OK, I see what you were getting at now. There are indeed rights that are defined by what others can’t do to you. Sorry for the misinterpretation.
No, I agree with posters like sleestak (in post #6) and aldiboronti (in #8) who say that, although we really ought to see to it that everyone has enough to eat, it’s a misuse of the word “right” to say that food is a right. I might make an exception in the case of those who, like dependent children, have a reasonable expectation to be taken care of by some other specific person. But if I don’t have enough food, there’s no one I can point to who really ought to be providing me with it; hence no one’s depriving me of my rights.
Agreed.
By this logic, all sorts of things, some of them rather silly, could also qualify as “infringing on the right to life.”
Exactly. If I plunk my lazy ass in front of my TV and say I’m not budging, bring me food, do I have a “right” to expect food to be brought to me? If food is not brought to me, who do a take to court for depriving me of this “right”?
I’ll go along with the theory that “Food is a right”, but the big question in my mind is - “Who is obliged to provide it?” I certainly feel I have a right to eat, but I also have an obligation to provide food for my family and myself.
Saying that something is a right doesn’t, in my mind, mean that the gummit has to provide it free of charge; it does mean that I can’t be denied access to it (re-reading that, it doesn’t make sense as written, but I know what it means).
Self-defense is a right, but the government is not obliged to defend the individual (I’ll dig up the cites if challenged). I have a right to not have my house broken into, but the government does not have to provide me with steel bars.
Out of curiosity, and because I can’t find any numbers, anyone have a number of adult starvation deaths in the U.S.? All I can find are related to negligent care givers or mental health problems. Is this really a problem? I realize that Colorado is kind of isolated from the center of the universe (New York, isn’t it?), but I don’t recall ever hearing about someone unable to get fed.
Seriously, is this a problem? Or are we just up in arms because they aren’t allowing a park to be used for charitable distribution?
If everybody suddenly sat down on their asses tomorrow, who’d make sure the “right of food” was enforced? Who’d grow it, who’d harvest it, who’d deliver it, who’d wash it, who’d prepare it?
That’s what makes me believe food is not a right. The pursuit of food, I could get behind that as a right.
Making “food” a right is basically saying “other people have an obligation to provide me with food, whether they want to or not.” Doesn’t that go against the principle of the inaliable right to Liberty?
The framers of the Declaration of Independence knew what they were doing. They didn’t say Happiness was a right, but that the pursuit of it was.
Sitting on your butt in a public park and having food delivered to you looks like it’s in pursuit of bugger all, to me.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! Let me give you Jessie. Jessie sits on her ass in front of a TV, and food is brought to her three times a day. Now – why Jessie sits on her ass in front of a TV, is that he’s 80 freakin’ years old, able to walk only with great pain and effort using a walker. She spent X years (I believe 30 but am not sure) doing some form of social work (she retired from it years before I met her, and I never got the details). She then spent her active retirement years doing volunteer work in the community, through her church. Delivering meals to shut-ins was one element of that, and she was struck by a car on an icy street while doing so at about 74.
I think Jessie has a right to eat food. She does, of course, have a wheelchair; perhaps the Social Darwinists in this thread might be mollified if we stuck a pushbroom up her ass and had her wheel herself around doing janitorial work to earn her daily bread? After all, it’s not like she’s entitled to anything from the rest of us, to hear the “compassionate conservatives” talk here.
Nowhere in my previous post did I say these people should not be fed or assisted. I have been on the local Medicaid program when I was unable to work and I know its uses.
For very practical reasons, I think it’s reasonable for societies to assume that there will inevitably be homeless, indigent, elderly, and unemployable people; and that, pragmatically if for no other excuse, that society should figure out some way of taking care of them.
I’m just saying that notion of “food is a right!” probably isn’t a very good argument.
There is no right to food. There is a right for you to go get some food. The way I look at it (from a natural law perspective, which is also the foundation of the D of I), the only true rights you have are those things that you would be able to enjoy if you were living alone on an island. Rights in the D of I, and natural law theory, from whence they came talk about it protectiing those rights while you are living in a society. So, we have the right to our own lives, the right to live it freely, the right to work toward a happier existence, and the right to enjoy the fruits of our own labor (property).
So, no right to food. No right to be fed. No right to have someone else work to get food to give it to you.
Then you have no right to survive. A society or person that will let me starve to death is a society with no respect for my life, and I owe it/them none in return. There is no moral difference between murdering someone for profit and letting them starve because you are too greedy to share; the only difference is the murderer is being more honest.
Brainless liberal - no one is advocating cutting off food for the elderly, infirm, or children. As a matter of fact, I don’t see that anyone is advocation cutting off food aid for anyone, we are simply stating that the State does not owe any random individual food or security. It does, however, provide these services to millions who are in need, as do countless other organizations.
I don’t get food aid because I have a decent job. If it was a “right” I would demand that I get what was owed to me, job or no since Rights don’t rely on income. If we ever get decent healthcare in this country even people like me should have a shot at it. But food stamps? No.
“You owe me a living” is as disgusting an attitude as “We don’t owe you anything”. But your Jessie is so totally unrelated to the point of this debate that I don’t even know where to begin. Jessie, I would think, is eligable for Social Security, medicare (or medicaid, I always get those two confused), and is recieving care, right? So how is she being denied food? Doesn’t sound like she can even get to this park that isn’t going to be handing out bread, so what is your point?
