Too Many Marches For "Rights"

Political marching, protest marching, call it what you will, has become the latest trend as a way of exercising. It must be because they march about everything now. Almost all of the marches are about entitlements, what the protesters call their "rights". One such "right" that has generated protest marches in a number of Western European countries is the "right" to have the government pay all or most of a student's college tradition.

The students all do the same thing, no matter the country in which they march. They write signs that insult the politicians who are taking away their "right" to a free college education. Oh and at lest a few of the signs will claim that the person who made the decision to stop giving away tax money for their tuition is a Nazi. Yes, of course. I must be a Nazi too because I don't think that I should have my self taxed to pay for a private privilege (the tuition).

At these "rights" marches you will also see the protesters blocking or delaying traffic, wearing make up and masks, smoking a few non legal joints, maybe swilling a few beers. But in the end the protest rallies rarely cause any change because the politicians just aren't listening. Why should they? There are protest marches every day about some individual entitlement that some group thinks it deserves because it can't fathom earning itself what it needs in life.

In the days when people worked for what they wanted and protested not for entitlements, but for actual rights, a protest march frequently produced pressure that led to dramatic change. Not now. Marches for imagined rights are as much childish temper tantrums as they are serious protests. Haha "I want! Mine! Mine!" Oh how they sound like a four year old deprived of his favorite toy when it is time for bed, not play.

Successful marching campaigns have certain things in common. They need to have a very specific goal and it should be focused on gaining a positive independence, civil rights, rather than repealing a negative like the marches do now. only they fail to see that the age of entitlements may be ending and that individuals may have to work and earn what they seek rather than being give so called "rights" by a political system that uses those "rights" to bribe and conspire for votes, as in "I will give you free medical care and you vote for me".

Maybe if the marchers had a real protest to, uh, protest, they might be taken more seriously. I suggest they first learn the difference between a right and a want. Equal opportunity, for example, under the law is a right. Free college tuition at taxpayers' expense is not. It is a want. And in this time of economic difficulty, marching and protesting merely for what you want will lead to a dead end street.