Free «Individual Rights versus Social Rights» Essay Sample

Social rights are those that are held by the society rather than by individuals inside it, and individual rights stand for the rights held by individuals regardless of the group interests. Social rights have been always used as a way to facilitate personal rights but they also represent a mechanism to suppress and restrict them. The Bill of Rights is called to protect basic human rights but there are still some controversial issues that make it hard to define whether a certain right is worth protecting. The liberty of one individual starts when the freedom of the neighbor ends. The rights for carrying weapons, abortions, gay marriages, capital punishment and many others are very controversial and have both advantages and disadvantages for any individual or the society in general (Human Rights, p.2). The Rights that each one of us holds and the Morals taken by the group are originally intended to cooperate side-by-side building up civilization and society ruled by commonly accepted values.

On the other hand, the hidden controversy between social and individual values is one of the most important questions in the search of the sense of life and understanding of it. Your right is limited by your restriction not to harm anyone while you are holding it. In my view the society does not enough to protect individual rights. For instance, when it comes to discussing abortion, the only individuals who are eligible to take the final decision are mother and father. The child cannot take its right to get born or unborn, it’s impossible to consider its opinion, as it even doesn’t exist yet. Due to the medical enhancements that have made abortions safe the government cannot claim it to be “a murder” (Sullivan, p. 2).

The group and the society cannot be permitted to take the life of an individual who has been already born in a death penalty because the government didn’t give this life – it is nature that has such an exquisite right. The right to bear weapons also depends on personal choice of each one of us, but if we do apply the weapons to harm the innocents, the government can punish us for this.