We don't have a right to be loved. In a proposed minimalist version giving children a right to be loved, the philosophical objection is that a right invokes a reciprocal duty to love our children. ... I swear Pilgrim, that's the objection.
Very well, it is manifest that there is no right to be loved by any of us of any age. I'm going to push back on that with vigor. I will do so with a maximalist counter (which you would expect of me) and a minimalist approach.
I argue that there is a duty to love. If each one of us carried out that duty everyone else would be loved. We would have the right and we would have it actuated. Problem solved. Philosophers pick at the margins of otherwise solid arguments. The practical effect of their objections to a right, especially one as "human" as love, is nil. That is the effect of most philosophical objections. I don't know of any human who doesn't love somebody. Even if they don't love their children they love someone else. Imposing a duty is aligning philosophy with practice. Maybe there are recalcitrants, I don't know. They have nothing to fear. There aren't going to be Love Police. It's a moral obligation. If you don't love even one person, including yourself, okay. If it's not too much trouble, let us know by means other than massacres/suicides. Philosophical objection met and cast into the dustbin of whatever history philosophy has. That's my strong argument and I will defend it.
Then there is my minimalist argument. We Americans, at least, have an amorphous right to privacy that is found in the penumbras and emanations of our Constitution. It is entirely consistent with Anglo-American jurisprudence and with moral philosophy that we have the right to withdraw from the society of those who make us feel unloved. So long as I am loved by one person, and that includes self-love, I do have the right to avoid the society of those who do not love me, who do not even like me, who may wish to make me unhappy or bodily unsafe if given the opportunity. I don't have the duty to associate with them. I can isolate myself (as in fact I do). I both love and like myself. So if philosophers are adamant that I have no right to love since they have no duty to love me or anyone else I just won't hang with them.
I think it would be better, no, I know it would be better, if we each accepted a duty to love at least one other person but if not, just don't come knocking on my door; just go away and no one will get hurt.
The end.
