Can rights be subject to a trade-off?

The background hum of stress as inalienable human rights are eroded. Today, in the New York Review of Books, Jeremy Waldron:

"The stakes are much higher in the trade-off between liberty and security. For what is traded off is something that was previously regarded as a right, and the loss of that right may simply be imposed on the people affected. This is troubling because rights are supposed to be guarantees given to individuals and minorities about the outer limits of the sacrifices that might reasonably be required of them. Rights are supposed to restrict trade-offs, not to be traded off themselves."

It seems to me self-evident that we are naive to trade rights for security, because we then have no course for redress when those keeping us secure abuse their power. Apparently, no-one else gives a shit. I look at my friends. All Ivy League educated. All successful. All bright. None of them care about anything more profound than whether they made the Lufthansa Hons programme. But let me not appear judgmental. My concern about terror is a low background hum. I worry about it as I sit in the BA executive lounge working out whether I can make Gold this year. Bad things happen when good people are out spending their Amex reward points.

You hate the ones you love the most: it's a subtle form of compliment

Wandering onto the Grauniad's website to read reviews of SARABAND - latest in the Bergman pantheon I am trawling through. I note their kind offer to submit a review of CONTROL on their "filmblog" page. Half the time the self-appointed mainstream media is having a go at Blogs for doing down investigative journalism et al. The other half of the time they are busy co-opting the new format to prove they are down with the kids. It's symptomatic of the self-regarding cant that suffuses the entirety of the press. They should spend less time bleating about right-wing ranters in the Texas putting them out of business and do some proper investigative journalism instead. The war in Iraq proved how far the fourth estate had become co-opted by the executive and its PR flunkies. If I'm going to get biased rants in the broadsheet press I may as well get it free on-line at blogger. Of course, that's not a solution either. I want thinking journalism. But my government's decided that I don't want to pay for it and the BBC is cutting jobs in factual programming. Eheu, o me miserum.