Speaking of human rights, as I was a couple of posts below, in my presentation to Canada’s House of Commons I quoted Michael Ignatieff, a forthright champion of human rights in his days as a Harvard professor but in his present incarnation as leader of the Liberal party in Ottawa rather more circumspect on the whole business. Here’s one Ignatieff line I cited:

Moreover, rights inflation – the tendency to define anything desirable as a right – ends up eroding the legitimacy of a defensible core of rights

That’s exactly right: The more pseudo-”rights” we have, the more our real rights get nibbled away. Here’s a very literal example of “rights inflation”: The human right to large breasts.

Note that the aggrieved transsexual suing for a larger bust on the basis of sex discrimination is not claiming that Britain’s NHS is discriminating against her by treating her as a man but by treating her as a ”natal female” rather than as a non-natal female. A “natal female” is not, as we old-school imperialists carelessly assume, a female from Natal Province in South Africa but the current term of art deployed by rights inflators.

The case is so absurd all one can say is: She’s a shoo-in! After which any “natal female” denied breast enlargement on the NHS will almost certainly sue on the grounds that natal females are being discriminated against. And at that point Her Majesty’s Government is pretty much on the hook for universal single-payer public-option 48DDs.

Even if it were (in Ignatieff’s word) “desirable,” no society is wealthy enough to afford the continuous artificial enlargement of its rights. On the other hand, I suppose there are worse dystopian futures than legions of large-breasted women rampaging through the rubble of an economically ruined land.

PS I’ll bet Obama Peace Prize head honcho and noted Norwegian breast man Thorbjørn Jagland can’t wait to give this latest human right a big hand.