Fish

Sunday, November 28, 2010

What is an Individual Right

The new word with the left is individual rights but I fear that the left really doesn't understand what individual rights really are.   They confuse it with individualism which is not the same thing because individualism is the natural product of people choosing their own path and be who they want.   Most people do this naturally so there is nothing special about it but what doesn't exist is individual liberty.  This is a much different concept than just individualism itself because individual liberty is simply the right of a person to reject any demand another person makes of their own behavior.   

In order to understand what this is we must think of the kind of liberty nations have.   Each nation, when dealing with another nation, has a collective right (because they are acting as a whole with respect to other nations) to reject any demands any nation may make on it.   This is the only place were collective rights exist since the entire society is acting as a whole unit to reject what another society wants them to do.   

An individual right works almost the same way accept that it applies to a much narrower unit in society that is known as the individual.  In the same way nations have a right to reject the demands of other nations individuals within society have the right to reject any demands other individuals may make on them within the society that they live.   In this state each person is sovereign over there own destiny just as nations are sovereign over there own destiny and each person is free to do whatever they want.   

The only real limitation is when they make a demand on someone else that is rejected by that person.  In this view, individuals are actually quite limited in their behavior since every interaction requires the voluntary cooperation of the other person.  They have the same right to reject your demands just as you have the same right to reject theirs.   

Its when one person loses the right to reject the demands of others that we lose our individual liberty and freedom.      

0 comments:

Post a Comment