How different the news of recent weeks would be if more people understood their rights and responsibilities.
Some say people who care about rights are trying to downplay responsibilities. For anyone who actually understands what rights are, nothing could be further from the truth.
A right is anything you can do without crossing the equal and identical rights of others. If it violates someone or their property, or obligates others to provide you with something at their expense, it isn't a right. However, no one has the right to not be offended. If you are only offended, you haven't been violated.
No one has the right to violate other people. This is what responsibility is: to avoid violating rights or preventing people from exercising their liberty.
Rights can be expressed better by pointing out what you don't have a right to do. You do not have the right to use violence against people who are not being violent nor harming private property. You do not have the right to take or damage property which belongs to someone else. Nothing can change this reality or create the right to do those things.
Look at recent news in this light.
You do not have the right to coerce someone into sexual acts in exchange for a job, no matter your position.
You do not have the right to make up laws which authorize you to take money or property by calling it a "tax"-- not even if you promise to use it for good.
You do not have the right to vandalize cars, houses, or businesses.
You do not have the right to shoot people who aren't violating others.
You do not have the right to send people or devices around the world to break stuff and kill people-- not even if you call it "spreading democracy" or "peacekeeping".
You do not have the right to vote to limit or eliminate anyone's liberty in any way, even if it's on the ballot.
Living within your rights is your most grave responsibility.
You have the right to resist any violation of your rights, or the rights of others, with whatever force it takes to stop the violator. This is why those who make a living violating the rights of others despise rights and pretend rights are inferior to responsibilities-- and they also insist on defining "responsibilities" in a way which protects them from their victims. They deny their greatest responsibility.
