Let’s get this straight, once and for all: INDIVIDUALS have rights – groups do not!
Each and every individual within any and every group has rights.
The group – as a whole – does not.
This is a fundamental distinction.
We must NEVER permit anyone to ‘fudge’ or sweep this distinction away.
If we do, if we permit a group of 10 people, 100 people, a million people, to have rights different from simply the rights of the individuals who make up the group, make no mistake about it: we are endorsing a tyranny of the majority, which is not substantially different from simple ‘mob rule’!
Coming up on the anniversary of the 11/09 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, some obscure priest in the US has announced that he’ll burn the Koran as his expression of freedom of religion.
This has generated huge publicity all over the world – quite out of proportion to the act itself.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I do not like book-burnings. It is too Jesuit-like… (Except that the Jesuits would traditionally shut the whole family, including the kids, in the house in which they found books, before burning the whole structure down. To the best of my knowledge, this preacher does not plan to burn any people – just paper on which some words are printed.)
Now, the Vatican has issued a statement that:
“every religion has the right to expect that its sacred books, places of worship and symbols will be respected and protected”
OH, NO, IT DOESN’T!!!
No ‘religion’ has ‘rights’!
Only individuals have rights!
And YOUR right to religious freedom stops where MY actions begin!
Let’s stop paying lip service to faux rights.
Let’s stop cowering in fear of reprisal for exercising our fundamental rights and freedoms!
I urge each and every one of you to take some ‘holy book’ – does not matter which one, as long as it is considered ‘holy’ by someone… or, even better, one of each of them – and burn them. At least in effigy…
Not because you disrespect them.
But because you have the right to do so!
Because our fundamental rights and freedoms are above any creed or faith or doctorine!
If you don’t use it – you WILL loose it.
Freedom is to important for such a gamble. Don’t loose it – USE IT!
On September 11th, go and burn some ‘holy’ books!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 