Well, Freedom… they already DID choose to fight and overthrow a government, thats what Mao’s people’s revolution was all about. Was it a majority? Nope, and neither were the framers of the DOI or the Consitution of the USA. The already chose to not be oppressed by a type of government and they chose what they have. So who the heck are we to tell them they’re being oppressed? This is no different than the farcical “Prime Directive” of Star Trek… “we know we’re advanced and further, we know we’re RIGHT, period. So we’ll hold with a status quo of non-interference (dare we say, isolationist) unless it furthers our own gains in some way (perhaps economic, but its not like we’re FERENGI, or anything), in which case the whole thing gets thrown out the door. But thats very unlikely, you understand… heeeeeey wait a minute, are those dilithium crystals???”
It is elitist, in a way, but you recognized that too. Good man.
More sci-fi mumbo jumbo with Jai Pey’s stamp of approval, turned my head on China in particular, Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, and his continuiation of the first four books, Second Contact. Alternate history, and pretty good. Of course (and this IS another thread) alternate history is mindless speculation anyhow… but it won’t stop me from talking about it.
Jai Pey, yup, read Starship Troopers, and found it to be almost infinitely better than the movie (with the exception that there is a different form of enjoyment to be taken from watching Denise Richards for 45 minutes to an hour…)
I know Lib’s take on rights, and I still don’t understand how owning property leads to rights. Wouldn’t ownership of the property be taken as a right?
As to China:
Eastern philosophy is, as I understand it, almost entirely different from Western philosophy. I believe that most of the opinions that Freedom, Jai Pey, Lib, and myself have expressed would be violently disagreed with by Eastern philosophers.
Their concept of freedom, rights, government, et al stems from a radically different history and environment.
As an experiment, I really wonder whether it would work to have a system like in Starship Troopers. For those that don’t know, it was a limited democracy. Only those that have served two years or more in the military (in any form) are allowed to vote, and only after they are no longer in the service. And it has to be an honorable separation (no quitting, no dishonerable discharge).
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
I admit it. I have been hanging around and posting. I have been avoiding this reply. Sometimes I just don’t want to think to hard I have been sticking to the easy threads
:: Thinking Cap On::
Actually, I don’t.
That 3 year old has no right to free speech. None whatsoever.
In addition to the right to live, that three year old has a right to be fed.
Now when you are an adult, you have every right to free speech, but no right to be fed.
It has been awhile since I read through all the posts up there, so I don’t know if this model is up there. I think the idea of looking at animals in the wild helps pattern what a right is. Remember, IMHO, a right is just the natural state of things.
The age thing aside, I am not sure where I stand on a voting = a right. I am thinking it through though. Rest assured that in between all the fun I am having this weekend, I’m tossing this one around,
Well, the framers were attempting to recognize the rights that God had created.
Here is the part from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”
He has. If you see a conflict, I suggest that you check your premises. I am much more inclined to think that any perceived conflict lies in my misunderstanding than in a problem with the way God created things.
Well, I may be proving your statement about self-examination true, but could you help me out and show me the contradictions?
You see, this is where I totally disagree. I see a right as the natural state of being.
It is easy to imagine this if there is only person. They can do anything they want. Anything at all.
Now throw God into the mix.Now they can do anything they want as long as God hasn’t put it off limits. This is a little misleading, since the order of the who came first is wrong.
Why does God get to put hings off limits? Because he is God God made the game, God gets to make the rules.
Throw in a couple of more people, and now the equation get a little complicated.
People still have the same freedoms and responsibilities, except (again ) when they bump into someone else’s freedoms. I think this is where Libertarian steps in. Under his model, whoever’s property you are on get precedence on most issues. Unless of course it breaks God’s rules. (although Lib might not refer to them as God’s rules)
Under other models, this is where the law steps in. To determine who is right and who is wrong. The presupposes that there is a right and wrong, and that we know it. Of course we usually have no problems of assuming we know something.
So, I don’t care at all about a group of individuals. The right is established between you and God.
Once again, I relaize that this arguement would old ZERO water with an atheist. But then I’m not one so I consider them wrong anyway.
:: Thinking Cap Off ::
I hope that passed muster. I’m off to relax. Have a good night.
