I'm sorry, but this thread is a little ridiculous.
First of all, let me say that our rights are as real as anything. They are physically written down in official documents. Yeah, sometimes they fail at the purpose for which they were created.
But think of it like this- you know what also has a purpose? Chairs. They exist for you to sit on. However, sometimes they break, sending its would-be occupant crashing to the floor. Observers may laugh if the victim is alright. Or, they may frantically call 911 if he's not. And if they do, the loud blare of the sirens would call out to all the people in your area, letting them know that somebody is hurt and in trouble. Soon, people will begin praying and sending angry letters to the chair manufacturer. The subject line of many of these letters would likely read, "An injustice has been done!"
With all this publicity, the media would pounce on the story. Now, not only the locally affected area is angry. Now the entire Nation is angry. The chair manufacturer would have to release a statement. They would say that a defect occured to the chair due to human error, all the while apologizing profusely .
But the emotionally inflamed masses would not accept this answer! Instead they would deny it as their anger reached new levels. They would begin to group into angry mobs outside the chair factory and boycott all goods manufactured by the company. After this, media attention would esculate further, and now the frenzy wouldn't be isolated to a single country- no- now the entire developed world would lose sleep over this grievance. They would be emotionally charged over the human error that was made.
All the while, a select few logical minds would be sitting at home. Sitting on the same brand of chair that broke and set the world on fire. They may even look down at it, saying, "My chair is fine. It has never caused me any trouble at all." These people may also look up statistics, finding that millions and millions of the chairs at fault had been sat in before, never hurting anybody. Except one person, of course. The guy who was sent to the hospital after an encounter with a chair defect.
This guy would be laying in his hospital bed, exausted after a long day of interviews, thinking, 'Shit happens. Everybody should simmer down for a second.... after all, I'm morbidly obese and there likely was nothing wrong with the chair in the first place. Was the media worried about this point? No. That's political correctness for you. And even if the chair actually had a defect, we should at least respect ourselves a bit more. Next time, we should look at the whole story, instead of focusing in on the one part that would satisfy our impressionable minds- the bit with the juicy controversy.'
Edit- Holy sh*t! I typed this on my iphone! I did NOT expect it to be this long.