Sunday, August 21, 2005

Either/or?

Which is the more important of the two: rights or responsibilities? Or are they equally important? Interesting questions. Michael Coren, writing in the TorontoSun.com, gives it to us straight:


The mass of our social difficulties, the majority of our seemingly insoluble problems, arise from the fact that in the Western world (and particularly in Canada) we have engineered a rights-based society rather than a responsibility-based one.


The social contract between the governed and the government, between authority and citizenry, has become degraded and unbalanced. Instead of asking what our duty or responsibility might be in any given situation, we demand to know what are our privileges and rights.


No comments: