THE ILLUSION OF RIGHTS
John Chuckman
In truth, there is no such thing as a right.
The last three centuries or so of European history developed
the concept and fixed it in our minds as something real and many modern states
have enumerated lists of rights, but, in the limit, the concept of rights has
no force behind it.
Words on paper mean nothing when those with real power in
your society decide that the words are only that, words. Judges have no power
to direct where the society’s power is unwilling to cooperate.
Apart from what has happened at various times in a number of
European countries, the ability simply to switch off rights has been
demonstrated many times in America's history, and there can be little doubt
that dimming down and gradually switching off rights now has become a central activity
in American society.
Nothing so effectively trumps rights as government claims of
emergency situations, such as civil war and now the so-called war on terror.
For the foreseeable future, rights in Western countries are going to
increasingly be limited or ignored, if not even proscribed.
This is certainly the case in the United States where construction
of a national security state is well underway, the template being that of
Israel, a state which despite a stage show of democracy is quite literally more
of a security state than the former East Germany, more both because technologies now are vastly more effective and
penetrating than anything the Stasi had and because the proportion of military
and security services in society is far greater in Israel than it was in a
supposed absolute state.
Establishing such a vast state apparatus anywhere is never
without consequences for human freedom and rights, although Israel has never
pretended to establish defined rights, it being an impossible task to do so for
a “democracy” where only one kind of person is welcome and where millions are
literally held against their wills and where the state apparatus feels free to
seize anyone’s property at any moment.
So it is a very ominous model towards which America is
working. The work has proceeded gradually since 9/11, so that there is no
sudden panic in such a large general population, but it proceeds inexorably,
with new steps announced periodically limiting this or that activity. Of
course, it just so happens that the project serves the establishment’s own power
interests, effectively securing continued and increased authority.
The events used to excuse the project and make it acceptable,
those of so-called international terror, were themselves natural outcomes, reactions
to the establishment’s abuse of authority in a long series of attacks and wars
to reshape the Middle East and its endless tolerance of an intolerable human situation
in Israel. The establishment’s behavior created international terror.
In the end, the unpleasant truth is that only might makes
right, and sentiments and fine words count for very little. We truly have made
small progress since the days when a French nobleman’s coach could run down a
peasant in the roadway without consequences. We are still ruled by wealth, and
the security services, servants of wealth, gain added and unaccountable powers
almost daily.
After all, that is how America governs much of the rest of
the planet today, isn't it? Why should home be any different?
