What are Your Rights?

Wouldn’t it be grand if everyone got their own way? Wouldn’t the country be better off if overeaters could eat, if drug users were allowed to shoot-up without fear of consequences? What about murder, and incest, and other such ridiculous personal occupations? Wouldn’t it just be grand?

Personal rights are bandied around every day of life by someone who believes that their rights are more important than the rights of someone else. If you are against a popular political figure, those who support him or her are liable to tell you that you are a racist, or you are a hater, or whatever new word they coin to define you in a negative way. However, those same people cry out loud that it is their right to say whatever they wish.

Whose rights are whose? I do not condone a great deal of behavior. One-sided conversations are not always good. Bosses cannot just indiscriminately tell their employees off. It is not good form, and it causes a hostile work environment, however, there are no laws against bosses who are bullies.

What about smoking? Should people be given their law-supported right to smoke? What about where they smoke? Should they be allowed to light up when their table neighbor is putting food into their mouth? How about walking down a public street? Granted, it is outdoors, but there are non-smokers on those streets.

Everyone has the right to live. They have the right to breathe, they have the right to speak up and be left to their own devices. As long as those rights do not infringe on the rights of others, it should be just fine. People who smoke pot in the privacy of their own home are harming no one but themselves, if you believe that pot harms people. The jury is still out on that one. However, there are those who argue that pot smoking is the reason that the border patrols are being shot at. Granted, the drug cartels in Mexico are shooting and killing innocent people on this side of the border in order to get their drugs across. Think about that. If pot smokers have to get their drug of choice from the dealer down the street who does business with “Jose” in the valley, who gets his drugs from across the border, then the pot smoker is helping to subsidize the income and prosperity of the cartel. How profitable is the drug industry? I have no idea, but it must be pretty good profits for those who are in the “business” to go to such extremes to get their “product” to market, huh?

Now, think of that for a moment. Drugs kill—indirectly. They kill people who are fishing in a lake, or visiting family south of the border. They kill professional law men and administrators who are investigating the crimes. Drugs kill Mexican and American law enforcement agents. What if the major drug export, marijuana, were legalized on the north side of that border?

Now, I’m certain that there are those who are adamant against legalizing marijuana but facts and opinions on both sides of the issue are easy enough to find online or at your local library. Scare tactics from the 1930’s through the 1960’s are not facts; they are ideologies that were created to control something else in a person’s daily life.

Marijuana does not kill. People who are under the influence of marijuana do not kill. Cigarettes kill. Cell phones kill. SUV’s and McDonalds can kill. But Marijuana has never been proven to kill anyone. Yet, cigarettes, cell phones, SUV’s and McDonalds are all legal.

Back to my point about rights: who has the right to tell me that I can’t spit in the street when there is a drought? Who has the right to tell me that I can’t spit in the street when it’s flooding? No one should have the right to tell me what to wear, what to eat, what to smoke (I have always been a non-smoker, non-drug user), what to say, or what to think? Do people truly believe that it is their right to have authority over anyone else?

Rights are allowed only as long as we fight to keep them that way. Ugly people, those with abhorrent behaviors, are allowed to spew their trivial nonsense as long as the men and women in charge agree with what they are saying.

To say something negative about a minority in the United States is punishable by alienation. To say something about a majority member is free game! To disagree with someone who is under the “protection” of special interest groups will cause you to be beat down to the ground, but disagreeing with someone that the popular group disagrees with will get you kudos and a great big slap on the back.

Once we all realize that we all have the right to our voice, to our cigarettes, to our Big Mac’s, we will all do the right things by ourselves, our families, communities, and country. It is up to each and every one of us to speak up and speak loudly. Don’t let a bunch of narrow minded control freaks tell you what you can and cannot do: as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. Murder is illegal for a reason.