We are awash in discussions of rights: state’s rights, voting rights, property rights, gun rights, privacy rights, corporate rights. The rights of the rioters on Jan. 6 trump (I use that term advisedly) the rights of the public’s institution, the U.S. Congress.
There is an important cultural shift that warrants more attention: In the past three decades we have shifted from an emphasis on society’s rights to that of individual rights. What is best for the public no longer has priority.
Today, the individual has primacy; the public’s interest is overshadowed — often silenced.
The mask mandate debate is a current , volatile example: The individual has a right to jeopardize the public’s health.
Another painful example: the rights of private developers in Utah to run rough-shod over the rights of the public to have clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment in the inland port. Government regulators have been emasculated by conservative courts and Legislatures.
Developer/owners’ rights to use their property any way they want has primacy over the health of westside school children (with the highest incidents of autism in the state), over the health of Salt Lake residents already often suffering from the worst air in the nation, over the desperate conditions of drought facing Utah.
Many do not realize that the 16,000 acre port jurisdiction is privately owned. And those private owners are salivating over the profits to be made from building an additional 152 million square feet of warehouses on the city’s wetlands. Despite Jack Hedges vaunted claims, UIPA has no authority over them! It cannot force them build sustainably (as the public has been promised), to use electric trucks, to have solar panels, or to contain their contaminated rain water that runs off their parking lots into the Goggin Drain, heading for Great Salt Lake.
The individual rights of the developers to make profits trumps the rights of public citizens to be healthy.
As my kids say, “That’s messed up !”
Alice McHugh (Nancy), Salt Lake City
Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax deductible