Do we have "natural" rights?

simply absurd.

How many times have I said Government can AND does restrict freedoms in this thread??

can you friggin read!??

how old are you???

 

You said that certain speech is not illegal, and I gave you an example that shows it is illegal. Why are you upset with me? You were wrong. That isnt my fault.

You have not demonstrated that rights originate anywhere other than with people. They are a product of consensus (opinion).

 

This was my response two pages ago...

again, don't hold me responsible for your lack of reading comprehension.

lol at you...amazing...

me from page 1:

 

Why are you arguing with me if you already agree?

I havnt held you "responsible" for anything.

 

I think we do have a fundamental disagreement though

• I believe that we all have natural rights (freedoms) and that Governments can and DO restrict them
  
• You believe we have no natural rights (freedoms) until a Government does NOT take them away

sorry, I just can't wrap my head around the concept of viewing it like that

 

Your not reading carefully enough.

The government of this country exists with OUR (not mine alone) consent per the Declaration. Every power it has now was obtained by the consent of an adequate number of citizens. It didn't happen in a vaccum. A sufficient number of active voters were persuaded to permit the government's expansion from primarily a rights protecting republic to the current day mixed economy where the statist element is almost as large or larger than the capitalist element.

 

I love words!

way back in the stone ages when there were no cops.....

if a man plopped down on your property and set up camp if you did not tell him to get off that was consent.

Now there is another school of thought from those who play hard ball that if you told the man to get off your property after proving to him it was your rightfully owned property and you did not shoot him that is also consent.

In lego-land consent is tacit acquiescence or not screaming foul ball.

using the word consent is a nice word because it gives the immediate impression of agreement in the minds of the lay people who do not understand law when the reality is precisely the contrary.

 

I'm reading you just fine. It's that you are passing your sophistry off as logic.

There is no such thing as group consent. Individuals can consent, groups cannot. All the individuals in a group can consent, but that is still not group consent. When you say "our" you say it as if everyone consents.

The Declaration, while a nice bit of writing, is a scrap of paper. It has no authority, nor does the Constitution.

Please define that "adequate number". The American revolution was fought by only 15% of the population of the American colonies. The revolutionaries prior to the war number less than 5% of the population. That means that 85-95% of the population at the time "consented" to British rule or had no opinion one way or another (which is unlikely as all Englishmen took a solemn oath of loyalty to the king.)

Most of the power authorized to the government by the Constitution was authorized by 140 wealthy landowners. Democracy is more a sham than anything else; so long as it allows power holders to expand power they are fine with it.

Voting changes very little except on those occasions where there is overwhelming support for something the government doesn't care much about anyway - such as women's suffrage and civil rights. It's the nature of government to expand in scope and power.

 

It shows you can test for and verify the fact that people believe they have a right to freedom of expression, more consistently than you can test for and verify the value of gravity. It was in response to your assertion that gravity was the same for everyone but the right to freedom of speech had no objective basis. Here:

We're a bit sidetracked with this discussion of objectivity and your assertion that things which are not objective do not exist. Few others will argue that rights exist, a right is simply something a person is due. The question posed by the OP is does a subset of rights some call natural exist, and how do we define that subset.

The answer to that is a simple yes and the definition is readily available to anyone with access to Google. Applying that definition can be complicated and I don't claim to have all the answers, but I believe an effective rubric for differentiating between legal rights and natural rights (a discrimination which may help internalize and master the definition) may be to consider the source of what is due a person.

Legal rights are entitlements to take from other people. Natural rights are freedoms to use what is naturally yours. People can deny your rights, they can prevent you from taking what you are entitled to from others or deny you the freedom to use what is naturally your own. Imagine yourself in that situation and ask what you are being denied. If what you feel you are due comes from other people rather than what is naturally your own... the right you are considering is not natural.

​

 

In a sense, yes. But I put stake in human constructs like morality and theory and evidence. You, however, seem to support only those human constructs which you deem to be "objective".

I will question it. Why put stake in a human construct like "logic" or "reason"?

I think you're moving the goalposts now. First, we were arguing about why there should be ought statements at all. I argued that there is no "should".

Now, you're talking about picking one ought statement over the other, which is a different argument.

