The Right to Rights – Or Just Privileges

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No discussion on Rights can be complete without the inclusion of ‘Government’. While it is said that politics is downstream from culture; this author is left wondering how such a small portion of society can have such an impact on society without some level of catering or pandering by those who can legally impose force on the rest. Many minority groups claim to be the recipients of oppression thus allowing them to claim victim status and yet these same minority groups receive preferential treatment from both society and the courts.

 

Returning to the US Declaration of Independence with its unalienable Rights or the US Second Amendment that provided the phrase ‘shall not be infringed’ these ideals present Rights as the preverbal immovable rock. Where as, The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms added wiggle room in many of the clauses; for example under Legal Rights the second clause states the following: ‘Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.’ For those not in the know, ‘amelioration’ is the act of making something better, an improvement. 

Of course there is the problem  of when something is up for grabs, who gets to hold the divining rod for what better is and for whom it is better for? In the writing of and the research for this article, this author has reached the conclusion that The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was misnamed, or poorly written if the name is to be held as both true and accurate.