Compassion for the less fortunate is an personal obligation for many of us, but I don’t think anyone has a “right” to special treatment. And, please, to our face, call a Shriner, a Mason, a Scout, or an Elk a “social darwinist” or a “compassionate conservative” in that snotty tone.
Der Trihs - who, exactly, owes you food? Me? Do I owe you a sandwich?
And who, exactly, is letting anyone in the United States starve? I still can’t find anyone outside of nursing homes and abused children. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, I just can’t find any indication that it’s a current problem.
So, if society is NOT, in fact, starving anyone, then what is your argument? Are these people in Florida actually unable to get anything to eat? Can they really be compared to people in Africa that are actually starving to death?
Just look at the canned-food collection bins at the schools and supermarkets and you might realize that people do care. But, of course, it’s much more fun to call 300 million Americans “murderers”.
Sure glad this is in the Pit, I was afraid I got a little too confrontational there for a minute.
On an only semi-related note - what about clean drinking water? Great Og, there are some parts of the world that sicken me just thinking about them. Children drinking what is essentially raw sewage. And, although they aren’t technically starving, suffering from Kwashiorkor and related conditions.
World hunger is a distribution problem… there’s plenty of food, just in the wrong places. Let’s get out of Iraq and start torturing the cretins that are starving their own people, 'cause the UN sure doesn’t seem capable of anything…
Whomever has food, if I have no other legal means of getting any. It’s just more efficient and even handed for an organization to hand it out.
Few if any people right now, because your side has yet to completely win. If you had your way there would be millions dead, between the mass starvation, food rioting and likely outright war.
Sounds good to me. If this were true, the charties would continue to have the right to distribute food in public parks to those who are less fortunate. Some choose to share the fruits of their labor that way.
Sometimes this place really gives me the Fear.
This is why I shrink away from calling food a “right,” as in right, inalienable human.
That definition of a “right to food” depends on the existence of a society capable of providing it; therefore, I don’t see how food itself can be considered a fundamental, inalienable human right. Wander out into uncivilized lands and see how long that right will keep you fed.
That’s coming at the problem of “rights” the wrong way around, I feel.
I’d rather think that caring for others is a fundamental obligation of a civilized society — that it is a burden society takes upon itself to solve. By feeding those who cannot feed themselves, it might be argued, we reduce crime; and that is a benefit to the society with an attached cost that we should take up willingly.
Different routes to arrive at the same location: the homeless guy still gets fed.
Okay, a couple questions about rights:
If I grab you and lock you in my basement, or if the government grabs you and locks you in a jail cell, for no good reason, you’re being deprived of your rights—specifically, your right to liberty. Right?
Now, what if you’re out exploring (in a cave, or an abandoned mine, or in the wilderness somewhere) and you fall into a cravasse and are trapped, and there’s no one else around who could rescue you. Is this also a case where you have been deprived of your right to liberty? That is, are your “rights” the issue in this kind of situation?
Now suppose you’ve fallen into the crevasse and are trapped, and I know you’re there and am able to get you out but for some reason I choose not to do so, but to leave you there. Now have you been deprived of your right to liberty? And is it I who am guilty of depriving you of that right? Or am I guilty, but of something else, not of taking away your rights?
Now suppose that you have gotten yourself trapped, and I’d like to rescue you, but a third party is preventing me or telling me I’m not allowed to do so. Is that third person depriving one or both of us of our rights, and if so, whom?
Sure you do. You have a right to exist as per your own efforts.
This I agree with. But is a commentary on the type of society one might choose to live in. Not on rights, in the basic natural law sense. In addition to these basic rights, societies can choose to grant other priveleges and classify them as rights. But they then are legal constructs, which is not what we’re talking about when we say “rights”.
If you wish to ascribe greed as the motive then I would agree with you here, as well. But that is not necessarily the case. If it takes me 12 hours to feed myself, I am under no obligation to work twelve more hours to feed you.
As long as the owner’s of the land (society) deem it a place for such activity. They can put whichever constraints on it they like. They can also remove them.
- Yes, I’d go with that. You have imposed your will upon me and taken away my self-determination. It’s not so much that you have confined me but that you have taken away my will to decide how to live my life.
2, 3, 4. No, my right to liberty has not been infringed. I decided to go off into a dangerous area. Nobody stopped me from doing so. With the freedom to make that decision for myself came the responsibility of accepting the responsibility of the outcome. One of the consequences of that free choice is that I am now stuck somewhere and dependent on the charity of others to rescue me.
- If you have decided to launch a rescue mission using your own labor and resources, and a third party prohibits you from doing so for no good reason, then they’re depriving you of self-determination.
You have chosen an interesting metaphor for individual rights. I live within a few hours’ drive of Mt. Rainier, and every climbing season several sets of climbers inevitably need rescue.
They constantly refer to their “rights” to be rescued. That somehow, by paying the $10/car admission price to the park, they have the “right” to a $6,000 helicopter ride down from the mountain if their feet get cold.
The “right” to be rescued from one’s own freely chosen unsafe behavior is something of a local issue.
Right.
No. There are no forces working to keep you deprived of your right to liberty. Your situation is inflicted by self and circumstance. Those are things that can also free you from your hole. You could come up with a McGyver-like idea or someone could happen by the next day.
The same as the previous question. The addition of the other person raises moral issues for him. There is no right for you to be helped. There may be a moral obligation on the passer-by’s part, depending on the society you both are a part of and the explicit and implied contracts that comes with it.
The third person is depriving you of your liberty, the liberty to act as you wish. He is interfering with you pursuing something that you view would make your life better, i.e., saving the person in the hole.