What It Means to be Human on “Nature Rights”

By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

My latest podcast delves into “nature rights,” which, I believe, could reasonably be depicted as neo nature religion. It isn’t just the constitution of Ecuador, as I have discussed before. Some US municipalities have passed ordinances giving “Nature” the right to sue. We live in the most bizarre times, don’t we? We can no longer dismiss these threats to human exceptionalism with a blithe, “It can’t happen here.” It is happening here. It is happening now. And unless more of us wake up to the threat, it will only get worse, for as I say in the podcast:

This [Nature rights] is not only anti human exceptionalism, but it devalues the concept of rights altogether in much the same way that wild inflation devalues currency. After all, if rocks and streams are “rights possessors,” human rights cease to be special and the very concept of rights itself, becomes ho-hum.

Tune in here.