As the previous installment explained, the language of rights and the language of responsibilities are logically equivalent. Rights are moral claims expressed with an active voice and obligations are moral claims expressed with a passive voice.
In fact, a right is someone else’s obligation and an obligation is someone else’s right. But this does not imply that both languages are equally good, because there is more in language that logical representation. A language expression can be logically adequate while being:
a) Not clear. The expression does not make easy to understand its meaning.
b) Not useful: The expression does not produce useful emotions and actions in humans.
The last installment explained why the language of rights is not clear: it is a convoluted, obscure and manipulative way to speak about obligations.
This final installment will explain why the language of rights is not useful: it produces all kinds of social and personal dysfunctions.
RIGHT MUDDLES RESPONSIBILITY
The passive voice muddles responsibility
As we saw in the first installment of this series of rights, the language of rights is a form of the passive voice of the moral claims (the passive voice of the OUGHT part). Like any passive voice, the language of rights makes easy to muddle responsibility.
If we start with a passive voice of the IS variety (the one that explains how things are, not how they should be), we can see this in the following statement of Cardinal Edward Egan regarding the handling of sex abuse allegations against priests:
«It is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this problem. If, in hindsight, we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry,»
For the sake of brevity, I have removed from this text the explanation of all the dishonest linguistic and semantic tricks that muddle responsibility in this despicable statement.
I will only focus in «mistakes may have been made». Who committed these mistakes? We don’t know. The passive voice allows to express an action while omitting a vital piece of information: who did the action described. It is a dishonest grammar structure that hides responsibility without the listener noticing that the responsibility has been omitted.
In fact, as we saw in a previous installment, passive voice follows the structure PATIENT be ACTION [by AGENT], where «by AGENT» can be and is often omitted. Cardinal Egan could have said: «Mistakes we made by us» but he preferred to omit this information. This kind of manipulation is impossible with an active voice: «We made mistakes», «[Whoever] made mistakes». It is impossible to hide responsibility.
In short, the passive voice allows people to hide the agent, the responsible of the action, as if these crimes were accidents of nature, which only just «happen». As Theodore Dalrymple observed in English prisons:
I am fascinated by prisoners’ use of the passive mood and other modes of speech that are supposed to indicate their helplessness. They describe themselves as the marionettes of happenstance.
In the previous statement by Cardinal Egan, it seems that the bishops enabling sexual abuses were only unlucky. They happened to work in a place where some mistakes simply «happened». This is the dishonesty of the passive voice.
The language of rights produces anarchotyranny
As we saw in a previous installment, the language of rights is only a passive form of the OUGHT statement: a passive voice to express moral claims. So it shares the dishonest muddling of responsibility with other forms of the passive voice.
The language of rights has the following structure: PATIENT has a right of ACTION [by AGENT] where «by AGENT» can be and is often omitted.
Let’s see an example with the language of obligations (modal active voice):
«You should not litter»
This is as clear as water. Whose responsibility is it? Yours. The one reading the sentence is the one who should not behave like a pig when walking on the street.
Let’s put it in the language of rights (modal passive voice):
«You have the right to a clean public space»
Whose responsibility is it to keep the public space clean? It is not clear at all. It is not clear that you have to refrain to behave like a pig in the public space. Maybe the local or national administration is the one responsible to keep the public space tidy and, as Theodore Dalrymple observes:
Thus, to take a trifling instance, it is the duty of the city council to keep the streets clean; therefore my own conduct in this regard is morally irrelevant—which no doubt explains why so many young Britons now leave a trail of litter behind them wherever they go. If the streets are filthy, it is the council’s fault. Indeed, if anything is wrong—for example, my unhealthy diet—it is someone else’s fault, and the job of the public power to correct.
That is, the language of rights produces anarchotyranny. It produces:
- Inmoral behavior (anarchy): everybody thinks that other people is the responsible to make the right (clean public space) come true so he feels free to behave as he wants. I can leave a trail of litter behind while protesting bitterly that «I have a right to a clean space».
- Overreliance on the State (tyranny): Since nobody is responsible, it is the role of the State to step up and clean the streets full of garbage. Even if it does not do it (because of unwillingness, incompetence or lack of means), everybody recognizes that it is the State the one who should guarantee this right. Even if the State does not clean the streets, it should be the one that is responsible to keep the streets clean, whether by outsourcing the work or creating new laws. Individual behavior is not important.
