Torc Waterfall in Ireland

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The right to water was not the only right claimed by the demonstrators. Many of them believed (to judge by the leaflets they handed out) in a right to eat, to a home, to education, to health care, to a job, in fact to almost everything important in life. They believed, then, that everything should be subsidized, which in effect meant that everything should be under political control, doled out according to political criteria (their own). 

This in turn demonstrates the pernicious effect on the human mind and soul of the notion of rights to tangible benefits. Indeed it is better if everyone does in fact have enough to eat, a decent roof over his head, etc.”€”but this is not a matter of rights but rather of decency, kindness, compassion, desire to avoid unnecessary suffering, and so forth. Once everything becomes a right, there is no need anymore for decency, kindness, etc.; and what is granted as a right is rarely received with gratitude. Indeed, resentment and humiliation are the more likely response, insofar as what is granted is never enough and confronts the receiver with his own inadequacy or status as a minor.   

It may or may not be that subsidy is the best way to secure a particular desideratum for all the population, but it is obvious that not everything can be subsidized in this way; the attempt to do so will end in totalitarianism. There may have been demonstrators against the water charge who regarded water as a special case, but most (I should guess) thought of it as just one case among many. Their vision of a just society was one in which all that was not a right was forbidden. It was not coincidental, then, that the Irish flag overprinted with Che appeared at the demonstration. 

Not all is for the best in this the best of all possible worlds, not by a long chalk; to the extent that the behavior of rulers and the powerful is disgraceful, protest is justified. But the demand for a perfect system, to use a word bandied about at the demonstration, in which all would be equal and none would be powerful or greedy or self-interested, shows that no lessons of history are ever learned, at least not by everyone. The demand for perfection is a protest against human nature.