mojo84 wrote:In practicality, it's usually the rights of the loudest most obnoxious that ends up trumping others.
Exactly. What has changed under the post-modern doctrine of "inclusionism" is that the majority would rather see their
own rights violated than to offend somebody. The Constitution protects the rights of the individual against the tyranny of the majority. What's different today is that, once SCOTUS justices began inventing "penumbras and emanations" to interpret the Constitution in ways not contained in its actual language, it became possible to invent all kinds of other penumbras and emanations to describe constitutional fictions — the primary one of these constitutional fictions being a right to not be offended.
The problem is this: almost
anybody can be offended by almost
anything, so there is no objective standard against which we can measure our own behaviors so as not to offend........assuming that not offending is even desirable (I can think of situations in which offending someone can be a useful tool toward making them see the absurdity of their position). Murder is murder, and the victim has been deprived of their life, regardless of their personal political or religious or sexual preferences. Imprisonment without the benefit of a trial is punishment without due process, and the victim has been unjustly deprived of their liberty regardless of their personal political or religious or sexual preferences. But what does not offend one person may offend another, and beyond overt physical or verbal assault of the other person, there is no way to know in advance what will offend, and what won't. Therefore, in a social offense, there really isn't a victim. No life has been lost. No liberty has been lost. Not even the pursuit of happiness has been lost, because it is spurious to claim that the offended person's pursuit of happiness has been blocked by the other person's offense......... not in a society in which the offended person is free to walk away, or to pursue happiness with some other person or in some other venue.
Elevating the status of a life free from offense from the status of a simple desire to the status of a God-given (or natural, if you prefer)
RIGHT is merely an expression of the most selfish generations our nation has ever produced. The final analysis is this: the first party's rights end where the second party's begin....... and neither party can have any rational expectation or constitutional protection against being offended by the other's words.
It seems that everybody wants their particular sociopolitical subset to be considered as special and somehow deserving of extra concessions, when the ONLY truth is that a person is only special because they are human, and for no other reason. No one "brand" of human is anymore special than any other brand of human. An LGBT individual has no more right to freedom from offense by what others think of them than an evangelical Christian has a right to be free of cultural offense. Freedom from offense is an unattainable goal without the particular grievance group suppressing the rights of those outside of that group. Thus, the only achievable goal is to learn to live your life not particularly caring what others think of your "specialness".......AND to learn to accept that this cuts both ways. If you don't care what others think of you, then expect them to reciprocate in kind.
The fundamental question is this: Are our rights collective, or individual? The collectivist viewpoint seems to be predicated on the notion that the collective IS the individual, and individual humans are only parts of it; and that therefore a right is held collectively, while the individual only has access to a small increment of that collective right. My reply is: a collective right cannot even exist if it is not first an individual right.......because a collective is made up of individuals. Therefore the collective
only has rights because the individual had them first. This is why I so often refer to the collective as "The Borg".
My message to people who cannot thrive outside the pampered hothouse of their own little grievance group is this: "Life is hard. Get over yourselves and get used to it.
You will be happier when
your happiness does not depend on other people
making you happy."