That is, the historical movement from the language of obligations to the language of rights in Western civilizations produces a change from individual moral behavior to the expansion of the State.
People behave more and more in a anti-social way (this is often called «freedom») while the State meddles in all aspects of individual life. Since the State is not able to control each individual, this produces both more anti-social behavior and more control of the State. This is part of the movement from a society of guilt and shame to a society of fear, which is ongoing in the Western civilization and will be discussed somewhere else.
The language of rights is a tool for parasitism
As we have seen, the language of rights seems like a great deal in our societies with infantilized populations. I get to behave as I want and Daddy-State will pick up the bad consequences of my actions. What’s not to like?
In fact, besides the fact that the State cannot cover the bad behavior of each individual (see above), there is the fact that the State is composed by people. The ones cleaning the streets are the street sweepers, which are paid by the State, that is, by taxes.
So the role of the language of rights is to shift responsibility from the people behaving badly to everyone. Now, if I want to behave like a pig in the public space, everybody has to pay for this through taxes. I may not pay for this (for example, because I am poor or a minor) but somebody is paying for my bad behavior. Somebody who does not behave like a pig is paying for me behaving like a pig. And the State is growing as the middleman for these taxes and responsible for this cleaning.
That is, the language of rights is a tool for parasitism. The parasites manage to shift the costs of their behavior to something else. This is one of the causes why both anti-social behavior and the size of the State are constantly growing in Western civilization. Taxes and State control increase and increase while people find new ways of being a parasite, which are expressed as a new right that is being created.
For example, in my country, even bad students have a right to higher education. This means that everyone (including working class people who does not go to the University) has to pay the costs of bad students who don’t want to study and want to party all the time. As I have said, the right is only a manipulation tool to justify parasitism. The right of bad students to have a fun college life is the obligation of everybody else to pay their irresponsible behavior.
This parasitism is often paid by the entire population through taxes but this is not always the case. Sometimes specific individuals bear the cost instead of the general population. The squat («okupa») movement in my country justifies its actions saying that the Spanish Constitution includes a right to housing so they are entitled to live in an empty house or apartment that belongs to somebody else, because they have this right. In this case, the costs are borne by the owner of the house. The right of a woman to have alimony in America is the obligation of his ex-husband to pay. In this case, the costs are borne by the ex-husband.
But, in general, the language of rights is mostly used with «rights» of some specific people, where the obligations (or costs) are omitted but they are diffused throughout the entire population. The right of a trans to be considered a woman and be called «the right pronouns» is an obligation for everybody else to lie to him and to engage in ridiculous linguistic expressions.
In fact, most new rights benefit specific interest groups while creating new obligations to the population in general. This is what makes palatable new rights to the general population. It is not only that the responsibility is muddled but that they are diffused throughout the population so they are divided by a big number of people and seem a small cost. Every new right is a small monetary or non-monetary cost that «taxes» the population so it seems a minor hassle. So this way the temperature of the water where the frog swims increases little by little.
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RIGHT HIDE RESPONSIBILITY COMPLETELY
Rights as a power grab
But, in reality, it is worse than that. In examples like «I have a right to clean public space», it is obvious that someone has a responsibility to keep the streets clean although it is not clear whose responsibility it is.
But most statements of rights do not muddle responsibility but they hide responsibility completely. In fact, the language of rights makes easy to forget that there is somebody responsible to make this right true, that there is some obligation. It seems that there are only advantages.
This is why everybody is talking about his rights. It tries to impose obligations on the rest of society while disguising the fact that these obligations are being imposed. It is a manipulative action by normal people and politicians.
With normal people, it is difficult to argue with a person who says «This is my right». The language implies that there is no cost to respect this right. So people claim rights as a rhetorical way to impose obligations to other people, without other people noticing that obligations are being imposed. The language of rights is a tool of manipulation to grab power for myself while imposing the costs to someone else.
This is why the left-wing parties and politicians in general are always wanting to increase rights («we need to advance in rights», «we need to create new rights») because it seems something that only has a positive side and no downsides. They create new rights to impose obligations that benefit the State or the interest groups that support the politicians while it seems that no obligation is imposed and it is a change that only has a positive side: it is «progress». In short, it is the perfect racket: it is a power grab that seems to give you power instead of taking power from you.
