Rights and Responsibilities

Rights are not a one-way street where the state and other people simply owe things to an individual — having rights also places real responsibilities on each of us, in at least four ways.

First, rights require us to think beyond our own personal needs and to help defend things that are good for everyone collectively — the 'common good'. Protecting the ozone layer, minimising air and water pollution, planting trees, preventing deforestation, and maintaining ecological balance are all things we must actively work toward, both for ourselves and for future generations who are equally entitled to inherit a safe, clean world in which they too can lead a reasonably good life.

Second, rights require us to respect the same rights in others. If I claim the right to express my views freely, I must grant that same right to everyone else. If I do not want others interfering in choices I make for myself — what I wear, what music I listen to — I must equally refrain from interfering in choices that others make for themselves. I cannot use my own right to free speech to incite a crowd to violence against my neighbour. In exercising my rights, I cannot deprive others of theirs; my rights are, in other words, limited by the principle that everyone is entitled to equal and identical rights.

Third, we have to actively balance our own rights when they come into conflict with each other or with someone else's. My right to freedom of expression lets me take photographs, but if I photograph someone inside their own house without consent and post the images on the internet, I have violated that person's right to privacy — exactly the tension raised when a television 'sting operation' broadcasts a private conversation between a public official and a well-known figure: even if the story feels newsworthy, publicising it without consent can amount to cheap sensationalism that infringes the very real right to privacy of the people involved. …