"When it comes to rights, *deserve* has got nothing to do with it."

"When it comes to rights, deserve’s got nothing to do with it....
    "Rights protect awful totalitarian people all the time. There are many philosophical reasons for this; one is the recognition that we can’t be trusted to decide who should or shouldn’t get rights, and that arrogating such power to ourselves will inevitably favor the powerful and popular over the powerless and unpopular.
    "That’s why the whole notion of 'free speech heroes' is dicey. Plenty of people who stand up for their own free speech rights would cheerfully infringe on the rights of others given a chance....
    "We all constantly struggle against the tide of the instinctual human position “speech I like should be protected and speech I hate should be punished.” But we like simple stories, and we like heroes, so when someone’s speech is wrongly suppressed, we battle a cultural inclination to make them into noble, admirable victims.
    "Usually they’re not, and wanting them to be heroic clouds our thinking."

~ Ken White from his post 'Hating Everyone Everywhere All At Once At Stanford'