Well, I think you did pass muster… and I’ll try to tackle your last post, with the following quid pro quo: I believe much the same as you, re: God.
I don’t believe that unalienable rights, as recognized by the DOI, are in line with the laws God put into place as outlined by the Bible. I won’t quote Romans and Ten Commandments again, other than asking this: Provide for me a reading of the Ten Commandments, or New Testament theology re: law of God, and show me where “Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness” can be found; perhaps my own limited view is coming into play here, but when I read those three, for example, in light of the orthodox Christian readings of the Bible, I see:
“Right to life = right to live, as a created being” (DOI comes close I believe, with the reference to a Creator),
“Right to liberty = freedom to live, apart and unbounded by tyranny” (Biblical justification in God’s clearing of Canaan for the Israelites?),
“Right to pursuit of happiness = right to a person’s ‘best destiny’ as ordained by God’s will or not”
Now, from my question re: God’s ability to create a unified moral code of ethics;
I share in your thinking, and its why I asked the question that way… I’m more apt to think the best intentions of the framers of the DOI missed the boat, somehow, in these three.
Again, I follow through here with no problem whatsoever, but I see a fundamental difference in the DOI (even its best intentions) and an orthodox Christian moral code of ethics, especially in terms of rights. My bottom line would be that there can be no other right than a person’s choice of (a) or (b), God’s way or his/her own.
There it is, the limit of all free will; and if a person chooses God’s way, he/she surrenders all pretense of self-determination (arguably, from that point onward). Not that I have a problem with that.
Now about contradictions:
Your premise, (a)
So depending on age (read: maturity?) you have different rights…
Premise (b)
If a right is a natural state of being, what difference does age make? Am I any less human at age 3 than I am at age 24?
I truly think you mean a three-year old cannot be held responsible for its right to free speech: it cannot be because it’s any less human. I might be putting words in your mouth, tell me if its the case.
Most pointedly, statement (1) from a couple posts above;
Here’s where its split open for me… simply ignoring a troublesome area doesn’t solve the quandry, and its not a consistent way to argue the point. Granted, you said you’d think about it… and that, friend, is the way of solving the quandry.
All I want (and I believe all that Surgo asked for) was a moral/ethical/philosophical way of talking about and describing rights. I have to demand that the system be consistent and non-contradictory, or else it becomes self-defeating. All questions must be answered by said-system, else it becomes suspect, and provided enough anomalies for which there are no answers, discredited.
And so, you yourself recognize that the same DOI, established from the same unified ethical code, yeilds two (arguably completely) different systems and understanding of how rights “are”.
So I figure, assume nothing: better to try the system against basic premises and examples to see if its unified and non-contraditory or not.
The right is completely established by God (or, as I figure, by some authority). It’s understanding, OTOH, is between you and God {or, depending on the system, between you and the authority(ies)}
I do care, for arguments sake, about the group of individuals, because I believe in a basic right of respecting human “dignity” which I truly believe is in line with the DOI and the Ten Commandments.
It doesn’t mean I stop believing in right and wrong, but it also means I might be confronted with another understanding of “right and wrong” which departs from mine totally, and have to respond in some way other than “Well, you can believe whatever you want, but I’m right”.
If your belief cannot hold water in front of anyone else, why hold that belief yourself? “It answers my questions” could be the answer, but all that does is appeal to the same subjectivity, contrary to the understanding of Absolute Truth you claim to possess.
Get me?
Regards to all… I don’t wanna hijack this too much longer on the same topic. FOr goodness sakes, someone must have a clincher for the debate in this arena.
You know, here is where I must part company with our founding fathers. I do not believe rights are “natural” or “God-given”. They are earned.
Such freedoms and rights as Americans enjoy were earned by their ancestors in the Revolutionary War, or even earlier, when the English citizenry wrangled the Magna Carta out of the King.
Personally, I am an atheist. I think it is inconsistent for an atheist to believe that rights are “natural”. If they are natural, do all living things in nature possess them? If not, at what point along the evolutionary chain did we acquire these “natural” rights? When we became Australopithecines? When we evolved into Homo erectus?
