Of Group Rights and Individualism - GUEST POST BY MATTHEW DUNNYVEG
Of Group Rights and Individualism
There was no such concept as individualism until it was invented in the wake of the French Revolution. It was coined as a term of derision by Joseph de Maistre to describe a thoroughly poisonous development. While I don't claim to speak for de Maistre, here is my reasoning for placing the collective ahead of the individual:
The traditional word for rights in the West was ius, a Latin word from which our word justice is derived. We had the right to be treated justly, nothing more or less. This is the reason "right" means both political and moral right in English. It took liberalism to introduce the poisonous situation in which having the right to do something makes it right to do.
Rights can only exist collectively. A real right is a prerogative that a given people withholds from government at the risk of life, liberty, and property. Government can only grant privileges which can and will be withdrawn at the convenience of that government. Government tampers with real rights at its own peril.
The most important right is the first civil right of any group, which is independence. This means a group can live and govern itself according to its own values and standards, and without permission or a by your leave from any outsiders. In a word, sovereignty is the most important right a group can have. Without this right, no other rights are possible. A group without sovereignty is forced to rely on privileges stemming from the mercy of their masters. Ask Poles, Palestinians, or Southerners about having to rely on the mercies of their conquerors.
Only groups that have risked life, liberty, and property to obtain sovereignty have it. And only groups willing to continue to risk life, liberty, and property will keep their sovereignty. So, while I'm all in favor of as many individual rights as possible, individual rights are impossible without the group right of sovereignty. Individual rights can never be allowed to trump the right of the group to survive. The fact that liberalism places individual rights above the collective right of sovereignty is why we have lost both individual rights and sovereignty. The more liberal we become, the less freedom we enjoy.