The scope creep of rights
With special groups and politicians having this interest in using «rights» as a rhetorical tool to get advantages for themselves, it is not strange that new rights are constantly being discovered and enforced. In Western civilization, the set of rights have scope creep: human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, migrant rights, animal rights, etc. You start by saying «I have right to live» and you end up by saying «I have a right to be called with xir as my pronoun». Rights are constantly increasing, because they are presented as a positive thing with no cost.
This way, a vast part of the Western population is more and more slave since it has to obey to all the obligations that these rights impose. But, since these obligations are hidden under the concept of rights, Western population applauds any new right and, hence, it applauds its own enslavement.
Rights as a geopolitical tool
In addition, this is used as a power tool in geopolitics. When the American Empire wants to invade a country, it can justify the invasion as «we are doing to enforce rights». Since the obligations implied by these rights are hidden, this sounds like «we are doing it because we want to do good». So each invasion is sold as a moral crusade.
In the invasion of Afghanistan, the alibi was «we are fighting for women’s rights» (no matter that the vast majority of women in Afghanistan supported sharia). This made blogger Jim quip: «We went to war in Afghanistan to make the local schoolgirls put a condom on a banana».
Recently, the Department of State declared that it has as a duty to impose LGBTI rights around the world. This provides the perfect alibi for invasion, since LGBTI rights is a modern Western invention that has not been exported to many countries in the world. In fact, all countries that are not Western, have no LGBTI rights or the LGBTI rights do not measure to the standard of LGBTI rights in the Western world.
Since Western civilization is constantly creating new rights, it is easy to find a new right that is not enforced in some country that USA wants to invade so there is always an alibi for invasion. We can invade for money, for power or other geopolitical goals, but we always says we invade for rights. We are not invaders but liberators.
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RIGHTS ARE RELATIVISTIC.
A culture based on rights?
We have seen that my right is someone else’s obligation. But there is something more. Rights are incompatible with other rights, a topic that was explored when talking about freedoms. In fact, since obligations is the lack of freedom, what is explained here is only the same problem than the one explained when talking about freedoms, only expressed in the language of rights.
When Muslim terrorists attack Western countries, there is a chorus of politicians that say: «they attack us because they hate our freedoms, they hate our rights». The rationale is that Western societies have more rights and freedoms that Muslim societies have, so Muslim terrorist, somehow, hate us for this. (The fact that we are meddling and killing people in the Middle East since forever has nothing to do, of course).
But is there a society that can have more rights than another one? In fact, this is impossible.
The infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop case before the Supreme Court illustrates this case. Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Lakewood (Colorado), refused to design a custom «wedding» cake for a gay couple based on the owner’s Christian religious beliefs. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission found that the bakery had discriminated against the couple and the Supreme Court reverted this decision.
Here we have two supposed «rights»: the right of the gay couple not to be discriminated against and the right of the baker not to do something against his religious beliefs. Both rights are in conflict. Allowing the gay couple’s right is forbidding the baker’s right and vice verse. Whose right is going to prevail? The Colorado Civil Rights Commission thinks that it is the former that should prevail but the Supreme Court thinks that it is the latter. In fact, as we have seen, this depends on the values of the society.
So you can’t have a society that has more rights than another one, since somebody’s right is somebody’s lack of right (or to be honest, somebody’s obligation is the lack of obligation of somebody else). The right of the gay couple is the lack of the right of the Christian baker. Every time the law recognizes a right is denying another right.
So Western societies have the right of women to divorce their husbands while Muslim societies have the right of men to have their families intact and see their children grow. Muslim societies don’t have fewer rights than Western societies. They have other rights (or, being honest, other obligation).
The same way there is not some thing such as «advancing in rights». Every time you advance in a right, you «regress» in another right.
Rights as a relativistic concept used in an absolutist manner
What we ultimately have is that «rights» (like «freedom» or «equality») is a relativistic concept: the right of somebody is the lack of right of somebody else.
But rights are presented in the public discourse like an absolutist concept: as if there were rights out there that are independent from societies and individuals and that they have to be accepted because it is morally right. So public authorities speak about «advancing in rights», «expanding human rights to the entire world» and so on and so forth.
