Member-only story
We Have No Rights
Just privileges, and the need to fight to keep them.
Thomas Paine wrote at great length about the Rights of Man in 1791. He was not the first. A short list of ‘inalienable rights’ is a key element of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. The Magan Carta of 1215 established certain ‘rights’ of freeborn Englishmen. The 1689 Bill of Rights expanded on these. In the 20th Century we had a plethora of declarations, committees and courts, all devoted to establishing, preserving and defending ‘human rights’.
All, of course, complete fiction! Just ask any person of colour in the US, any citizen of Russia, China or North Korea, or any woman you meet!
What some of us have, in some countries, at different times and in different circumstances, are varying sets of privileges. Privileges written in the blood, sweat and tears of those who fought for and won them, and others who, when necessary, defended them!
Make no mistake, these privileges can be taken from us at any time, and there are people trying to do just that as we speak!
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. (Frank Herbert, in Children of Dune (1976), misattributed to Louis…
