WHAT WORKS BEST FOR SOCIETY...AND HUMANITY?

With all the breast beating, shirt tearing, moaning and groaning going on about individual rights…particularly the right to privacy…a question that seems to be getting short shrift is:

On the issue of a “privacy rights”, what best serves the needs of society and humanity?

Does protecting “individual rights” and “individual rights to privacy” best serve society and humanity as a whole…or is there an unnecessary cost to society in promoting the individual right?

Should the right of the individual be more important than the rights and well-being of society and humanity in general?

Society started when humans first banded together as a group…and of necessity gave up certain individual rights in order to live as a group.

Why would this not continue? Why would it not be expected that the concept that allowed society to form in the first place…would not expand as society grew more complex.

Allow me a slight tangent here: The gun rights lobbyists seem to think that the rights of individuals to own guns as (supposedly) protected by the 2nd Amendment…are far more important than any safety that might be obtained for society in general by reasonably limiting 2nd Amendment rights.

Odd thing: Some of the people I know who most adamantly oppose that kind of (in my opinion, wrong-headed) thinking…are now in the vanguard of the movement to champion individual rights of privacy…even though there is compelling evidence that reasonably limiting those individual rights may be helpful…even necessary…to the general public safety.

These people who champion individual rights to privacy suggest that an individual’s right to privacy is so “sacred” that even if our country (and the population in general) would be safer if the government were allowed to be more invasive and intrusive in search and surveillance…the individual “right” not to be included in the surveillance should trump the general welfare.

Folks…that is nuts. The argument for unlimited rights to own weapons…and the argument for unlimited rights of privacy…are both nuts.

The right to own weapons OUGHT to be limited; there is a “general well-being of society and humanity” question in play…and in my opinion, that question ought be resolved with the general well-being of society and humanity trumping any individual rights in that regard.

Similarly, the right to privacy OUGHT to be limited; there is a “general well-being of society and humanity” question in play…and in my opinion, that question ought be resolved with the general well-being of society and humanity trumping any individual rights in that regard. If the government determines that intrusive surveillance help protect the population in these troubled times, it not only have the right to allow that surveillance…IT HAS THE OBLIGATION to do so.

This is not to say all parties on both those questions cannot reach plenty of accommodation, but it most assuredly says that if “trumping” is a must…the general welfare holds the Ace.

I have my reasons for feeling this way…but I would like to hear your opinions.

Post away…and let’s discuss it.

(Cross posted at my other forum)