Human Rights Are Individual Rights

Sometimes it’s necessary to state the obvious, so here goes: People will not read this post, though a person might.

You can probably already see where I’m going with this. So let’s go there.

People — collectively — will not read this. Individual persons — singular people — might. (One possible exception is if a person were to read the post aloud to someone else, or even to an assembled group of people, but how often does that happen in the modern world?)

This idea of singularity rather than plurality applies regardless of demographic. Black people will not read this post, though a black person might. Ditto for white people, or any other racial label you might apply. Rich people will not read this post, though a rich person might. Et cetera.

My point here is that we make a mistake when we talk about “people” collectively, as if they are cells operating together in a huge body instead of entities operating individually as persons. It’s a failure of language, and maybe a failure of perspective.

We make the mistake whenever we lump people together into groups, especially groups we want to criticize or lionize: Democrats and Republicans; Christians and atheists; Carolina fans and Clemson fans (!). It is easier to treat them as groups we can point at as if “they” were amoebic, single-minded masses instead of individuals with their own attitudes, abilities, and dreams. (“They” collectively — and “we” collectively — make it hard when some individuals come together to make trouble, whether as not-so-peaceful protesters or sports hooligans, but even then some individuals stand apart and aloof, separate from the mob, and deserve not to be lumped in with the troublemakers.)

(Image: Word Cloud, “On Liberty by John Stuart Mill: An Important Book for Intellectual Thinkers,” by _, on WordCloud.app.)

Finally, now to the point of this post: Yes, we make a similar mistake with respect to rights. People do not have rights, though persons might. Groups do not have rights, only the individuals within those groups.

Why? Because rights are exercised individually, they belong to individuals. We err when we overemphasize rights with respect to groups and neglect the individuals who make up those groups. We can end up diluting those rights, acting as if they are only spread across large populations rather than held by singular people, and that is a dangerous step toward overlooking and even removing those rights.

Let’s not go down that road.

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Maybe none of this needed to be said, but it’s done now. For other musings and oddball ideas,
– Take a look at A Church More Like Christ, awarded a Silver medal by the Military Writers Society of America
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