Charlie Hebdo: Rights, freedoms, responsibilities: How far can satire go?

I saw this doing the rounds. Will Self is good, he presents fresh thinking, but he's not always right, he's not infallible. And I disagree with him on this.

He, as many others do, churns out the pithy 'every right comes with responsibility' expression. I think this is dangerous talking. If he's talking about entitlements (such as those pesky rights of way things) then yes, I might buy it as a guide. But, in reality they're not Rights in the ethical sense of the word. Ethical, Human Rights are absolute. There's no associated responsibility to go with a right to life, it's not a reward that follows your satisfactory completion of your responsibilities or duties. Rights, such as those that are in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and used to be called fundamental rights, are inalienable, they aren't negotiable, they're so protected that I can't even give mine away. Because it is not possible to give up those rights, even to avoid violence, torture or threat, it means that after the event, the perpetrators have no excuse, no defence, they can't say anyone agreed to give up their rights.

They're important, the right to life, freedom, security, expression, privacy, the freedom of thought, conscience, religion and more. They can't be traded over the possibility of insult, or hurting someone's feelings. I can't take someone's religion away from them, but I can and should be able to criticise them. There are weapons against insults and bad feeling whether thrown by pen or word, and that's an articulate response by pen or word, not a withdrawal of freedoms. Religions are free to make their case, but if they're not good enough at doing that, then they can't expect to get their way by snuffing out others' expression. If anyone wants to state anything under the umbrella of their religion, then anyone else should be able to state anything they want. There can't be an advantage, or a head start in debate for the religious.

So, this relates to the violence of last week, where violence was justified with religion. The perpetrators claiming religious justification they have given up on their argument, they have been unable to persuade on even terms, so they used violence to change the terms. They lost.

If we accept the argument, that our rights are a privilege, or something we're lucky to have because of the sacrifice of others in a some war a long time ago, if we offer our rights up to be traded, then we're risking those rights people have and many still have to fight for. People didn't fight in past wars because they were trying to gain rights, but because they already had them. They were defending them them and we should defend them now.

Millions of people didn't come out on France's streets yesterday to call for more restriction on speech, or restriction of thought, or religion. They came out to celebrate their secularity, to express their freedom without fear to their security. They came out to assert a universal right to debate with their words, and with pens and pencils.