Losing your job because you celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk does not make you a victim. It makes you an idiot.

An idiot first and foremost because you’re the kind of person who celebrates murder. An idiot again because you forgot that your boss also has the internet. And an idiot a third time because now you’re crying about freedom of speech when you clearly have no understanding of what human rights are, what they protect, who they apply to, or how they interact with each other.

This video is a bit of a human rights for dummies video because clearly there’s a lot more dummies out there than I realized. Now, I’m going to start with a caveat. Not every video that you’re seeing online of people crying about losing their jobs is actually real. Satirists and opportunists who just want to monetize their ad revenue off a viral video have put up a lot of hoaxes and fakes. So be careful before you repost viral videos. But the fact remains that yes, there are quite a lot of people who are now well into the find out stage. And some of them are crying about it online because people have been sharing what they said, amplifying it so that the whole world sees it, and now they’re experiencing real world consequences because of their online idiocy.

So why isn’t this a violation of their freedom of speech? Why isn’t this actually a free speech issue at all? And if you can get fired for what you say, then what is this whole freedom of speech thing about in the first place? Are there people just picking sides and celebrating speech they like whilst punishing speech they don’t? Or is there actually underneath all of this an ideologically consistent, intellectually coherent position which simultaneously protects freedom of speech from government action whilst also respecting our other human rights and each other’s human rights, things like freedom of association?

Well, we’ll get into that whole mess in just a second, but first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project, and I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I am 100% viewer supported. So, please help me to keep the Topher Project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my no-nonsense videos, then you will love my no-nonsense books because I take no prisoners when I discuss the crucial questions of power, government, human rights, freedom, and civil disobedience. You’ll find my books on Amazon.com. And you’ll find not only my books, but also my DVDs and my t-shirts and hoodies in a range of different designs at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

Now, I am not going to go through a bunch of the social media posts that are out there in this video.

They’re all over the internet. You can find them easily enough if that’s something that you actually want to see. And there is plenty of mainstream media reports all about the firings that have already taken place as a result of people’s social media posts, with more firings most certainly yet to come. That’s a rabbit hole that I just don’t want to go down today. What I want to do is focus on free speech, human rights, and cancel culture, and specifically whether or not these firings that we’ve seen in just the last few days are the reverse of the cancel culture craze that we saw in the early 2020s, or if perhaps there’s something different going on here.

Now, there’s a few simple points we can lay out up front before we get into some of the more complex nitty-gritty of human rights a little bit later in this video. So, let’s start with the easy stuff first. The right to speak your mind freely is absolutely a human right. It is one of the most fundamental ones at that. But it doesn’t trump anyone else’s rights or stop them from responding to what you’ve said. This is the basic question in this situation. You have the right to speak. I think everyone agrees on that. But do others have the right to respond to what you’ve said? And the answer is yes, they do.

See, the US First Amendment and human rights in general don’t actually restrict your fellow human beings. They restrict government. The US First Amendment specifically says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people to peacefully to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment, as with the human right to freedom of speech more generally, does not restrict your fellow man’s response to your speech. Because if it did, it would be a violation of their human rights.

Your right to speak does not mean that you have a right to force others to listen or force them to agree or force them to stick around or force them to still be your friend or your client or your employer.

Now, I’m not a fan of cancel culture for all the reasons that I’ve laid out publicly during the cancel culture craze a few years ago. I think it backfires most of the time. It’s unproductive. It turns villains into victims. And there’s a whole host of problems with cancel culture. But the fact is, from a human rights perspective, you have the right to speak, and they have the right to respond to what you said, including firing you.

So now we need to go deeper, a little more complex, because we need to touch on the difference between what’s called a negative human right and a positive human right. Now in my first book, Good People Break Bad Laws, I touch on exactly this issue. And the uncomfortable truth is that much of what people call a human right today isn’t. Much of what’s in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights are not human rights at all. And I can explain exactly why. Because the most essential core foundational principle of a human right is that it is equal and that it is universal because it exists by virtue of our humanity.

See, if a right is something that we were to earn through our actions, then it’s not a right at all. And if it only applies to some people and not to others, then it’s not human. That right doesn’t exist by virtue of our existence as a human being. They exist for some other reason. So for a human right to be a human right, it has to be universal and equal to every human being. But this principle universality and equality immediately creates some boundaries around what a human right can or cannot be because, by definition, a human right for one person cannot violate the rights of another. That would not be equal rights and therefore whatever that right is being claimed it’s not a human right if it violates the rights of another human it’s not a human right at all.

Now this is what’s known as a negative human right. That is a human right that exists to protect your rights but does not violate the rights of others. These are the only real human rights. They’re called negative human rights, but also often called human liberties because people unfortunately mistake the word “negative” to mean that it’s a bad thing. They think these are the bad human rights. And that’s just an unfortunate quirk of language. Cuz that’s not the case at all.

Let me give you a clear example of the difference between a negative human right and a positive human right, which is therefore, in my opinion, not a human right at all. Freedom of movement is one of the fundamental human rights, and this is one of the good ones. This is one of the negative ones. It protects you but doesn’t violate the rights of others. You have a right to move around. But that doesn’t mean you have the right to force other people like me to give you a lift to your destination. The negative right stops others from interfering with your right to move around your freedom of movement. I.e. it means that others aren’t allowed to kidnap you or to trap you in some way or to just be blocking you all the time so you can’t get to where you want to go.

