Wednesday, February 11, 2009

We need to refine our use of the word "rights"

You do not have the right to have a cup of coffee in the morning.

"WTF?" you're thinking, "I totally do."

No, you don't.

You're totally allowed. It's perfectly legal. It's your own coffee purchased with your own hard-earned money. No one is going to stop you. Most people will even offer you coffee if you haven't had any yet.

But it isn't a right. It isn't codified in the Charter or anywhere else.

This is a problem with our current usage. We tend to use the word "rights" to refer to stuff that you're allowed to do, not your actual codified legal rights. Even though we understand intellectually the meaning of capital R Rights, if someone tells us we don't have the right to something, we hear that we aren't allowed to do it.

I don't know if it's because of this or just related, but there's a lot of other sloppy usage. I've heard people say "Voting is a privilege, not a right!" Except it's totally a right. You sometimes hear people complain that people are so worried about their rights but not thinking about their responsibilities, as though they're opposites or prerequisites or something.

Let's watch our usage. It's an important word for an important concept. It won't help to weaken it.

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