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Position:Home>Arts & Humanities> 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. 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. |