As we have seen, this is one of the features of the Western culture: use relativistic concepts in an absolutist manner. This has obvious advantages for manipulation:
- Since rights are relativistic, anything that powers want to enforce on the population can be expressed as a right. See above for more details.
- Since rights are treated as an absolutist concept, they are presented as something indisputable, something that people have to accept and comply with.
So rights (like freedom and equality) are the ultimate weapon: you can legally and morally force everybody to abide with anything you want.
Rights as a tool of political manipulation
Since rights are obligations disguised as freedoms, since they seem all advantages and no downsides, Western authorities can use them as a tool of political manipulation. The method is as follows.
1. Western authorities (politicians, international organism, the elite behind) want to impose some new political measure. Let’s say «making divorce legal», which happened in my country in 1981.
2. This political measure will benefit somebody and will harm somebody. For example, it will benefit the person who wants to divorce and it will harm the person who wants to keep the marriage intact.
3. The authorities focus only on the people that benefit from the new measure and invent a new «right», which didn’t exist five minutes before but it is created from thin air. There is a right for unhappy people in marriage to «rebuilt their life». This people have a right to divorce, because they are entitled to be happy. The» right» to be happy of the abandoned spouse is completely omitted.
4. The benefits of the new political measure are publicized in media, movies, songs until the population see the «new right» as something that is so obvious and so fair that denying it puts you in the same category as Hitler.
5. The new «right» is recognized in a law and now there is an obligation for some spouses and kids to see their families broken. We are advancing in rights! Yippee!
6. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This method has been used with all kinds of new «rights». The last example is the right of «gender identity», the right of «gender-affirming medical care» (that is, the obligation of parents to see his deluded kid to be castrated).
An example: using rights to introduce pedophilia
Pedophilia is a right nut to crack, for obvious reasons. Decades of trying to make it legal have produced modest advances. The problem is inventing a right out of pedophilia to apply the method described above is not obvious. For decades, the course of action was to try to invent a right for pedophiles to have a good sexual life. This was so outrageous that it had to be introduced piecemeal. So we got all these «ethical pedophiles» that claimed not to touch children (some of them were caught touching children afterwards) but they wanted to be understood because they were born this way. So we had things like this TEDx talk claiming that pedophilia should be accepted as an unchangeable sexual orientation https://www.metroweekly.com/2018/07/tedx-speaker-argues-that-pedophilia-should-be-accepted-as-an-unchangeable-sexual-orientation/
Obviously, this went nowhere so a more effective strategy had to be devised. Now the course of action is to invent a right of sexual expression for children. If children want to have sex with an adult, who are you to limit the right of the kid, you monster? This will be the new «right» that is going to be imposed to us.
On September 21, 2022, Irene Montero, the Spanish minister of equality declared in the Spanish House of Representatives:
“All children in this country have the right to know their own body, to know that no adult can touch their body if they don’t want to, and that this is a form of violence. They have the right to know that they can love or have sexual relations with whoever they want, based, yes, on consent. And those are rights that are recognized, and that you do not like.»
See the language of rights used to justify that kids can have sexual relationship with adults, even if it is in an indirect way. The minister refused to rectify these words when asked to.
The Spanish Minister for Equality has reiterated that «children have the right to know that they can love whoever they want and have sex with whoever they want, that they have the right to abortion.» She stated that sex education is «a pillar of access to sexual and reproductive rights,» which in the minister’s opinion is «a matter of human rights, not an ideological option.»
This is the end game of the concept of rights in Western thought: to justify the most outrageous abuses that cry out to heaven based on creating «new rights». Western people have been trained to agree when they hear words like «rights», «freedom» or «equality», like Pavlov’s dogs. Their brains turn to mush and they justify the most criminal abuses. They repeat «freedom», «equality», «rights» while they drool like idiots.
Conclusion
This started as one page of notes I had based on the reflections on rights I have had for years and wanted to flesh out. Then, when I tried to write it, it blew out of proportion. If you have reached the end of this writing, thank you for your patience.
I only wanted to show that the concept of rights is one of the most evil concepts that has produced Western thought and that is used to enslave us and take us to hell. There is no way out of our current predicament without rejecting the language of rights and go back to the language of obligations, which was used by the wisdom of all cultures except the modern West.
