What's More Important: The Rights of the Individual or the Rights of Society??

Question

Personally, I believe the rights of Society should always far outweigh an individual's rights.

Too many individual rights, unfortunately, can harm society as a whole. Limiting how much one can earn, the types of property one may own, and things one may publicly say will help ensure that EVERYone is on a fairly-equal playing field.

It may sound totalitarian, but I do believe it's the only way to form a healthy society for everyone.

Answer 1

You are correct. The basic right is the right to live, because life is a prerequisite for every other freedom's value. The dead can't make any use of freedom. When you must choose between the survival of many and the survival of one, most of the time the survival of many will be the right choice.

But not always. The "many" might not include everybody affected by your choice of whom to save.

If an overcrowded lifeboat is sinking, and some people must be pitched overboard, who is the one person who must be exempted from the "tossing lottery"? The person who knows how to navigate the ocean. If he dies, then all the others will also die. So in that situation, that one is as important as everyone else in the boat put together.

The rights a person has should be graded in proportion to how important he is to society. How many will suffer, if he doesn't do what only he can do? Or, I should say, what he can BY HIS NATURE do.

Any laws that create specialness for some "out of thin air" are bad laws. They subordinate natural ability to position in an artificial social hierarchy, thereby subordinating better people to their natural inferiors.

One thing you don't want is equality of condition. You should not award an equal portion of opportunity and resources to unequal people. The more able should get preference. You shouldn't lavish resources trying to help less able people to "compensate" because that deprives the more able people who can actually make an above-cost return on the same investment.

I think it would be best to offer opportunities ON EQUAL TERMS to everyone. Whoever can do, let him do, and pay him well. Whoever cannot, deny. No reach-downs. No affirmative action. No quotas. No parasites. No "compensatory" measures. No "status" exceptions. No special deals.

Answer 2

Honoring and protecting individual rights should always be of primary concern. The fallacy in the question is the notion that the two are mutually exclusive. If the rights (including property rights) of the individual are protected, then society will benefit. If rights are sacrificed for a supposed societal improvement, both the individual and the society will ultimately suffer.

Answer 3

The rights of the individual ARE the rights of the society. The society fails when individuals are treated as if each one was in some kind of herd of people. Every situation is different........so the rights of the individual must be judged by what has happened to that person, and the harm it may cause this person or another.

Answer 4

Society

Answer 5

Good question.

I think there must be a balance between the 2.
Too much consideration for the individual leads to an uncaring and selfish society.
Consideration for society rights only theoretically leads to a communist state.

Often individuals rights conflict with each other. Then you must choose between them to create the best society possible.
For example, the right to freedom of expression can also lead to perceived insulting of religion. This insulting of religious ideas might be considered permissible. However, if it turned into violent persecution because of someone's religious beliefs then it would not.

Answer 6

OMG LMAOFD!!!!!
You are NOT serious right? You're joking right?
If you ARE serious, who stirred your brains with an ice pic? You have a serious logic and reasoning disability.
OK, here is the "kindergarten" version so you may be able to understand it.
There ARE no SOCIETAL rights that do NOT STEM DIRECTLY from individual rights. Get it? The "rights of society" you refer to are in fact only "governmental rights". You obviously believe that all rights, individual or otherwise are give to the people by the government. Here is a shocker for you sport. In America, the people have ALL the rights and grant only a FEW specific rights to the government. That is working for most of us, don't know about for you but the rest of us like it a lot. Now there are countries in the world that have the "rights of society" thing going on. France, Germany, Italy, England etc. All of them are socially unstable and failing as a society. Seems to be working great for them...why don't you lend your support of "rights of society" by moving to one of those countries. I'll give them another 50 years before they are bankrupt and begging the "individual rights" countries to bail them out. And we probably will, as we have so often done before.
Get a grip and try...try very hard to escape out of that liberal education your parents paid so much for and try thinking in straight lines again. Remember when you were in kindergarten, before anyone had a chance to mess up your thought processes? It was fun. Things were black and white. Rememberrrrrrrrrr..................remmmeeeeemmmbbbberrrr....................

Answer 7

The rights of the individuals. A society can be controlled by a few. And such is the case right now. Our Government is attempting to take away the rights of the individual to preserve the wealth and power of the elite in this society.

Answer 8

The rights of the individual are the rights of society.

Answer 9

I would have to disagree with your assertion, as the limitations you propose are anathema to encouraging the exceptional. I do not wish to have limitations on anyone's ability to express themselves, own property or generate income. The more restrictive the society, the less able it is as a whole. A good model of what you describe is China...

Answer 10

The right to raise a child in a safe environment
Individual Rights
Societal Rights.