What if we are wrong about rights?

January 16, 2021. To my mind, the primary source of division in the United States today is the (growing) disagreement over the government's role in maintaining or creating 'rights.' The government can provide negative rights (guarantees of what the government won't take from you, like freedom of speech, freedom of religion) and positive rights (guarantees as to what the government will give or provide you, e.g., public education, housing, healthcare, cell phones, food stamps, a job).

In 2017, SOCIETY published one of my last articles, "What if we are wrong about rights?" I did not realize when I wrote the article just how important this discussion would be. And the article posed the basic question: What ARE our rights as Americans?

What if we are wrong about rights SOCIET.

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The quick response might be to look at the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, only these enumerate a relatively short list of rights, however important, and only of negative rights. Much of the argument from the Left today has been the desire to eliminate some of these constitutionally prescribed negative rights. And at the same time, the Left continues to increase its list of demands for more positive rights. This includes the most recent right, the 'right' to a free college education. This claim was preceded by a number of other positive rights claims, for college loan forgiveness, for free healthcare insurance (and not just for citizens), free cell phones, and more.

The debate over the entire portfolio of rights is likely to continue and even increase in volume under the Biden administration. To state my preferences, I feel that the government has gone way too far in creating new and even unreasonable (or economically infeasible) positive rights, while ignoring their responsibility to enforce negative rights, e.g., to protect free speech. Worse, I fear for the progressive left's campaigns to eliminate some negative rights.

I will limit the review here to a simple, pointed question about the freedom of speech we have long enjoyed and continue to need protected, with a simple question: Can freedom of speech endure hate speech legislation? To wit, can the government or certain self-appointed groups, designate certain words, phrases, memes, emojis or symbols as illegal, that one can not speak or write or publish these 'hate words' without, at a minimum, being 'cancelled' or 'doxed,' or worse, being jailed or fined?

Implicit in the concept of freedom of speech is the knowledge that some speech will be offensive to some people. The original idea was to allow citizens to speak out against government policies or actions, including through PEACEFUL protests, and it is often translated into the academic concept of 'academic freedom,' yet at it's roots, it is the guarantee by the government that, outside a few extreme examples, e.g., yelling 'fire' in crowded theater when there is no fire, as offensive as my words might be to any particular person, group, or organization, I have an almost absolute right to say those words.

In a related matter, per Jordan Peterson's initial assertion in Canada, the government should not be allowed to force me to use certain words to address a person who chooses what can only be called non-traditional methods of addressing a person, such as demanding to addressed as 'zhe' rather than as 'he' or 'she.' Peterson did not object to using those terms; rather, he objected to a government saying that you must use the words prescribed by the person being addressed, or be subject to a fine or even prison.

These will be interesting times, as the 'purge' begins, much in conflict with David Landes' guidelines for a successful, prosperous, wealth-creating society. Landes noted that while majority can rule, the majority can not attempt to destroy the minority, to seek retribution. We shall see.