My rite to through a punch ends at your nose.... Read on....?

Question:

My rite to through a punch ends at your nose.... Read on....?

Rights are tempered by responsibilities. There is no way around this fact.

Someone once said, ??My right to through a punch ends at your nose.?? Put another way, I have the right to through a punch only if I exercise the responsibility not to hit you. I doubt that anyone would argue against this.

Yet it would seem that there are in fact people who would argue the point.
For example the Education Department of Western Australia has a major directive stating that all children must be included, no matter what. It is the child??s right top be included in the class, and on the surface it would seem a good thing. So what happens if one child physically attacks another? This situation happened recently at a school that a family member of mine teaches at. The interpretation by the principal of the directive was that the attacking child could not be removed from the class, So the child who was attacked was left to remain in the class (not alone, with the rest of the class) until the child asked to go home, due to distress. Is it not that child??s right to have a safe and un-distressing school experience. Many other examples exist, but this one highlights my point nicely.

This leads me to two questions.

1. Should the promotion of rights with little or no focus of responsibilities in the general population be considered a moral or criminal offence?
AND
2. What is it about our current societal structure that makes us more rapacious when it comes to wanting our rights fulfilled even at the expense off others?

Serious answers only please.

Thanks.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Such a great question and what a pity that it has to be asked twice over here without any reasonable response!!

Let me put my own thoughts in this matter down here.

Every right that is demanded from the society by an individual, first of all implies a restriction on the rest of the society in one way or the other..... otherwise there would be no need to demand the right. To honour such a right of an individual, the entire society undertakes a responsibility to allow it. Since the equality principle mandates that a right granted to one ought to be equitably granted to all others in any free society where there are no masters and slaves, the individual right equitably accrues to all....... which then implies the corresponding responsibility for every individual to allow the right to all others. This is the first stage of responsibility automatically attaching to a right by the very definition of 'right'.

The second stage is the complexity arising from several rights being granted to individuals..... here every type of right has an additional responsibility not to infringe upon any other type of rights granted to all. Thus freedom of speech not only carries the responsibility to let others too have similar freedom of speech, but also carries a responsibility not to say what might insult or offend any other individual beyond the acceptable level of decency and interactions. Thus every single right gets entailed with the responsibility of honouring, and in no way disabling, all other rights of all other individuals.
The word equitable is an additional complexity in the interplay of rights and responsibilities.... to be equitable, the rights and corresponding responsibilities have also got to be commensurate with what is deserved by an individual in accordance with the function and capability the individual concerned is expected to contribute to the society.... thus the freedom of speech and corresponding responsibilities for a politician need not be the same as it is for a judge in a court of law and can be further different from that of a media reporter.

If any right is granted without corresponding responsibility, it would create inequality and injustice and thereby impair the society's character as free and fair.

Responsibility is obviously a burden and it is just human nature to try and avoid it or negate it... to the extent this becomes possible and can go on unchecked due to the complexities of large loosely knit society, it creates a power imbalance...... and sooner or later, the rights concerned would no longer remain equitably exercisable by all..... and the society would turn authoritarian in nature to that extent.

The Principal in the case you have quoted, in my view needs more education and learning, especially in such matters as the principles of equity and justice...... as it is, he is very likely to turn his school into a totally authoritarian institution...... because, whether knowingly or otherwise, he is exercising rights without commensurate responsibility.