To me it is much more logical to see our present constellation of rights and freedoms as something of a social compact, developed over time, and which has become the bedrock of our political belief system (as embodied in our Constitution). (Of course, I speak as an American.) Leave me out of the pseudo-religious discusion of our “natural rights”.
Well, here’s where I agree with an atheist, but have to argue "pseudo-religious"ly to get to the bottom line.
Natural rights don’t have to appeal, utimately, to God to be “natural rights”. They do have to appeal to an authority of some kind.
A scientist, for example, can claim that there exist natural rights (I’d read expectations) inherent in a human’s genetic code. A lawyer can argue about natural rights which are identified by the law. A Marxist-Communist appeals to the dialectic, I as a Christian can appeal to God or the Bible.
We’re not talking solely about religion here… I admit this is a lenghty side-bar debate for me and Freedom, but there’s a big question I (for one) would like an atheist to answer: How do you morally/philophically/ethically talk about rights? You’ve given me a taste, in “something of a social compact, developed over time, and which has become the bedrock of our political belief system”, but that’s not all. Ethically, how do you describe that? “Go with the flow”?
Maybe not the same rights (in answer to “Do not all things in nature possess them?”) but sure, there is room for a reading like that. We’re talking about the natural rights of a human, though… DOI is pretty clear its identifying rights for humans and not for dogs.
With regards to the evolutionary chain (I think you hit the nail right on the head, here, from a scientific perspective), there can only be rudimentary “rights” recognized (possibly not even “natural” ones) when there exists some type of society. Protection of kindred is readily observable in giant apes; I truly believe this would be a necessary step to the establishment of certain rights, further down the evolutionary chain, because all rights (ultimately?) stem from (or at least, correlate to) survival instincts and pressures on a population (Heinlein wuold agree to this I think).
Moral and ethical descriptions of these rights occur when the society tries to express them in overarching terms.
Well, I guess I should begin by saying that you don’t have to be a Christian to believe that the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) is a good rule to live by. My “morals” derive, I suppose, from the very practical view that the world is a better, happier place to live when we treat others as we wish for them to treat us.
Unfortunately, not everyone follows this principle (not even all those who profess to be Christians). Therefore, society, over time, has developed a set of rules to live by (laws), most of which derive ultimately from the Golden Rule.
“Rights” are not “natural” in my view. Instead, they are simply a set of “super-rules” which take precedence over all other rules. Thus, the “rights” set forth in the Constitution take precedence over any other rules. If a law is passed which violates one of those rights, then that law is invalid (and will be ruled so by a Court).
Now, in my view, there is nothing magical or natural about these rights. They were developed as a practical way to prevent the will of a majority of citizens (or of a tyrant) from being imposed oppressively upon an individual (or a minority). They were created by people who had some experience with tyrants and did not want that experience to be repeated in the future.
Obviously, I take a much less romantic view of “rights” than most, but I still view the rights embodied in the Constitution to be a vitally important hedge against tyranny. They are no less important for having derived from human beings rather than from some divine source.
Freedom, we need to clear up an important issue immediately. Namely: God.
I don’t know the ratio of atheists/agnostics/spiritualists/etc, but what I do know is that in any discussion of right and wrong, rights, almost anything, it’s best to keep God out of it. After all, if we don’t agree on whether God exists, how can we agree on the nature of rights that you say spring from God?
Now, just because you’d not use God as justification, you can still argue in favor of the morals and beliefs that spring from your belief in God. Immanuel Kant founded a moral philosophy based on his Christian beliefs, but without relying on either the Bible or the concept of God.
Of course, we also seem to disagree, on a fundamental level, on the nature of rights, so maybe my saying this won’t do any good…
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
And that’s the problem with Libertarianism in a nutshell. Y’all are waaaaay to preoccupied with your possessions. It’s almost like watching a child with a toy yelling “Mine! Mine! Mine!”
I’ll ask again. How is freedom of speech dependent upon property? Surely you don’t contend I must be a property owner to enjoy this right. Same question on freedom of religion.
[/rant]
You are evading the question though. Where is it written that we have any rights at all? Do these rights emanate from Nature, from God, or from us little ol’ humans?
I say that what we consider “rights” are simply human constructs which we have imbued with a sort of pseudo religious reverence. (Helped along by the references to “the Creator” in the Declaration of independence.)
