When I write of the rights of the collective, I really mean "the rights of the individuals who make up the collective". It is simple common sense that sometimes it is best to limit the rights of one person in the interests of the rights of many others who might otherwise be harmed by that first person exercizing their individual rights.
There is no such thing as the rights of the collective because there is no such thing as "the collective" (i.e. "the collective cannot be defined).
Go ahead and try to answer the question I asked you yesterday. Who decides what the rights of the collective are? Who decides when the exercise of my rights has violated the rights of the collective? Who gets to decide what "the collective" even means? It's not one person, so is it two? Three? Is it fifty people? Is it any group of people at all or is it a particular group? Is it the majority? The majority of what, your church group, your city, your state, the whole country? What if the majority in your city said your church group sucks and shouldn't be allowed to exist any longer? What if the majority of the world said your country sucks and shouldn't exist any more? Are they right by virtue of the fact that they're the majority? No? Why not? Who decides whether they're right or not?
WHO DECIDES?
"A right is the sanction of independent action. A right is that which can be exercised without anyone’s permission.
If you exist only because society permits you to exist—you have no right to your own life. A permission can be revoked at any time.
If, before undertaking some action, you must obtain the permission of society—you are not free, whether such permission is granted to you or not. Only a slave acts on permission. A permission is not a right." - Ayn Rand
If you think it through honestly, you will find that there is no rational answer to my question. The closest to an answer you will find to the question "Who decides what the rights of the collective are?" is "The collective.", which is obviously self-defeating. The concept of individual rights, however, has quite the opposite outcome. I cannot say it any better than others already have...
"Since Man has inalienable individual rights, this means that the same rights are held, individually, by every man, by all men, at all times. Therefore, the rights of one man cannot and must not violate the rights of another.
For instance: a man has the right to live, but he has no right to take the life of another. He has the right to be free, but no right to enslave another. He has the right to choose his own happiness, but no right to decide that his happiness lies in the misery (or murder or robbery or enslavement) of another. The very right upon which he acts defines the same right of another man, and serves as a guide to tell him what he may or may not do." - Ayn Rand
Try to apply that same sort of logic to the the collective and see what happens. It won't work because all the concepts break apart into meaningless and undefinable ambiguities, starting with the concept of "the collective" itself. How can an undefined entity have the right to life and even if it could, what would its right to life even mean? How would anyone know whether an undefined and undefinable entity actually existed in the first place and what could it possibly mean to violate it's right to life?
Clete