by Roxanne Cottell

Created on: October 11, 2008   Last Updated: October 15, 2008

It isn't against the law to be an offfensive person. There is no law against any one of us being a pompous moron, but this does not mean that we have the right to offend others. We have the freedom, but we do not have the right.

Rights are funny things. Rights make us start sentences with "I have the right to..." and most of the time we are confusing having the right with having the freedom. People think that having the right to freedom of expression gives them not only the right but also some unspoken sense of duty to behave boorishly toward others. I will not go on with the standard "do-as-you-want-done-unto-you" sermon. I may have the freedom to do that, but I do not have the right to.

We have the right to do lots of things. Some people believe that it is fine to be rude to others, and they stand up for this right. They have the right to stand up for the right to say whatever they want. In this country we have the freedom to refuse to bathe on a daily basis, the freedom to worship a head of lettuce, the freedom to drive under the speed limit, the freedom to eat stinky food in a room full of people, but this does not mean that we have the right to do all these things.

One can hardly blame a person for feeling like they have the right to do anything anymore, because daily the freedoms which give us the rights seem to slip away more and more. The only way we may feel like we can preserve what little is left is to go to the extreme with our freedoms and our rights and say and do things that otherwise we might not. When we feel like we are being stripped of our freedoms is when sentences start with "I have the right to..."

One very important thing that we should all remember is that those freedoms which give us the right to do anything in this country is that those freedoms give us something that not a lot of people have anywhere else in the world - choice. We might not like the state of the nation at any given time, but at least we have the freedom to choose to exercise our rights. We do not realize just how much we have until what we have is no longer ours. We have the freedom to pick our nose in public, belch loudly on the bus, fart a mile up in the sky, and yell obscenities out over the rail of a ship as it nears harbor. We have the freedom to say and do basically anything we care to.

Taking care to be gentle with these freedoms is another thing altogether. We have the freedom to do what we want, and we have the right to say it if we choose to. It is too bad that more times than not we lack the common sense to see the fine line between freedom and right.

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