Ben asked:

Do you all think that so many of us are asked not to question or at least discouraged from
questioning?

Think of the recent war. Many people thought that any form of inquiry into whether it was right or
wrong was "unamerican." Is that really true? Of course not. Do people have a right to question
leaders? Parents? Do kids have the same rights as adults? The educated as the uneducated? Should
we all have an equal right to ask questions?

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>At bottom, Ben, when you look at the issue of "rights" from a completely objective point of view,
no-one has any rights at all. We are born without anyone asking us if we want to be born, and we die
without anyone asking if we would wish to live longer or even forever. What happens in between is,
equally, altogether up to chance, for if you happen to be born in a tent you'll be brought up according
to the nomadic way of life or, if you happen to be born in a highly civilised country, you'll grow up as a
scion of civilisation and will adopt its queer notion that as a result of this chance, you have "rights". If
you were to look at this issue from the point of view of Robinson Crusoe, you'll see at once that this is
purely a social issue, and consequently when philosophers or legal writers talk about "rights", they
are of course adopting the presupposition that in a society, rights and duties are distributed according
to some notion of fairness and/or justice, although they would be hard put to point to more than
perhaps a dozen such societies in the whole history of mankind. Most of the time, it's the law of the
jungle; even today (as you know) there are plenty of tyrannical governments which have not been
touched by any concept of right other than that right is with those who have the power to exercise it.

Now this does not answer your question at all. Nevertheless it is worthwhile, every so often, to put the
issue in these terms, to clarify a couple of central points in the debate about rights. Firstly, we are
indeed constantly discouraged, even in so-called democratic nations. Wherever there are
governments, there is secrecy and cover-up. To exercise rights, either individually or in a group,
requires you to combat those whose interest is poised against your's. Simple fact. Secondly,
however, the whole problem is strung up from the wrong angle, as so often happens with really
important human concerns. Instead of rights, we should be talking about responsibilities.What is
being left out of reckoning is this: Being born does not confer rights, it only confers responsibilities.
Everyone of us, on reaching a certain age, is confronted with this plain fact. So are animals, which
then go on to follow their instincts. But we pride ourselves in brains with which to think. So we think
up the notion of rights and forget what we really should be thinking about and doing ...

Well, at least I've answered some part of your question and hopefully given you something to think
about. There is of course a vast literature on "rights", on legal rights and social rights and natural
rights and so on. You might like to dip into Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx, Sartre for
the flavour of the thing. As for me, however, I'll now step off my soap box and let someone else take
over. Still, I would be pleased if in reading any or all of this stuff, you bear in mind what I said about
responsibility. It is amazing how such a simple thought can throw such a different complexion on the
political and social questions which animate us all, and especially us "free" citizens of the "free" world.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney