We do have rights, and most of us thank God for this new insistence on human rights and human dignity, but someone must also protect the rights of the whole, the common good.
Richard Rohr
#1: Rights
There’s a lot of talk about rights: gay rights, women’s rights, trans rights, indigenous rights, abortion rights, animal rights, children’s rights, seniors’ rights, Palestinian rights. On and on and on.
Rights come attached to nouns: The right to free speech. The right to education. The right to medical treatment. The right to equal pay for work of equal value. The right to privacy. The right to self-determination. The right to life, liberty and the security of person. Then there are rights with verbs: The right to work. The right to vote. The right to seek legal counsel. The right to remain silent. The right to own property. The right to marry and found a family.
Rights are intrinsically associated with freedom: Freedom of information. Freedom of assembly. Freedom of religion. Freedom of political association. Freedom of movement. Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression.
Rights and freedoms are enshrined in national bills and charters, and ultimately in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217A) “as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations”, the UCHR consists of 30 articles, the last of which is notably:
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
In addition to legally recognized human rights, new rights are constantly emerging when a particular minority sees itself as the victim of persecution, discrimination, exclusion, and unfair treatment at the hands of government, another group or agency, or society in general. Although some new rights are legitimate, others are somewhat obscure—the right to choose, the right to decide, the right to say no—while others are completely absurd; take Israel’s right to exist. How about the right to sing the blues?
With so much attention given deservedly to human rights, people have become as keenly aware of having rights as they are adamant about making those who ignore or violate their rights pay compensation. What we rarely hear in all the talk about human rights, however, is any mention of responsibility, the second of my Three R’s. Regardless of their validity and inalienability, rights come not only with privileges and entitlement, but also with significant responsibility.
#2: Responsibility
The right to free speech
Inarguably, the most fundamental right in any functioning democracy is the right to free speech, a right which has increasingly come under draconian attack since October 7, 2023. According to Article 19 of UCHR,
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Although everyone must be free to say whatever they think or believe in any manner, at any time and any place, everyone must also be responsible for the consequences of their speech, particularly when they spew hatred, incite violence, libel, slander and defame, in which case people should first turn on their brains before they shoot off their mouths.
Lately, Western governments have been busy introducing various forms of legislation to restrict free speech in the name of combatting hate speech, aka antisemitic hate speech. There is a huge difference, however, between authentic hate speech, such as the kind of racist tropes uttered by extremist political figures like Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir, and what is deemed hate speech because it criticizes Israel’s genocide and Western complicity or supports the Palestinian cause. If A doesn’t like what B says publicly, A should put forward a better argument, not shut B down, which is a clear violation of the right to free speech.
The second responsibility that comes with the right to free speech is to tell the truth to the best of one’s knowledge, and to stick to the facts at hand. The right to free speech doesn’t license anyone to lie, fabricate, confabulate, distort, disregard, mislead or misrepresent the facts. It’s not only politicians and public figures who are guilty of spreading lies and propaganda, but as human rights lawyer, Craig Mokhiber exposes in his August 24, 2024 article, Western Media Can Be Held Legally Accountable for Its Role in the Gaza Genocide, corporate media is egregiously complicit in “knowingly disseminating Israeli disinformation and propaganda, justifying war crimes and crimes against humanity, dehumanizing Palestinians, and blacking out information on the genocide in the West.” When speech is weaponized, Mokhiber argues, it can destroy not only the rights of others, but also the right to life itself. When the UDHR was created, it was “made clear that freedom of expression does not grant media corporations or anyone else a right ‘to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the other rights and freedoms’.”
The greatest threat to free speech comes not from protestors on the street, the speaker on the soapbox, the writer of a letter-to-the-editor, independent journalists, Tik-Tok videos, social media, you or me, but from those institutions and agencies that were created to guarantee democratic rights and freedoms, yet which act irresponsibly, arbitrarily, and illegally.
The right to defend against attack
Indisputably, everyone be they state or person has the right to defend themselves from attack. That’s why states have armies, and individuals have a gun or alarm systems at home, carry pepper spray in their handbag, learn self-defence. But the responsible state or individual does not use disproportionate force—if someone hits you, you don’t break their arms and legs and cut their throats—nor do responsible, law-abiding states and individuals resort to collective punishment or carry out strike unprovoked, pre-emptive strikes. In a civilized society, the most responsible defence from attack is to maintain good relations with neighbours and to settle differences before they escalate into violence. The right to defend also comes with the moral responsibility to protect the weak and disadvantaged from attack.
