The other side of Rights: Responsibilities.
By Paul Tiki.
This is kind of a riff on the excellent article written by Old Jarhead. The breakdown of what the founders were thinking and meaning with the concept of Rights was excellent. Rights are not just about what a person CAN do, but also what the government CANNOT do.
There is something else about Rights that is not spoken of, at least not enough, and certainly not in any organized fashion. There is a concept that was not brought up in my civics class in high school, nor was it mentioned in most of my later Political Science classes in college. For every Right you have and exercise, you also have a Responsibility.
To be clear, the Responsibility part of this is based more on Morals than on law, although there can be overlap. Most of the time, your Right to do something comes with the responsibility that you do not use your actions to infringe upon the Right of another citizen. This is where the law is most often involved. Here are some examples.
You have the right to free speech. You can say whatever you want. You have the Responsibility to not say something untrue that will harm another person’s ability to make a living, or damage their reputation in some way. We actually have laws on the books about this one for Slander (when the untruth is spoken) or Libel (when the untruth is written). You won’t go to jail for these, but you can be sued. Just ask President Trump and ABC and NBC if I recall correctly.
You have the Right to associate with who you wish. You have a Responsibility to not let such associations damage other people. This one is a bit nebulous, but here is an example. Your teenage kid is hanging out with that hooligan down the street. He has a Right to do so, but he also has the Responsibility to not participate in and even prevent (if possible) the hooligan from beating up another kid and taking his lunch money. I’m talking about teenagers here, but it also happens with adults, it’s just usually a bit more subtle.
Here is a big one. You have the Right to keep and bear arms. We are allowed by our constitution to buy, own, and use Arms, whether they are Firearms, Axes, Swords, or Pointy Sticks. This is one that the State loves to try to infringe in all sorts of ways. Theoretically, I should be able to carry a rapier on my hip. I suppose I still could, although law enforcement would likely call it probable cause for all manner of grief. The rapier isn’t a great example so let’s get to what the Right of the Second Amendment means and is commonly used for.
Firearms. Pistols, Rifles, Shotguns, Blunderbusses, Black Powder cannons, and so on. Arms, at the time of the Founding, meant all of these. Hell, if you had the money you could buy a frigate with 18 cannon and it be perfectly legal, even though you could, in theory, use it to destroy a small coastal city. But if you do choose to own some form of arms you also have a big Responsibility. You have to keep your arms from causing inappropriate harm. I stress inappropriate for a reason. To use a pistol in self defense is to cause harm appropriately. To use your Arms to stand up to tyranny is to cause harm appropriately. To leave a loaded pistol lying around where a toddler can get to it is where it can cause harm Inappropriately. That is just part of the Responsibility.
Knowing when and how to use it, not using your Arms to commit other crimes, and so on.
The right to peaceable assembly has been in the news a lot of late, in the form of various protests. You do have the right to go out and yell whatever damn fool thing you want and protest and so on. That’s fine. You have the Responsibility when you do so to NOT prevent other people from going and doing things that they need to do. You have a Responsibility to not get so carried away you set someplace on fire.
You have the Right to not incriminate yourself by what you tell the cops. You have the moral Responsibility to help them in most cases, or, at least, not actively hinder them while they are going about their legal and moral duties. This one is a little bit odd, because the Amendment in question was written to prevent an abuse of power common enough in various governments going back to the dawn of time. It’s there to prevent the government from compelling you to speak in a way that would get you in trouble. You see it again and again in modern cop shows or courtroom dramas where the evil government is trying to get some hapless victim to confess to a crime they didn’t commit so the real perpetrator can go free. Sadly that’s based on countless stories through history detailing the same thing.
I think you see where I am going with all of this. Yes, you do have the right to do a lot of things, but every single time you exercise that right, one should always consider, if only briefly, what the Responsibility is.
A very wise person once said “My Right to swing my fist ends where Your nose begins” Most of the Rights we enjoy are just like that. If you give it a moment’s thought, you should be able to figure it out if you just think about My Right, My Fist, and Your Nose.