If they are not simply human creations, then somebody please point me to some divine or natural basis for these rights, cause I just don’t see it.
Oh, please. Are you the only person who doesn’t know the board crashed and posts were lost? Something told me I’d better save my response, so I did. I’ll paste it here:
By what magic do you possess your property? You’re born with some, and then you acquire more. What’s magic about that?
The NP position isn’t arbitrary; it’s simply how we define rights. And that’s the topic of this thread, isn’t it?
Regarding so-called “freedom of speech”, there is no such thing, as we see it. You have the freedom to speak on your property, but not the freedom to speak on mine.
You have rights naturally because you are born with property. If nature gave you life, then your rights are derived from nature. If God gave you life, then your rights are derived from God.
Man, that is one scary philosophy you’ve got there! To each his own, I suppose, but don’t expect to win many converts with that sort of declaration.
And yes, your definition of rights (rights=property) is arbitrary. It is not based upon anything you can point to in nature is it? (Or for that matter in religion?) Therefore, it is by default an arbitrary creation of the human mind is it not?
Note: The fact that it may have been created by the “Austrian School” doesn’t make the philosophy any less arbitrary, it just makes it a whole lot more pretentious!
But again, my view is that all “rights” are arbitrary creations of human philosophy. Don’t get me wrong. Rights are good things. They’re just not mystical things.
Of course I believe rights exist. I have the right to, at any time, do anything I want. However, I do have to accept any consequences other people inflict. Hmm, I hear you all saying, that doesn’t sound like a right to me. Well, to be honest, neither do I. But that’s the best answer I can get from any of my teachers at school, or any other adult I’ve ever spoken too. And being a good-little-me, I’ve taken their word for it. But rights existing? In a perfect world, yes. Rights really fail to be rights when there are exceptions, which rights we have LEGALLY always are. So what can define a right? Governments? No. Societies? Perhaps, but not likely they’ll all agree. I believe you define rights to yourself. What do governments really know about the people? They know what they voice, but not what they really feel as a whole, and neither societies in general nor Governments can appease people by granting rights and keep everyone happy all the time. Oh, that reminds me, a right shouldn’t be soemthing to be granted to you, but merely reminded of.
Of course, if they DO originate from God, then it doesn’t really matter if we agree on that does it?
IOW:
If A = A,
then A = A even if you and I can’t agree on it. A fact is a fact. The fact of this matter, is that to a sizable chunk of the world, you can not define what a right is without acknowleding God.
I have been clear here in this thread that an atheist would have a completely different take on a right than I would. You could partly reconcile this difference by changing “God” to nature.
Jai Pey,
I took advantage of the board being down and did a little reading. I saw Kant recomended somewhere around here, so I read a little of his work. I also delved a little deeper into Rand (a personal favorite).
I found that Kant and myself have irreconcilable differences :). He believes that there can be no moral absolutes because they always result in contradictions.
ei:
You are compelled to falsely testify against an innocent man in order to save your life. If you testify he will be killed.
An innocent life lost will be the result of either action, so how can you apply a moral standard?
Of course, if you believe in God, this problem is cleared up a little.
Now about Rand.
I picked up “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”
It’s not exactly as exciting as Starship Troopers :), but it does a great job of exploring rights and exploring moral dilemas. The book is a series of short articles that cover many topics. The best part was, you start out reading an article called:
**Man’s Rights{/b]
I was so pissed off that the board was down. (friggin hackers) I rushed over to post but just got that horrible routine maintenance message. Well, here are a couple of choice quotes from this essay.
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
“There is only one fundamental right, a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action – which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the futherance, the fulfillment and the enjoymentof his own life.”
“The concept of a “right” pertains only to action – specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.”
There is no way I can do Rand any justice by posting bits and pieces on this forum. Next time you are in Barnes and Nobles you may want to consider taking a couple of minutes to flip through it. Soince it is broken up into small essays, it is easy to read 10-15 minutes at a time and finish a topic.
Notwithstanding the truth (that the ‘rights’ of humans are largely illusory), the core meaning of “Natural” or “Human” rights is that there are certain rights that belong to a man independent of his position in society. Since society does not bestow these rights, society cannot justifiably take them away.
