Human rights, individual rights. We all have rights. We all should have the same rights. Yet we often withhold those basic rights that we’d want for ourselves from others in civilization because we dislike or disagree with them. Why is that? Is that because we’re afraid of them? Some of them, undoubtedly, have forfeited the right to have those protections – either for a short period of time or forever – but the easiest road to stripping humans of their inherent rights is to treat them as inhuman.
We are also incredibly selective in our willingness to recognize the existence of these rights. Some, in America, recognize the First Amendment rights, but only for groups they support. Some recognize only Second Amendment rights. Some are willing to subjugate all the rights to their personal interests without any sense of irony.
We, in America, have built a society upon a foundation of individual freedom and inalienable rights but we constantly pile heaps upon heaps of fear and ignorance on that bedrock to the point that it is now so completely obscured that it remains a distant memory.
It is a difficult thing to do, to be honest: to stand firm on your principles and be honest and true to them in the face of overwhelming fear, emotion and sensationalism. As humans, we are also petty, cheap, jealous, base and vindictive. Tolerance is an achievement, not an inherent state of existence. The ability to hold two conflicting ideas in one’s head takes effort, whereas vilification of some ‘other’ takes nothing but the triggering of some base emotion.
We are also social creatures. We have the herd mentality. We need to be part of a greater whole. We want to be liked. We want to be wanted. We need approval. And approval is most easily gained by further dumping on those that the majority is already abandoning. Joining the crowd and appealing to base instincts of fear and ignorance and hatred is far easier than standing firm against that tide.
This is why it makes perfect sense that judges do, perhaps subconsciously, succumb to negative advertising and shy away from standing behind principles of freedom, equality and due process. That’s why politicians lose their seats because of spurious allegations of “supporting child molesters”. It’s why the Debo Adegbile‘s of the world can’t get the recognition they deserve.
When we decide whether certain rights (guns) should be granted based on whether we like the people who are seeking those rights (gun nuts) then we decide that rights aren’t rights at all, but rather privileges that can be taken away without any recourse.
When that happens, it won’t matter if you’re a child molester or a law-abiding citizen owning a firearm. You’ll be as much of a criminal in the eyes of everyone else.