Other rights and responsibilities
In western countries, the right to own property is highly valued because of its association with social standing. Responsible owners maintain their property, not only for the sake of their own safety and comfort, but for the general good of the neighbourhood. In the case of landlords, their responsibility is to provide their tenants with safe, decent, comfortable and affordable accommodation. This notion seems, however, to be outdated in a financialized housing market dominated by profit-driven corporate landlords and real estate developers.
No one should be denied an education. Education comes with the responsibility to put your skills and knowledge to good use not only to make a decent living for yourself, but also to benefit the organization you work in and the community you live in.
Everyone should have the right to set up a business, a right that includes the responsibility to provide a service or product of consistent quality. It does not include the right to rip off customers, exploit workers or contaminate the environment so that you can make as much money as possible.
Having a family, a right that is essential to human happiness, is one of the most challenging and rewarding responsibilities a human being can take on. It means taking care of your spouse, children, your elderly parents. It does not mean loading your responsibilities onto the school system or the government or blaming them when things go wrong.
The other side of the right to medical care is the personal responsibility to value your health and well-being. It is irresponsible to expect a doctor to proscribe a magic cure for your every ailment, then blame her when your heart condition worsens because you haven’t changed your eating habits, stopped smoking or bothered to get physical exercise.
#3: Respect
To quote Richard Rohr again,
The deepest questions are not those of rights and power, or whether or not we’re getting everything that society owes us. The deepest questions are those of how love can be expanded and increased.
Before love can be expanded, there must be respect. As in the Golden Rule, we need, first of all, to respect the rights of others as we would have them respect ours. We need to put ourselves in others’ shoes and to recognize that, as human beings regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity or any other superficial factor, we all have the same basic needs, the same fundamental desires, the same inalienable right to happiness, life, freedom, self-expression and self-realization. Full stop.
Legitimate human rights are universal. Our rights are inclusive of our family, our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues, our fellow citizens, every fellow man, woman, and living being. There are no exceptions, no exclusions, and no exemptions.
We are living in a time in which people are demanding their rights. But at the same time, we must be mindful of our responsibilities and we must show respect. Because nobody can have one without the other two. And without all three together—rights, responsibility, respect—love cannot grow and flourish.
Diane – I was with you right up to the last three paragraphs, where the message got lost. “We” are not where the onus for responsibility and respect for rights lies. Instead it rests with those in power – political, economic, cultural – in part in whom we trust, e.g., elected officials, to assure rights for all, respect for all. When they abrogate their responsibility – for example, in tax cuts for the rich, making life tougher for those not well off; obscene levels of spending on the military that contributes to the bankruptcy of the nation; blind, bought off ideological support for a genocidal entity, to name just a few – when they do all this and more, despite our protestations, despite our feeble attempts to turn them out of office, it is not “we” who are to blame.
To be very pointed, who’s responsible for the egregious violations of human rights and dignity at the present time that stand among the worst of them all since the adoption of the UDHR in 1948? The United States and Israel. I’m not going accept any responsibility for that other than to do what I can, in addition to living my own life, to protest them, to hold them accountable. And as is the nature of the bestiality practiced by those two, they will prevail. Though that’s not an excuse to retreat from the battle against them.
A closing note – this is all the legacy of Zionism, exposed by Yaweh Sinwar on Oct. 7, 2023, that all that buttresses human dignity, among them rights, responsibilities, respect, mean nothing when an all consuming, aggrandizing, life-antithetical, supremacist dogma is allowed and abetted to run wild over humanity.
This notion that we “have” rights troubles me.
If I am alone in a forest, alone on a desert island, or anywhere at all, what innate rights do I “have” other than whatever rights any other form of life has?
We exist and survive by our means, individually or collectively. I have no rights other than what the laws of the universe permit and what my fellow man is willing to afford me.
It seems we are looking into a deep philosophical well, searching for a droplet of truth. But rights do not drop out of nature, nor do they abide by the laws of physics. They have no mass. They exist in the space between our minds and our wills, in that arena where we negotiate how we treat one another. When alone, we are neither restricted nor entitled; we simply are. Once others appear on the island, interaction begins and the world becomes complicated. We want recognition. After all, it was our island, or was it? That does not make rights false or illusory, only contingent upon other massless things, such as social and moral frameworks.
It seems to me that this thing we call rights is not something I merely think about. I feel it and know it innately. Be it an illusion or a delusion, rights are another form of that other construct we endlessly grapple with: love. Like love, they have no mass and no measurable presence, yet they exert real force upon us. If I have love for my fellow men, I will respect them, treat them with dignity, and see them as my equals, neither lesser nor greater, but as part of the whole. I am but one human in a mass of humanity. If I love, I will be loved.