Month: August 2020

To the detriment of the political discourse, we do not in the common parlance draw the proper distinction between rights and entitlements. The two are distinct and should not be confused.  The perennial public debate over the role of the government in the lives of individuals would be a lot clearer if the distinction between the two were properly drawn and were better understood.  RIGHTS are inherent.   Genuine rights are not granted to persons by king or country and cannot be taken from the individual. This leaves the question of what constitutes a right and who says so.   Some see rights…

In 2014, Scotland had a referendum on secession from the United Kingdom.  The process was an exemplar of democracy.  The country was evenly divided between the proponents and opponents of the schism.  In the end, the Scots voted 55% to 45% to remain part of the UK.  The voter turnout was 85%.  In this election, the issue was clear, the decision straightforward and the significance paramount.  There was only the single question on the ballot.  Choosing whether Scotland was to be an independent country or, alternatively, was to maintain its 300-year old affiliation with its neighbors, was not a decision…

In the simplest case, a single word may be a collective noun. It can refer to people (crowd, team, mob), to animals (herd, bevy, pack), or to things (clump, bunch, batch). These are usually general in nature. You can have a team of cyclists or a team of scientists or a team of oxen. A more elaborate construction refers uniquely to a group of something and takes the form:

a [collective term] of [noun]

The doctrine of qualified immunity grants government officials performing discretionary functions immunity from civil suits unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.  In other words, unless the harm done is blatantly egregious, the government is not responsible for violating the rights of citizens.  Misbehavior which would clearly result in legal action when one party harms another is virtually impossible when one of the parties is the government. Qualified immunity is in the news these days because it is the principal which protects government entities from lawsuits resulting from police…