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Muddles responsibility: produces anarcotyranny
HIdes cost: Scope creep.
Right as barrotes.
Since it hides costs, it is used as a power grab by people and politicians
Relativistic. Parasitism – Privatizes benefits
The right to pedophilia: use as a weapon.
It is relativistic used as an absolutist rhetoric
sibility
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The right to pedophilia. These are the new rights. Only five years ago and it seems Moses. So you are a meanie denying a right.
In Western society, the concept of rights has scope creep. The rights of children, women, LGBTI, migrants… This is the way the power and the groups of pressure favored by the power imposes obligations to the majority of the population without noticing that an obligation has been imposed.
Fight people with each other.
As a result, the rights is a tool of parasitism. The right to education of bad students. Western civilization is invaded by a set of parasites that are incompatible with each other.
Without the tommyrot.
But what is a right, anyway. An obligation is easy to grasp:
Not a symmetry. It is a convoluted and manipulative way to talk about obligations.
Right after right, we are being put in chains.
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Language of obligations is straightforward. Has the following structure: AGENT OBLIGATION BENEFICIARY. The object is often implicit but it is obvious to find out.
Language of obligations is SUBJECT has the right of RIGHT [by the AGENT] where «by the AGENT» is often dropped and not obvious to find out.
Who is the responsible to produce this right or obligation? Shall not litter. Muddles responsibility.
In fact, the language of rights makes easy to forget that there is somebody responsible, that there is some obligation. It seems that there are only disavantages.
This is why the left-wing parties and politicians in general speak of rights in the campaigns, because it seems something positive while an obligation is imposed on layers of the populations.
This is the fact why everybody is talking about his rights. It tries to impose obligations on the rest of society while disguising the fact that these obligations are being imposed. It is a manipulative action by normal people and politicians.
The right to pedophilia. These are the new rights. Only five years ago and it seems Moses. So you are a meanie denying a right.
In Western society, the concept of rights has scope creep. The rights of children, women, LGBTI, migrants… This is the way the power and the groups of pressure favored by the power imposes obligations to the majority of the population without noticing that an obligation has been imposed.
Fight people with each other.
As a result, the rights is a tool of parasitism. The right to education of bad students. Western civilization is invaded by a set of parasites that are incompatible with each other.
Without the tommyrot.
But what is a right, anyway. An obligation is easy to grasp:
Not a symmetry. It is a convoluted and manipulative way to talk about obligations.
Right after right, we are being put in chains.
The language of rights, as any other
- «We did not have a good understanding back then» (as if priests abusing minors is rocket science),
- «in hindsight» (as if this has not been a sin for 2000 years),
- «if mistakes were made» and «mistakes may be made» (he does not admit that something wrong has happened, it is only a possibility that it may have happened),
- «I am deeply sorry» (instead of admitting responsibility or apologizing, he only «feels sorry»).
In addition, labelling the enabling of sex crimes and despicable sins as «mistakes» is completely dishonest. This can almost be read as if this was an accounting error when we are talking about priests abusing minors and bishops enabling this behavior.
But look at the passive voice: «mistakes may have been made». Remove the dishonest «may» and we get to «mistakes were made». Who has made these mistakes? It is never said. You cannot retrieve this information from the words uttered. There is not a «by» clause, such as «mistakes were made by all of us» or an honest active voice «We made mistakes».
It has often been noticed that the passive voice is a manipulation device to hide responsibility, by hiding the agent of the action. The book «Mistakes were made (by not by me)» explains this and provides the following statement of Cardinal Edward Egan regarding the handling of sex abuse allegations against priests:
«It is clear that today we have a much better understanding of this problem. If, in hindsight, we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry,»
The good Cardinal had no responsibility and nothing to feel guilty about. He happened to be present in an unenlightened era where sexual abuse was not well understood and working in a place where «mistakes were made». He «feels sorry» about the victims, the same way you can feel sorry about the victims of World War II without having responsibility in these deaths.
In short, passive voice can be used as a dishonest way to shirk responsibility because the responsible of the evil deeds can be easily omitted.
The language of rights also muddles responsibility
As we have seen, the language of rights is only a modal version of the passive voice and shares its manipulative character. The language of rights, like any other passive voice, makes easy to omit the AGENT of the action, that is, the person responsible for the moral claim.