An excellent article from Real Left (formerly known as Left Lockdown Sceptics) makes an excellent case for the primacy of individual rights, and how without individual rights, there can really be no common good worthy of the name. This is a very important and necessary corrective for a grave and perennial error that has long plagued the political Left (both genuine and phony) for at least two centuries (on and off) to one degree or another. Namely, the specious idea that group rights > individual rights is essentially a form of moral relativism that ends up hurting not only the individual, but the collective/community as well.
(Quite frankly, this is one of the very, very few things the Left could and should agree with Ayn Rand on.)
If we can't hold onto our hard-won civil and human rights and liberties in a crisis (whether real or manufactured), then we cannot hold onto them at all, as they would thus not really be rights, but mere privileges doled out by the powerful, with more strings attached than a spider's web.
Genuine rights and liberties are NOT conditional, after all.
Now, this does NOT mean we should endorse hyper-individualism either, as in "I got mine, screw everyone else," or, as Margaret Thatcher said, "there is no such thing as society". That's the essence of neoliberalism, which is, in a word, evil. No man or woman is an island, after all. But affirming the common good need not, and must not, mean trampling individual rights either. The false dichotomy between individual and community is exactly that, false.
Without the primacy of individual rights (and the rule of law, to back up such rights), any attempt at democracy ultimately devolves to oligarchy, tyranny, and/or most likely of all, ochlocracy (mob rule). It basically becomes like two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. Natch.
The key takeaway: If the genuine Left ever wants to rise again in any way, shape, or form, they had best take heed! Or else, the phony neoliberal pseudo-left, the right-wing (including the far right and "alt-right"), and/or the "tankies" on the extreme authoritarian far left, will all gladly and eagerly vie with one another to fill in the moral vacuum left by the grave error of hyper-collectivism. And yes, hyper-collectivism is just as bad as hyper-individualism, if not worse still. They are two sides of the same ugly coin.
Long article, but definitely worth a serious read. We ignore it truly at our own peril.
P.S. In case the reader wants to trot out that old chestnut, we are well aware that shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater is not, and should not, be protected as free speech, for example. Duh! Indeed, there are nuances and edge cases, to be sure. But these are essentially the exceptions that prove the rule of (largely) absolute individual rights.