In theory, a human’s dignity is supposed to supersede any social order. As near as there’s been to a ‘definition’ of rights, IMHO, is AlFred Verdross’ five propositions, as follow:
(1) Each social order must recognize in the person a sphere within which the person may act as a free and responsible agent;
(2) The law must protect and guarantee the free exercise of a person’s action;
(3) The authority of the governing body must be limited;
(4) Respect for this limitation must be guaranteed;
(5) Respect for authority is not absolute, but subordinate to the dignity of the human person.
In actual practice, arguing that any “Natural” rights exist in the abstract is academic at best, in that, should such rights exist they are completely intangible in a societal construct.
That you are theoretically free to exercise your ‘rights’ is not a license to do so. Though members of a society retain such ‘rights’ as they may wish to define for themselves as individuals, the State, by its nature, judges the importance of those rights. Unless one withdraws from society one surrenders one’s individual rights to the collective interests of the community. This is the actual practice, and the one which grates on idealists so tremendously.
Sometimes the State is relatively benign. Sometimes the State is oppressive and tyrannical. But in neither case do an individual’s ‘rights’ exist tangibly in any form other than that granted by society.
Outside of society one has the same ‘rights’ as any other animal born to this Earth – the right to prey on or be preyed upon. I might argue that things aren’t all that much different inside society, but that’s a whole separate thread . . .
BTW – spoke-, the right to property is indeed one of the most fundamental postulates of equality and “Natural” rights, since denying a man his possessions is the first tenet of oppression.
Dr. Watson
“A society that puts equality ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.”
I already pointed you straight to it. You can open your eyes now. Your first property was your life, your body, your mind. Whichever gave you these, whether nature of God, gave you your rights.
Lib, he’s not arguing that we have property, and I’d say you’re right, in that after birth, we own our life, so we have property as long as we’re alive. What he’s disputing is the connection of rights to property. I would think that if you could connect rights to property, you would have a permanent basis for rights. However, I have yet to see a solid connection from one to the other. Go ahead and tell, I don’t mind seeing a Libertarian explanation (with both meanings of Libertarian).
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
The first issue is semantics. The book “A Childs Garden of Grass” created an interesting semantic difference between “freedoms” and “rights”, which I’ve found. Essentially, they define a “freedom” as an activity which you are physically capable of pursuing. They define a “right” as the power to limit someone’s freedom.
Thus, under that distinction, I have a freedom to speak, and a right to protect my property from intrusion.
In practical terms, a government obtains a monopoly on force to guarantee certain freedoms (denying others the right to restrict that freedom) and enforce certain rights (denying certain freedoms by use of force).
One of the difficulties of the formation of governments and laws are that there is no objective way to determine whether any specific freedom or right has a fundamental nature (i.e. it is never or always correct to deny a freedom).
Therefore, all governments need to have a self-correcting mechanism to determine the “correct” mix of freedoms and rights to guarantee “optimal” social function.
I quote the above terms because otherwise I beg the question of “optional” social function. While I won’t try to define these terms, I will note that a society in open revolt cannot be considered “optimal”.
It is an advantage of American Democracy that each person can adjust their society to his own personal preference. This adjustment is small, but the aggregate effect can be very powerful.
Likewise, there are deep procedural protections that conserve the preferences of minorities. These protections survive because the majority of people have some preferences that are in the majority.
I will reiterate my point: There are no freedoms or rights that can be considered objectively fundamental. There are only those which, given the course of time, can be deemed effective under certain circumstances. In a democracy, we all contribute to determining the mix of freedoms and rights to maximize the fulfillment of our personal preferences.
He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’
Thank you for allowing me the dignity to express myself.
Here you go.
(1) Property is owned, on a de facto basis, by whoever calls the shots with respect to that property. If you call the shots, you own it. If politicians do, they own it. So, the owner of property is the shot caller.
(2) If you indeed own your life, as you agree that you do, then that means you are the one with the right to call shots with respect to your life.
(3) That means rights are an expression of ownership, and that ties rights to property.
(4) This rhetorical question then brings it all into focus: to whose property, other than your own, do you believe you should have rights?
