But, before we continue down the path of rights, let me diverge and ask a different question (I know, I’m horrible with continuity in serial posts): is insurance the only role of government? Is law solely for protection of rights? What about the didactic power of law? Should that be considered as fundamental a facet of law as its preventative/retributive nature?
Here’s an example of the didactic nature to which I refer:
In the mid-to-late 90s, the internet began to replace cassette tapes as the ideal format for sharing music; while time-consuming and costlier, it opened up new vistas of music beyond the collections of your immediate friends. Songs were shared without guilt and without guile. Then, seemingly out of the blue, there were lawsuits and legislations that told the sharers that what they were doing was wrong.
Now, the debate of the issues of piracy is one for another time, but what -is- worth underlining here is the difference in the attitude of the citizens: some realized that what they were doing was wrong and stopped, others felt the same way but continued, still others believed themselves to be Robin Hoods and developed better ways to share. The point is that, whether or not they agreed with legislation, no one was innocently trading any more.
That is an example of the ability of law to act more prescriptively than descriptively. The underlying issue of course, is, in a democratic system, -should- laws be prescriptive? Or should they mirror the society? If the answer is “a balance of the two,” then where do we find that balance?