Rights or choices? It might be time to re-frame the debate

By David McElroy · June 13, 2011

When I gave up the mainstream left/right way of looking at politics, I started seeing the world in terms of natural rights instead. I’d always been influenced by the natural law/natural rights school of thought, but that became my lens for pretty much everything. I’m starting to wonder, though, whether we should re-frame issues in terms of choices rather than rights.

It’s not that I’ve suddenly stopped believing that every human being has rights. In fact, I firmly believe in my understanding of what rights are and where they come from. But that’s the problem. When we talk about rights, we’re all coming at it from radically different directions. We believe that different things are rights and we also have different explanations for where rights come from. It makes for interesting philosophical debate, but it’s pretty useless insofar as changing the world.

Doug Douma is a libertarian friend of mine who recently wrote an article asserting that the origin of rights is the Bible — the Christian New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament, which the Jews call the Tanakh. Even though I’m both a libertarian and a Christian, too, I didn’t agree with his conclusion, so even though we’re both Christians who believe in looking to scripture theologically, even we don’t agree on that. I offer this as one tiny example of how difficult it is to decide on where rights come from and what they are. If Doug and I don’t agree — and we both take scripture seriously — how can we expect people coming from entirely different philosophical points of view to have any chance of agreeing with us or each other?

Even speaking of something as broadly as “rights” means different things to different people. In libertarian and most conservative circles, it’s going to generally mean something based in some form of natural rights. For those on the modern left, it’s going to take the form of one humanist argument or another — and the resulting human rights are generally going to look very different. And let’s not even get started on the question of which rights are negative and which are positive. (Hint: The negative ones are the “good ones,” as far as I’m concerned.)

I’m not trying to give you a survey of all the different kinds of ideas about rights and where they come from. I’m only trying to quickly make it clear that almost nobody agrees. Even when people use the same words, they frequently mean very different things by those words. It’s easy to get people to agree that we all have “unalienable rights” — as the U.S. Declaration of Independence puts it — but trying to get people to agree on a definition of those rights and the source of the rights creates nothing but a logjam of people who are all convinced that they’re right.

We’re not going to change the world by trying to talk people into supporting our idea of rights. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the people who will read this article will have a dozen different views of the subject, even the ones who generally come from a pro-individual liberty position. So why do we keep trying this? Isn’t there a better approach?

I’m starting to think we would be better to talk about allowing everyone to have a personal choice about which system he or she wants to live under. As long as we’re talking about rights, the discussion essentially seems to be an argument over which system everyone has to use. Why not agree that there can a number of different systems, even if we don’t agree with many of them?

Can we simply agree that we’re not going to agree about where rights come from? Can we agree to disagree about which things are rights and which things are not? And can we agree to simply allow people to have a choice about whether they want to live under your notion of rights or not?

If we frame the argument as a matter of individual choice, we don’t have to prove to anyone that we’re right. We also don’t have to convince people to change their minds. We just have to agree that it’s OK for different groups of us to go off in different directions and try our ideas and try to convince “customers” to live under our differing systems. Doesn’t that stand a much better chance of actually bringing about change than trying to get everyone to agree to the same set of rights? Isn’t it worth a try?

Share on Social Networks

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

Related Posts