The Attack on Language: 'Rights'

Column by Stephen Browne - Sep 22, 2006

 Be first to rate this column! (See bottom of page)

“Men do not long continue to think, that which
they have forgotten how to say.” --C.S. Lewis

One of the interesting experiences I’ve had discussing the issues of liberty with non-Westerners is that they do not share the basic assumptions common to members of Western civilization.

In particular, when you discuss freedom, and the concepts of rights, responsibility, and causality that flow from it, you find that they do not share the automatic acceptance that freedom is necessarily a desirable thing.

This is oddly refreshing. It is actually easier to deal with someone who openly declares that freedom is undesirable and dangerous to society than a westerner who pays lip service to liberty but subverts the concept by attacking and distorting the definition of it. With the former, you at least know where you stand.

Let’s face it, since the preeminence of Western civilization (in material goods and military might, at least) became generally acknowledged in the twentieth century and the spectacular success of the American experiment in pushing the envelope of liberty farther than previously thought practical on such a scale, no Western intellectual can attack the necessity of freedom for a humane society and still be taken seriously.

This means that the enemies of liberty within our own civilization must attack the ideas by attacking the underlying definitions.

One method is by way of qualification: “Well of course freedom is a good thing but… 1) you can’t allow everybody to… 2) you have to have… 3) people can’t be trusted to… 4) sometimes you have to give up a little freedom to…” This method is relatively easy to counter and tends to fall apart as soon as somebody thinks to ask, “Really? Why?” and sticks to it.

Another method is that of conflation, usually between freedom and opportunity. “What freedom does 1) a starving man, 2) a poor man, 3) an employee with no other job prospects… have?” This is more difficult to counter and must be faced by insisting on the distinction. Freedom is a relationship between men in society. Starvation and poverty are tragic human conditions. They are different things. Get over it.

In the long term the most subtle, and successful, method of attacking a concept is by expanding the definition.

Most people think of a word and its definition in terms of all the things that it means. Perhaps even more important is what it does not mean, i.e. all the things which are excluded from the definition. Perhaps this is why short words have the most expansive definitions and long words the most restrictive and specific. Longer words contain more information establishing more specific boundaries.

To check this out I invite you to take out the most unabridged dictionary you can find and look up the word “set.” It has the most entries of any word in the English language, over three hundred in some dictionaries, followed by “run.” Now look up “antidisestablishmentarianism” — precisely one, highly specific entry.

Consider the word 'rights.' Though not a long word, it is usually used in a word phrase that indicates a pretty specific thing, the obligation of others not to interfere in your actions, or to refrain from acting in certain ways towards you. “You have the right to remain silent.” No one has the lawful power to compel you to speak. “I have the right to speak my mind.” No one has the lawful power to prevent me from speaking my mind, etc.

In common speech, this starts to broaden when talking about contractual rights and privileges of membership in organizations. “I own stock in the company; I have a right to vote for the board of directors.” Note that this still carries the essential idea of obligation of members of a group to each other.

The definition is insidiously altered with the change from the right to do something, to the right to have something. “Everyone has a right to a 1) decent living, 2) good job, 3) nice house.”

Though couched in the most humane-sounding terms, I wonder how easy the idea would be to sell if it were stated in terms of the essential definition? “You have the obligation to leave me alone so long as I leave you alone” versus “You have the obligation to provide me with a house so long as you have one and I don’t.”

Now we come to the most expanded definition of “has a right to” yet, exemplified by Bill Clinton when he addressed the subject of human cloning: “Every child has a right to two parents.”

Yes, a child’s interests are best served, under most circumstances, by having two parents — and a few grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins don’t hurt either. Unfortunately, many don’t, due to circumstances under no one’s control.

In this case, “has a right to” has come to mean nothing deeper than “It would be nice if…”, which approaches the final redefinition, where the meaning is expanded to the point that it comes to mean anything at all — and therefore precisely nothing.

  

Share