Why You Need to Defend “Other People's” Rights

Let's start with free speech. It's not just about your right to speak. It's about your right to listen.

When someone is silenced, the right of everyone else to hear that speech is violated. Including yours.

But what when the speech of someone you might want to hear is silenced? Then what? Who will you go to for redress?

You're just an individual. You are weak. You are up against the state. The state is strong. No individual can stand up to the state and prevail. Only numerous individuals, standing together, can successfully challenge the state.

How about the right of habeas corpus, the right not to be imprisoned by the state without a trial, without any charges, without the right to defend yourself before a jury who will decide your guilt or innocence instead of the state deeming you guilty because it says so? If you're thrown into a dungeon, once that right is lost, you have no power to get out.

If people you hate, or are told to hate, don't have rights, neither do you. The state can always declare you an enemy- or do what the U.S. has done, say that to “protect” you from official enemies, it must take away your rights. (It has done this in every war, and increasingly in the periods between wars. This is not a new phenomenon.)

Other people aren't “other.” Other people are you too.