That’s the actual human right because that can apply equally to all of us and it doesn’t impose itself onto others.

It just stops them from imposing themselves onto you. But if we were to interpret the right to travel, the right to freedom of movement, to mean that you can demand that I have to give you a lift, otherwise you’re violating my right to travel well, hang on. In demanding that I give you a lift, you’re now violating my right to private property. It’s my car. It’s my petrol. It’s my time. My right to freedom of movement. Cuz I’m no longer free to go where I wanted to go. I have to go where you want to go. You’re violating my right to freedom of association. Maybe I don’t want you in my car and no I don’t have to give you a reason it’s my car, my rules.

So in this case, this supposed right that’s being claimed this freedom of movement being extended to include the right to force other people to help you travel that becomes a human rights violation in and of itself. Now I could, if I wanted to, volunteer or agree to give you that lift. At that point, my rights are not being violated. I’m helping you to travel of my own free will. But you have no right to force me to facilitate your right to travel. Even though you do have a right to travel.

So you have a right to travel freedom of movement that’s your human right. That’s the negative right. The human liberty. It protects you and stops others from violating your rights. But it doesn’t give you the right to violate the rights of others in order to facilitate your right to travel. Okay, that would then be a positive right or a right that forces others to do what you want regardless of their human rights. And that then becomes not a human right at all.

Now, unfortunately, the UN doesn’t seem to understand these differences.

And if you read through the UN Declaration of Human Rights, you’re going to find a mishmash of positive and negative rights thrown together as though they’re all the same thing. But they’re not. So, now that we understand the difference, we understand that the exact same principle is in play when it comes to your freedom of speech and expression.

You most certainly do have the right to speak as long as you’re not violating another person’s rights for example, the right to life by directly calling for violence against them. If you’re not doing that, you’re all good. You can say the most vile, despicable things if you want to, up to and including celebrating the murder of a man like Charlie Kirk. A man who didn’t just exercise his human right to speak, he went out of his way to lend his microphone to others, amplifying their voices of disagreement along with his own voice as well.

So to continue the metaphor from earlier, Charlie was the kind of guy who gave people a lift. He exercised his rights, but he also volunteered to assist others to facilitate their right to speak as well. But it was his microphone and it was his rules and he’s a very clever guy and most people came off second best when they tried to debate him. So there are people who are now celebrating his murder. They’re even trying to use Charlie’s words against him, as if something that he said could be used as a justification for putting a bullet in his neck. It’s pretty sick. But as much as I don’t like it, they do have the right to say it. But also, everyone else has the right to respond.

Because one of the core negative rights that we all share the good human rights that protect us is freedom of association. Now, freedom of association simply means that we are allowed to hang out with, to employ, to invite to our house, invite to dinner parties the people that we want. And if people that we don’t want show up, then if we’re on our own private property, we have the right to make them leave. And if we’re not on our own private property, then at a minimum, we have the right to leave ourselves and to not be forced to continue to associate with people that we don’t want to associate with for any reason.

This is freedom of association. You cannot be forced to continue to associate with someone that you don’t want to be associated with.

So the same human rights that mean that yeah, you can celebrate the murder of a peaceful communicator that you didn’t like if you want to the same human rights also mean that your boss has the right to disassociate from you, to fire you, because he or she no longer wants to be associated with you because of what you said.

And that’s not a violation of your right to speak. You spoke. That was your right. They fired you. That’s theirs. They’re not violating your rights when they fire you. They’re exercising their own rights. Cuz if it’s their company, it’s their house, their rules. You have a human right to be free to work no one should be allowed to stop you from working but you can’t force someone to employ you because that would then be a violation of their rights.

So, congratulations on that little speech you gave online. Time to go find a new job. And the fact that people don’t understand the difference between negative and positive human rights and nor do people seem to realize that a human right cannot be something that violates the rights of others. It’s impossible that lack of understanding is proof, if any more than were needed, that our education system is failing us and badly. So, if you’re winging about losing your job because you celebrated a murder, then you are not only an idiot and you not only need to go and find a new job, but also you probably need to go back to school and maybe pay attention this time.

Now, for anyone who would actually like to understand human rights, as well as understanding the origins of power, of government, the role of civil disobedience in the modern age, can I suggest you grab a copy of my first book, Good People Break Bad Laws? You can get it from amazon.com if you’re outside of Australia or you can get it from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com if you’re inside of Australia.

Then, if you’re a Christian and you’d like to understand more about the theology of civil disobedience and how it is that Christians must obey God at all times which means that at times we must defy human authorities in order to be obedient to God then grab a copy of my second book, Good Christians Break Bad Laws. Dive into the Old and New Testaments, Romans 13, 1 Peter chapter 2, plus the lives of Moses, Daniel, Esther, the apostles, and of course, the life of Christ himself, as well as some church history, to really understand what it is that God has called Christians to do, and how it is that we must continue to obey God even in a fallen world. You’ll find both those books on Amazon, but you’ll find my books, plus my multi-award-winning DVD, plus my t-shirts and hoodies in a range of different designs at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com.

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