Justice over Rights

You have no rights.
The fantasy of rights comes chiefly from Germanic cultural mythology. Originally, it was more a matter of the rights of nobles and royalty, issues for which there would be no accountability to anyone else. This was chiefly expressed in the land-based feudal system of the European Middle Ages. It reached its high point in the doctrine of “Divine Right of Kings.” It was deeply flawed, and those who gave us the Enlightenment felt they had reasoned out a good answer by vesting humanity itself with certain rights. We see this mythology reach its peak in the likes of the US founding documents — which many of the authors never actually took seriously in the first place — and perhaps the “Rights of Man” and similar documents.
It’s not as if there were no people who actually believed these ideas, but the people promoting them often refused to live by them when ignoring them suited some contextual purpose. What matters is how these ideas became the mythology permeating Western democratic cultures. Today we have the comedy of various partisan agendas cherry-picking which kinds of rights they will emphasize to the exclusion of others. This whole talk of rights is bogus in the first place, because it’s nothing more than a rhetorical device to make your philosophical opponents look bad.
I don’t subscribe to this mythology. Once I understood what sorts of liars were behind the mythology, I realized it was pure junk. The longer I dug at the foundations of human history, the more utterly certain I was any talk of rights is an excuse to avoid discussing the real issues. A much more ancient and enduring concept is justice. The problem is in the definition of justice.
My regular readers know I reject the notion justice is defined by human reasoning. If it’s left up to us, it won’t take long for meanings to be stood on their heads. It has to be something external to the combined efforts of human intellect, or it won’t ever work. I assert justice has been revealed from the Source of all things, but even among those who accept such a presupposition, most have gotten lost by multiple filters layered on over many centuries. We’re back to where we started with human reasoning as the reference point.
Nor can I assume my reasoning is somehow immune to failure. All I can do is assert what I know and let truth cut it’s own path, but I’ve been digging into the question of what was communicated to us in primeval times. The idea of rights is directly contrary to what has been revealed as justice.
Here’s what most people choke on: You must not hold your life as precious, but you must treat all others so. That has nothing to do with self-defense, but as the broad view of what brings justice on this broken human race. On the one hand, we recognize life sucks, and it’s really not something we should take seriously for ourselves. On the other hand, we are wrong to make things any worse than they have to be. If we place our own perception of our needs above others, then there are no boundaries, no consideration for taking your share of the misery. That’s unjust. Your comfort is not some absolute played off against all contexts. There is a certain amount of background sorrow which varies and you are required to absorb your share.
That share itself varies with circumstances, and you are obliged to measure that, as well. You are your brother’s keeper in some senses. Everything is an on-going estimate of what will bring the best results for everyone in your orbit in life. There are measures of your existence which are shared property with the surrounding humans. Western Civilization has gotten this part wrong from the beginning, by raising the individual too high, and for all the wrong reasons. Individual greatness should rest entirely upon their demonstrated competence in caring for others. Not feelings, but effectiveness.
For example, the loss of JFK as an injustice is not a matter of partisan politics or his fine rhetorical speeches. After learning his lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis, he was about to remake the whole government into a more just and sane system. He would have dissolved the CIA as his and the nation’s greatest enemy; it was and still is, and it is they who killed him. He planned to break up the banking controls over all the economies of the world, and was going to seek genuine peace with the likes of Cuba and the USSR. He was willing to transform the US military from it’s massive and insensate bureaucracy to a much smaller and more effective force, doing what actually made a difference at the lowest possible cost in life and dollars.
These and many more ideas threatened the entire corrupt system which brought him to power as a figure head. He wasn’t willing to be a figurehead. No, not every thing he planned would have worked, but the net effect was a serious threat to entrenched criminal interests. We are hardly surprised when so very many different interests cooperated to murder him. As for moral problems, I suggest his private behavior was comparable to what we know of King David. Yes, I’ve done far better with my personal morality but I’m not distracted by the call to govern. I’d make a complete mess of things through sheer incompetence were I actually chosen to run such a big show. Whatever his flaws, the world would have been a far more just place had he lived.
I could say the same for many who never got the chance, but ran for President. No one candidate ever embodied justice, nor even the best of our hopes and dreams, but some came close enough to be a serious threat to those who actually do rule. A certain amount of inefficiency is expected, and personal moral failures are quite the human norm. Justice is unhampered in the main by most human foibles. It’s when we narrow down our individual focus on ourselves that we become ripe for exploitation by those whose plans for their own comfort require injustice on a grand scale. You’ll notice the right to vote has accomplished no good thing, nor most of the other “rights” enunciated by the liars who intend to make them all both dramatic and meaningless.
Somebody has to be in charge of we’ll all kill each other in the long run. We’ll do that only after we have terrorized each other with all manner of petty spite. This business of rights tries to make every man a nobleman against all others, and it’s guaranteed to be unjust on the whole. The very thread of thought is a threat in itself. There have to be people with authority, but it must arise from a genuine demonstrated ability to carry it justly. We simply have no concept for that in the West. We bluntly reject the very foundation of justice by hatefully refusing people the utter necessity of living in tribal social structures, the one society capable of best protecting humans against injustice. This whole business of rights pitting family against family shows a cynical intent to isolate people from their one best hope of protection.
In the name of rights we have destroyed justice, but it hasn’t gone away. It will devour us all too painfully, all too soon.