goodbytes Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 There have been an increasing fervor of debate and discussion regarding human rights lately. But during a conversation that started with UPB and ended up being a discussion about the innate nature of human rights I came to a startling conclusion: There is no such thing as rights outside of the sphere of government. The political definition of a right according to wikipedia.org is: legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory. Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology. Therefore, even recognizing the existence or need of rights implies a necessity of government. So what are rights really, and how can we better understand our existence and the ability to exist outside of government by changing some fundamental verbage we use that inadvertantly advocates the very thing we are fighting against? All human beings on this planet are innately free. From the moment we are able to form opinions and decisions and learn as much as we can to make the most informed decisions we can, we are at the height of freedom. It is only in our decision, albeit collectively, to allow a comparatively small amount of people influence the realities of the many that we become slaves to that reality instead of our full potential. I don't want to get too far into this to keep it open for discussion...so I look forward to hearing from you all about my thoughts!!!
Mike Fleming Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 As far as I can tell, the only rights that exist are property rights which stem from self-ownership. No other rights exist. I work on the basis of people not having rights. ie. no-one has the right to hurt someone else no-one has the right to kill someone else no-one has the right to steal from someone else no-one has the right to take someone else's gun off of them etc...
TheRobin Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 That's the same mistake as some people make, when they say that arguing against governments is arguing against roads or healthcare. Just cause people who work for a certain group called "government" use violence against everyone who would compete for creating a good justice system and therefore have created a monopoly justice system in a given region, doesn't mean that there can't be justice without a group of people violating the very principles they're claiming to uphold.
dsayers Posted April 2, 2014 Posted April 2, 2014 Goodbytes, I used to feel the exact same way. When I saw this thread/video by alexqr1, it helped me to understand why that isn't the case. In fact, I believe we had a discussion about it there as well.
cobra2411 Posted April 3, 2014 Posted April 3, 2014 As far as I can tell, the only rights that exist are property rights which stem from self-ownership. No other rights exist. Yes, and they exist in spite of the state, not because of it. When I was in my constitutionalism phase I used to get irked when people would state "My constitutional rights" as if the constitution itself granted those rights. The correct term is "My constitutionally protected rights". Rights are inherent to being human and thus can not be removed without fundamentally altering humans. Heavy is inherent to lead, if I remove heavy then I no longer have lead. If you remove rights you no longer have human beings.
LibertyDefender Posted April 6, 2014 Posted April 6, 2014 There is no such thing as rights outside of the sphere of government. The wikipedia description you presented implies the existence of legal, social and ethical theories on rights. I think you are focusing on one school of thought rather than a broader interpretation of rights (and morality). If you are examining legal rights (which I personally think are an oxymoron), then sure, those rights cannot exist absent a government. If we are arguing logically, I would think your first principle would go something like this: "All rights stem from government decree." If that is the case, not only are your rights arbitrary in the present, but in the absence of government, it would be perfectly normative to do whatever you wanted (acts of violence included) to anyone you wanted. Essentially, it quasi-fails the moral premise of universality, because people without governments would have no rights and people under different governments would have different rights. I think therein lies the attractiveness of the libertarian first principle that: "He who initiates force (or fraud) is always wrong." It really boils all philosophical discussion down to the base unit of interaction (two people) and assigns moral responsibility of right and wrong to both parties in a given circumstance. It matters not whether you live in a foreign land, are in a giant gathering of people, or are the last two people on Earth. In all these cases, your rights are constant. Incidentally, I think it also makes it very easy to distinguish between positive and negative rights in situations where people aren't able to do so. I suppose your idea that all rights flow from government is fine, so long as you believe humans are no better than animals and that individual life has no intrinsic worth - rather society collectively does. However, I believe both those ideas to be wrong.
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