and accept they live in an unreality, they will stop messing society about and let real people try to sort out our problems properly.
(c) Anthony North, March 2004
