Opinion: Extra rights for some don't exist

If a police officer has the right to do something – anything -- so do you. If you don’t have the right to do it, then no one does. Not police officers, CIA agents, bureaucrats, or presidents.

A job or a position can’t create extra rights; there’s no such thing as an extra right.

This is hard for many people to accept because those who benefit from the fantasy of extra rights work hard to brainwash the public into believing it.

The only reason those jobs exist is to hire someone to do things most people would rather not do for themselves. Yet the existence of the job doesn’t remove your right to do the things you hire others to do. It can’t.

Pretending otherwise is as silly as believing once you hire some kid to mow your lawn you have no right to mow it yourself anymore. And that his parents can throw you in a cage if you dare to do so.

There’s no guarantee those servants are competent or can do it better than you could. Or that those jobs should be done at all.

What those jobs do create is illegitimate power over you and your life, liberty, and property. It’s the same kind of power a mugger in a shadowy doorway has over you if he gets the drop on you. Having power doesn’t make the power legitimate or make the actions right.

It’s good I don’t have the power to impose rules on my neighbors forbidding them from doing things I don’t want them to do, but which violate no one’s life, liberty, or property. It’s also a good thing I don’t have the power to kick in my neighbor’s door to stop them from doing something that is prohibited by these rules I or my club dream up. This power is always abused when exercised, whether by a lone individual or by a collective such as society.

Or by an antisocial collective like a government or a mob.

Majority opinion can’t change rights into wrongs or wrongs into rights. It can’t legitimize invalid power or the attempt to protect and exercise such power. This is why democracy is nothing to fetishize or promote.

It’s not safe to confront those addled with the notion of extra rights or illegitimate power. It’s also not necessary. Once you see them for what they are, they become trivial to your life.

Farwell’s Kent McManigal champions liberty. Contact him at:

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