Collective rights: A contradiction in terms

Robinson Crusoe needed rights only when other human beings, including cannibals and mutineers, landed on the island. These other human beings could violate Robinson Crusoe's rights. When these other human beings appeared, that's when Robinson Crusoe suddenly needed rights.

As Ayn Rand put it, “a right is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.” To possess a right means to enjoy freedom of action, free from coercion by other men.

Rights are not necessary to protect an individual from nature. Rights cannot protect an individual from nature because nature, in the form of carnivorous animals, poisonous plants, or a harsh climate, is incapable of respecting the rights of a human being.

Rights are useful only in protecting an individual from other human beings, who can choose to respect an individual's freedom of action, providing they hold his human rights sacrosanct.

Rights are necessary only in protecting an individual from other human beings, who can choose to violate an individual's freedom of action, in the event his human rights become an inconvenience.

Human rights are the rights of the individual human being to be protected from other human beings. Collectives of human beings are the victimizers of individual human beings. Collectives of human beings are precisely what rights were intended to protect individual human beings from.

It should be clear now why the notion of “collective rights” is a contradiction in terms. It should also be why the notion of “collective rights” is a “stolen concept.”

The notion of “collective rights” steals rights from the individual and turns them over to the collective. The notion of “collective rights” steals rights from their rightful owners and turns them over to their usurpers. The notion of “collective rights” steals rights from victims and turns them over to their victimizers.

The notion of “collective rights” is an ideological steamroller beloved by collectivists of all stripes, from Maoists on the Communist left, to champions of Taiwan independence on the fascist right, who use it to flatten any uncooperative individuals who might stand in their way.

The notion of “collective rights” is an affront to logic, to the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. What's worse, the notion of “collective rights” is an affront to justice, to the fair and equitable treatment of all individuals under the law.

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