What Are My Rights?

What are my rights? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Our modern understanding of rights and what they mean differ dramatically person to person. The term has been so dramatically altered in the past hundred years that it is nearly unrecognizable from its original definition. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For simplicity, I will only evaluate rights in their context here in the United States.

When the term “inalienable rights” was created, it was understood that there are a variety of rights humans should have, but some of them hold a significantly higher value than the rest. These rights, given by God, cannot be taken away by any government power.  Hence, the Bill of Rights was created.

Over hundreds of years, those rights have expanded through court rulings, legislation, etc. Much good has came from these decisions, but now we are left with a dilemma. How many rights does a person have?

The list of rights we believe to be “inalienable” has grown so long that some could argue it is nearly infinite. And there’s a problem with that. By expanding our definition of rights to cover nearly anything, we lose the value of what creates a right in the first place. It devalues the importance of all the others.

Let’s look briefly at the right to vote. A constant critique of women’s rights advocates is that for hundreds of years women never had a right to vote. In their opinion, women were oppressed and valued as less than men. But here’s the truth. Only property owning men were allowed to vote because they were the only people paying property taxes. Therefore, they should decide what happens with government spending. It all falls back to taxation without representation. It has absolutely nothing to do with the oppression of women. Voting was a privilege, not a right, not even for men. If a man didn’t own property, he didn’t get to vote either.

Now let’s look at the right of marriage. A couple years back, the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage was a constitutional right. LGBT advocates everywhere rejoiced. Do I think we should institutionally prohibit gay marriage? No. But marriage is a privilege, specifically designed to sustain a family. One man, and one woman decide to devote themselves to each other, no matter what. As a result, they raise a stable, supportive family together. When you expand the definition of marriage to include couples who are biologically unable to reproduce, you devalue marriage as a whole.

The expansion of rights comes at a significant cost. And our society has been willing to accept it, to its own peril. Look at the 2020 election. The amount of confusion that took place was the result of expanding voting rights to include not even showing up to the polls. Mail-in voter fraud occurs when voting becomes a right, instead of a privilege.

Divorce rates have exceeded marriage rates for decades. Statistically speaking, you have less than a 50% chance of staying married to your significant other. Why? Because we’ve lost the value of marriage. Anyone can marry anyone, without understanding what makes marriage so valuable. Marriage isn’t a right. It’s a privilege.

Over time, this trend continues to worsen. I fear that if you don’t regain the importance of our rights and responsibilities, we will fall into a chaotic democratic disaster: mob rule. These past couple years, through de-platforming and cancel culture, mob rule has already become a reality. And if we don’t get a grip, our culture  will tear itself apart from the inside out.