Rights and Responsibilities

I hear a whole lot of folks shout about their rights. They have the right to this and that. They have the right to not doing this or that. “We have our rights!” becomes a rallying cry.

And it sounds great on the surface. How does one argue with the idea of having rights? Obviously is someone disagrees, then they must be trying to take away someone’s right, correct?

Wrong.

Rights are not your free ticket to do whatever you want or to ignore rules and responsibilities. Rights come with responsibilities. All the rallying cries in the world don’t change the fact that rights come with a cost. They are not free and do not give you the ability to do anything you want without criticism.

We see this play out right now with the arguments over masks and vaccinations. Those opposed to these things argue that it is their choice since it is affecting their bodies. There is an element of truth to this of course. But it disregards the fact that their choice has an impact on other people. Why is it that you get to decide what kind of threat someone else must face without their input?

License can be defined as behaving as one wishes without regard of the consequences. That’s not the same thing as a right. It seems that many of the vocal folks who are clamoring about their rights are really more interested in having license to do whatever they want without regard to the consequences to themselves or others.