I agree completely that far greater thinkers than you and I have pondered this topic for millennia. And they’ve written lots about it.
And what they’ve concluded after all that work is that the idea has great merit but there’s no real agreement on the details. No agreement on what are the minimum core postulates are that must simply be assumed and cannot be derived from more base ideas. Nor is there a firm calculus on how to resolve conflicts within various elements of any set of the proposed fundamental natural rights, much less between proposed sets.
Certainly each real government in the world to date has taken their own spin on this, some aiming for good and others aiming pretty much for evil. Some stabs have clearly been better than others.
For damn sure a world of greater agreements about a greater roster of rights would likely be more peaceful, more thoughtful, and more happily harmonious. And by “harmonious” I explicitly don’t mean the harmony of enforced conformity beloved of Mr. Xi over in China right now.
I’m not sure there’s anything more to be said that doesn’t amount to “Tis so. Tain’t so. Tis so. Tain’t so.”
People have generally agreed about what rights should exist for quite a while now. The trouble is deciding which groups of people get to have or exercise them.
Again, I ask for specific examples of Canadians on the SDMB denying these things. I agree it sometimes happens in other fora and in things like comments on media websites or social media.
Not completely. Is there a right to be forgotten on the web? Different stakeholders have very different concepts of privacy. Of course, privacy laws are often a patchwork, and often been gutted due to a failure to update laws in step with technological advances, However, there is often significant case law.
Whatever we call it, inalienable, God-given, culture-given, consensus-given, or whatever, these rights can be taken away by political authorities. Hopefully they won’t, but giving them some special name doesn’t prevent bad authorities from taking them away.
There are many Americans who hold that a fetus is a living thing worthy of protection, but someone who is an immigrant or comes on your property is not. These inconsistencies are important, and matter more than written words, but so are imperfect philosophical definitions since one has to start somewhere. They say the Constitutions of China and Russia are impressively written, though I have not read them.
So no government ever allowed slavery or capital punishment or war.
The idea that anyone is guaranteed any right is nonsense. The idea that any right is universal is also nonsense. A right only exists when society in general decides that it exists and then employs a means of protecting that right. If you live in a different society, that right can disappear.
Government doesn’t give you rights. But government is the means people use to protect the rights they want their society to have.
My view on this issue is coloured by the fact that for the first part of my life, Canada did not have constitutional protections for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, due process, equality, and other rights.
Then Canadians as a society decided to entrench those things in our Constitution.
It’s the fact of entrenching those rights in the Constitution that gives them their force, not some abstract idea of natural rights. Governments enact constitutional provisions to give force to those abstract ideals.
It is true that legal structure gives pith and substance to abstract ideas of rights. For example, certain groups were not permitted to join some Canadian golf or social clubs until the 1980s or even later, after a number of legal challenges and improved laws.
The fact Québec has not signed the Canadian Constitution does not mean Québécois lack rights though they sometimes take other (and occasionally better IMHO) forms there.
The existence of the Constitution, legal precedent, case law and recognition of intolerance does not necessarily free these groups from routine discrimination and stereotyping, negative opinion nor difficulty. Only the more egregious abuses, and only if these matters are pursued and/or publicized. The existence of laws does not guarantee they cannot be ignored, overturned or ineffective. As a lawyer you clearly know how little many Canadians even know about law. Law often provides the support needed to keep society sound and strong.
You’d also get the chance to visit warm climes in both winter and summer without dealing with either pre-merger US or pre-merger Canadian customs & immigration officials. Sorry abut the TSA; they are indeed eternal.
Oh, I’d suggest that Canadians know law very well: American law, thanks to American police TV shows and movies. You may recall one of the truckers’ protest accuseds who tried to plead the Fifth in a Canadian courtroom; and I myself have had clients who have floated the idea of invoking their First, Fourth, and Fifth amendment rights in a Canadian courtroom. We have the equivalents in our Charter, of course, and while I don’t expect clients to cite them chapter-and-verse (that’s my job, after all), I do expect them to know that amendments under the US Constitution have no weight here in Canada; and thus, cannot be cited as such in a Canadian courtroom.
