What are my rights?
I hear people say things like “right to education” and “right to healthcare”, also “right to
bear arms” “and right to privacy”, but these things seem pretty mish-mash.
Is that what rights are? Just whatever the government decides to grant me? It seems
wrong that a persons “rights” should just arbitrarily change from one sector to the other.
(I imagine Homer Simpson hopping back and forth over a border “Now I have freedom of
speech! Now I don’t! Now I do! Now I don’t! Do! Don’t! Do! Don’t!..”)
Are there fundamental rights? If so, how are they derived/identified?
In the U.S.; our rights our outlined in the Bill of Rights, the founding fathers believed that rights are inherent, and crafted the BOR to limit the powers of government over people. It’s more about what the government cannot do rather than what we can. Crucial distinction.
Your rights are to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Vis-a-vis the Federal government, they’re enumerated in various points in the U.S. Constitution, notably in the first eight amendments made to it (since it neglected to provide a list). Other rights are guaranteed by various other amendments. The Ninth Amendment states that you have other rights that are not listed – and the Supreme Court, which is chary of defining new ones, has nonetheless mined that for four or five items that are obvious in retrospect but unspecified (e.g., the rights to marry, to have children, and to travel). (Note also that sometimes it takes a little creative reading: e.g., “you have the right not to be prosecuted for something you did legally at a given time that the government later decided was a crime” is written as “Congress shall pass no ex post facto law.”)
Vis-a-vis the State, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a portion of your local state constitution spell them out in similar detail.
Vis-a-vis your fellow man, you have whatever rights statute law and perhaps your state constitution recognize, and whatever you can get from him. (I am legally fully justified in discriminating against you because of your race, color, creed, national origin, or whatever, so long as I don’t violate the specific provisions of the various Civil Rights Acts, state law, and so on – it’s nobody’s business but yours and mine. Of course, I bear the burden of my actions, like when you organize a bunch of your coreligionists, members of your race or ethnic group, or whatever, and picket my store because I’m a racist or anti-[insertreligionhere]ist jerk.)
You have the right to remain alive until you die or are killed. Beyond that, I know of nothing that’s guaranteed by the nature of the world.
Most countries have some sort of guarantee of basic rights that they assume are “guaranteed” to you. The “Natural Rights” theory espoused by the Founding Fathers would assume that God (not the Christian one, but the slothful God of deism) guarantees the stuff spelled out in the Declaration, and that this is “self-evident” (to Jefferson, at least; not to Bin Laden, evidently). In Taliban-era Afghanistan, you have the right not to be tempted from your pursuit of good fundamentalist Islam by the sight of women who might lead you to unclean erotic stuff. :rolleyes: In Canada, you have the right to such medical care as you need; here, to such as you can afford or which the doctor/hospital is willing to give you through its own ethical sense of responsibility. So, no, there are no real absolutist rights recognized by everybody.
I cannot think of a single one that doesn’t depend on one’s outlook on life, or morality, and so on. I started a thread on this some time ago but for some reason I can’t seem to find it. No matter, it is a good topic.
For any person to suffer unnecessarily, for any reason whatsoever, is wrong. I think this would invoke a fundamental right to carry out justice wherever it is needed. But the value of justice is also defined by its method as well as the end result. This would probably mean that every individual should have the right to expect a reasonable and consistent level of justice meted out by a legitimate authority.
The right to expect a legitimate authority to do all this kind of dirty work for you is, I think, a fundamental right also. You can see what would happen if this wasn’t the case at all, or the rule of law wasn’t being properly enforced. Take, for instance, the example of the recent atrocities which took place over the weekend in Israel. When the Palestinian authorities allow its own citizens to take the law into their own hands, it affects everybody. By not keeping a leash on suicide groups, and allowing them to declare war on whoever they wish, it diminishes the credibility of the rule of law, and only invites anarchy. I mean, how is it possible that a group which does not even have the right to award punishment to a criminal should be given the right to wage war?
I have been speaking very generally, but you can see the potential problems this throws up.
You have the right to remain silent. If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present while you are questioned. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.
Do you understand each of these rights as I have read them to you?
Do you wish to give up the right to remain silent?
