Rights are not sacred. They are precious, but they are also insidious, as the week’s events will testify. The right to free speech can lead to indoctrination or hate speech. The right to privacy can lead to the elimination of human life. The right to bear arms can lead to carnage.  Rights can be perverted to wrongs.

Indignation comes naturally to our lips, because we think our rights are sacred. We are obsessed with defending them to the detriment of those they harm and offend.   We don’t assume a point of view, we establish it. We don’t contend with the opposition, we batter it.  We don’t elect representatives, we purchase them and seal their allegiance.

The problem is, it is all based on good intentions.  We have every right to be proud of our democracy, our freedom to speak and assemble, and our right to arm ourselves. We are a model for emerging democracies, not to copy, but to study and learn from. We have struggled to clarify these rights over years of elections and judicial decisions, and we have come a long way.

But we are also arrogant in our rights, and it takes unspeakable tragedy to shake us loose from them.  This is not to make us responsible for the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Only one man can be faulted for that. But we have a problem with rights like the Gollum has with its “preciousss” ring.  We don’t respect our rights, we enshrine them.

To this date, December 18, 2012, no one has tried to make political fodder of the Newtown tragedy. It proves we have restraint and a sense of the sacred.  It proves we can make a moral treaty.

Someone will shortly violate that treaty, because someone always does.  When that happens, we should remember our rights, especially free speech, but we should also remember our wrongs: arrogance, privilege,  and presumption.  We should not tolerate political gamesmanship in the face of tragedy or indulge those with an ax to grind.

We may have inalienable rights, but they are not incorruptible.