I lost this text twice because of computer problems. I am writing this for the third time. I hope this time I can finish it. I know that I am late to the party and I apologize.
I disagree with Z about his philosophical materialism. The fact that rights are not physical (so future alien archeologists cannot discover rights in the remains of human civilization) does not mean that they don’t exist. Future alien archeologist wouldn’t discover Math theorems or your ideas, sensations and emotions in the remains of human civilization. This does not mean that Math does not exist or that you haven’t had ideas, sensations and emotions.
The concept of rights was invented by Catholic theologians of the Modern age as a way to express objective morality. Then, it was adopted by the Enlightenment, by the philosophy and law produced by the bourgeois revolutions and then by the United Nations and by everyone.
Although I am a Catholic and I believe in objective morality, I think the concept of rights has been one of the worst ideas in the history of humanity. The problem is that it is a language that obfuscates moral reality so it is prone to manipulation. So it has been used to manipulate Western people to destroy their own civilization.
The same way the left side of an object cannot exist without the right side, there can be no rights without duties. My right to life is everyone else’s duty not to kill me. If I have a right to my private property, everybody else has the duty of not using this property without my permission. And so on and so forth.
Ancient cultures and non-Western cultures expressed morality in terms of duties: «Thou shalt not kill». Modern Western cultures express morality in terms of rights: «You have a right to live». But the second way is manipulative.
First, in this second way, the responsibility of the duty is muddled. If I say «Thou shalt not litter», it is clear that it is you who should not throw garbage in the public space. If I say «You have a right to a clean public space», it is not clear whose is the responsibility. Maybe I can throw all the garbage I want and it is the government’s responsibility to clean this mess. So the language of rights allows everybody to shirk his responsibility and the government to get more and more power because it has to «guarantee the rights of the citizens». It is a recipe for anarcho-tyranny.
Even worse, since every right comes with an obligation (a duty), the language of rights imposes an obligation while sounding that no obligation is imposed. So If I have a right to divorce, it is the duty of my wife and my children to accept that they have lost their family and their husband and father. If I fight for «the right to divorce», people are fooled that only good things are involved (people in unhappy marriages can be free) while disregarding the costs.
The same way, if I fight for «the right to a free public education», the cost of maintaining this public education is silenced. Maybe a hardworking man is paying for entitled kids to party and do drugs. It seems as if rights had only benefits while no having any costs.
This is why rights have been multiplying drastically. Every time somebody wants something from society can say «It is my right!» and force other people to bear the costs of making this wish come true. So, if I am a tranny and want everybody to tell me that I am a woman, I can rephrase it as «I have a right to my identity».
The thing is phrased in a way that seems that no obligations are imposed on everybody. But this forces everybody to lie in front of a laughable person. If I say «as an undocumented worker, I have a right to public education and health», this hides the costs of providing this education and health.
In short, the language of rights is a weapon of people trying to impose the costs of their behavior upon the entire society. A weapon of parasitism. This is why rights keep on multiplying. In addition, the managerial class takes advantage from new rights because they are the ones that manage these rights. So, for every illegal immigrant with rights, for every broken family because of the right to divorce, there is a social worker who votes for the Left and works with these immigrants and broken families. Politicians, civil servants, human resources officers make a living or get power based on rights.
The socialist John Peters Humphrey, director of the United Nations Human Rights Division, wrote the first draft of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which are only the Ten Commandments of a new godless religion: the progressive religion). Shortly before the Declaration was adopted, he wrote in his diary. “What we need is something like the Christian morality without the tommyrot”. For him, «the tommyrot» was «God, Jesus, the atonement, etc.».
What we have seen it is that it is impossible to have public morality without» the tommyrot» (whether «the tommyrot» is Christian, Muslim, Confucian, etc.). When Western society was Christian and the law was based on Christian morality, the list of rights were clear to everyone: the rights derived from the Bible and Christian tradition. Even if you are an atheist, you can admit that this is a morality that has stood the test of time so it has no nonsense. So, no, you don’t have a right to be a non-binary because » God created man in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them» (Genesis 1, 27) .
If there is not something divine that is the foundation of society (whether is Christian, Muslim, etc.), everybody can claim that his wish is a right that has been oppressed until now and, if he has enough backing from the powers that be, he can achieve this so-called «right», passing the cost to everybody else. That is, the parasitism has no bounds and the society dies, killed by a one million parasites. Which is why we see in our society. So, yes, give me «the tommyrot», every time.