Post by midcan5 on May 14, 2014 8:10:32 GMT -5
There is no such thing as a 'natural' right, rights only exist if we, aka society and it accouterments, say we have a right and if some ordained authority can help us. No where in nature are there natural rights, a dog may mark his space with urine, but another bigger dog or species may think (?) otherwise. I asked this question not long ago when that naive, mostly foolish, Paul Ryan said that rights came from God, meanwhile he is involved in making rights or is that taking away rights? I'm sure he ain't god. I asked for someone to name a natural right - same question but before you puzzle yourself, check the stuff below.
"Rights are just (tastes) emotions without rational thought' Jeremy Bentham paraphrase
"Natural Law, and the related Natural Rights, play an important part in Libertarian Capitalist ideology. They are not alone in claiming that their particular ideology meets the law of nature, Hitler (for one) also did so. So do numerous other demagogues, religious fanatics and political philosophers. However, they like to claim that only *their* "natural law" is the "real" one, all the others are subjective impositions. But, then again, so do all the others. We will ignore these assertions (they are not arguments) and concentrate on explaining why natural law (in all its many forms) is a myth. In addition, we will indicate its authoritarian implications." www.spunk.org/library/otherpol/critique/sp001283.txt
"This Universal Declaration Of Human Rights' www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Good piece: lacithedog.blogspot.com/2009/11/rights.html
Treanor is always a challenging thinker, he'll definitely screw up your conceptions or is that misconceptions. 'Why human rights are wrong'
web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/human-rights.html
"A Serbian or Iraqi child who is shot to enforce human rights, suffers just as much pain, as an American or British child. Yet the US and British governments do not kill or injure their own citizens, to protect their human rights. That fate is reserved for Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Africans, and Asians. The western human rights lobby claims, that it is wrong to deny people human rights. They claim opposition to human rights is based on 'ethical relativism', and that their own 'moral universalism' is superior. Yet they would not bomb their own cities like they bombed Belgrade or Falluja or remote Afghan villages. Clearly, the 'moral universalism' of the human rights lobby is itself relative: it is turned on and off to conform to geopolitical interests. It was never much more than a propaganda slogan anyway." PT
And sometimes rights ain't rights or ain't the right rights.
"It was the Bill of Rights itself, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, which made slavery legal in the Dred Scott case of 1857. That same Bill of Rights negated the results of the Civil War by making de facto slavery legal in the form of Segregation thanks to the Court's decision on Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896. Indeed, that same Bill of Rights ended de facto slavery with the Brown v. School Board decision in 1954, only after great internal debate among the judges. In 1905 the Court approved the exploitation of workers, women, children and immigrants, thanks to Lochner v. New York. It continues to find women unequal to men, in such cases as Bradwell v. Illinois or Hoyt v. Florida. In Korematsu. v. U.S.A. it also approved the removal by the Executive of the constitutional rights of the American Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
This is not to say that legislatures are incapable of acting badly: Over the question of Japanese rights in 1941, the parliaments of both Britain and Canada were guilty in the same way as the American Supreme Court of racism combined with financial opportunism - that is to say, the removal of rights, internment and forced disposition of property. The point is, however that the Bill of Rights gave no extra protection, nor did the wisdom of the judges.
Still more important, these policy questions central to morality and humanism, central to the very nature of the citizen, were decided by an appointed body, The elected representatives thus escaped all responsibility for decisions which were essential to the moral and physical well-being of their electors. Worse still, so did the citizen." p326 John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'
"Rights are founded on ethical value judgments, which may be empirical or rational. A right is that which confers legitimacy upon an action or a belief. For example, if one has a right to free speech, the act of speaking freely is given legitimacy." philosophynow.org/issues/21/What_is_natural_about_Natural_Rights
More links for the interested.
www.amazon.com/Inventing-Human-Rights-Lynn-Hunt/dp/0393331997/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/are-there-natural-human-rights/
www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-rights.htm
"Rights are just (tastes) emotions without rational thought' Jeremy Bentham paraphrase
"Natural Law, and the related Natural Rights, play an important part in Libertarian Capitalist ideology. They are not alone in claiming that their particular ideology meets the law of nature, Hitler (for one) also did so. So do numerous other demagogues, religious fanatics and political philosophers. However, they like to claim that only *their* "natural law" is the "real" one, all the others are subjective impositions. But, then again, so do all the others. We will ignore these assertions (they are not arguments) and concentrate on explaining why natural law (in all its many forms) is a myth. In addition, we will indicate its authoritarian implications." www.spunk.org/library/otherpol/critique/sp001283.txt
"This Universal Declaration Of Human Rights' www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Good piece: lacithedog.blogspot.com/2009/11/rights.html
Treanor is always a challenging thinker, he'll definitely screw up your conceptions or is that misconceptions. 'Why human rights are wrong'
web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/human-rights.html
"A Serbian or Iraqi child who is shot to enforce human rights, suffers just as much pain, as an American or British child. Yet the US and British governments do not kill or injure their own citizens, to protect their human rights. That fate is reserved for Eastern Europeans, Arabs, Africans, and Asians. The western human rights lobby claims, that it is wrong to deny people human rights. They claim opposition to human rights is based on 'ethical relativism', and that their own 'moral universalism' is superior. Yet they would not bomb their own cities like they bombed Belgrade or Falluja or remote Afghan villages. Clearly, the 'moral universalism' of the human rights lobby is itself relative: it is turned on and off to conform to geopolitical interests. It was never much more than a propaganda slogan anyway." PT
And sometimes rights ain't rights or ain't the right rights.
"It was the Bill of Rights itself, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, which made slavery legal in the Dred Scott case of 1857. That same Bill of Rights negated the results of the Civil War by making de facto slavery legal in the form of Segregation thanks to the Court's decision on Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896. Indeed, that same Bill of Rights ended de facto slavery with the Brown v. School Board decision in 1954, only after great internal debate among the judges. In 1905 the Court approved the exploitation of workers, women, children and immigrants, thanks to Lochner v. New York. It continues to find women unequal to men, in such cases as Bradwell v. Illinois or Hoyt v. Florida. In Korematsu. v. U.S.A. it also approved the removal by the Executive of the constitutional rights of the American Japanese after Pearl Harbor.
This is not to say that legislatures are incapable of acting badly: Over the question of Japanese rights in 1941, the parliaments of both Britain and Canada were guilty in the same way as the American Supreme Court of racism combined with financial opportunism - that is to say, the removal of rights, internment and forced disposition of property. The point is, however that the Bill of Rights gave no extra protection, nor did the wisdom of the judges.
Still more important, these policy questions central to morality and humanism, central to the very nature of the citizen, were decided by an appointed body, The elected representatives thus escaped all responsibility for decisions which were essential to the moral and physical well-being of their electors. Worse still, so did the citizen." p326 John Ralston Saul, 'Voltaire's Bastards'
"Rights are founded on ethical value judgments, which may be empirical or rational. A right is that which confers legitimacy upon an action or a belief. For example, if one has a right to free speech, the act of speaking freely is given legitimacy." philosophynow.org/issues/21/What_is_natural_about_Natural_Rights
More links for the interested.
www.amazon.com/Inventing-Human-Rights-Lynn-Hunt/dp/0393331997/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/are-there-natural-human-rights/
www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-rights.htm