 

They can believe whatever they want and it changes nothing. The concept of rights is STILL based on opinion. It does not exist outside of opinion. And none of it is universal.

Gravity is objective, no matter what your testing methods are. The fact that you cant verify specific values does not change that. "Rights" are not objective, because they are based on personal opinion. Their definition will change depending on who you ask.

It is the same for everyone. A 1kg weight is still 1kg, even if you measure it wrong.

Because your definition of "objectivity" is wrong, and therefore your claim that "rights" are objective is also wrong.

If personal feelings or thoughts are involved, it isnt objective.

Natural rights dont exist in a vacuum. Someone has to define them. Therefore they are not objective...they are relative to whoever is defining them.

In our society, the government has that final authority to define them.

 

Our thoughts and feelings are an objective fact, insofar as they are known to exist as distinct electrical signals and patterns in our brains and nervous systems.

It is also an objective fact that humans are a species of 'ought', which is to say that moral constructs - like logic and reason - are an organic human phenomena. It's plenty objective.

 

If it was objective, someone would be able to define it using something other than majority opinion.

So far, no one in this thread has managed to do that.

 

Define what?

 

"Natural Rights"

 

Our "natural rights" are those morally righteous claims which we derive using logic, reason, and our observations of nature.

 

Your opinion is gravity has the same value wherever you test it. Your opinion is not reproduceable by experiment and is contradicted by respoduceable experiment. Objectively, there is no basis for your opinion.

Your opinion is all rights have no objective basis and originate from government. We observe people independently and consistently claiming the same rights around the world, including places where government does not exist. Your opinion is contradicted by respoduceable experiment. Objectively, there is a basis for claiming these rights exist and are independent of government.

Use the most precise scale in the world and you'll still find a 1 kilogram mass weighs differently for a man in America than a man in China.

The observation that people feel love is objective. That love is not objective is irrelevant to the observation or it's objectivity.... or to the existence of emotions including love.

Governments are formed or challenged to protect rights. Our own for example:

"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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men"​

If a government can be created or challenged in the defense of rights, the rights surely preceed the government and that government is not the final authority.

 

And my opinion of gravity is subjective, not objective. Thanks for supporting my argument.

The observation does not apply to all people that have ever existed. Apathetic people do exist.

If the specific rights were really self evident, it would not be necessary to codify them into law. The reason it is necessary to codify them into law is because they are NOT objective.

Not everyone agrees on what a "right" is. That is why we have a Constitution...to spell it out explicitly.

 

Natural law provides an objective framework for determing what is a natural right and what is not. It is not necessary to codify rules for human behavior into statutory law. It is, however, necessary to codify rules for human behavior and get people to believe that it is just to do so if one wants to control the peaceful actions of others.

 

Anger existed before someone described it on a page, and gravity existed before someone documented it in a book.

A hundred men walk into a foggy room. Ninety of them feel something in the center. Some describe it as whiplike, some describe it as treelike, others might feel something that moves like a snake. That their descriptions are imperfect isn't an argument that what they found doesn't exist. Collecting and refining their observations into a single document to reflect on helps folks understand the elephant in the room.

We're doing the best we can to understand the natural laws. That we don't all have (and never will all have) a perfect understanding of gravity or the right of expression doesn't mean these things don't exist. It is self evident that men have the rights of life and liberty, do you really believe they don't? Would you argue gravity doesn't exist just because our understanding of it is subjective?

Our Constitution wasn't written to create unalienable rights. It was written in an attempt to secure them against those who would deny us the life and liberty we know all men are due, the freedoms that are our natural rights.

"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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men"​

 

which natural rights are you all talking about anyway?

civil?

political?

commercial?

ecclesiastical?

common law?

so many to choose from!

 

Which no one can agree on, evidence by this board.

 

It can't be helped if logic and reason fail you. However, the natural law framework of ethics allows one to objectively derive rights through reason. It is the only ethical framework in which equal rights for all individual human beings can be objectively determined.

It is your choice whether or not to be civilized and hold to a system of ethics, or be a brute and do whatever feels good. Do you have a system of ethics? Is it objective and derived from reason, or it is emotional and intuitive and irrational?

 

Natural rights as in the philosophy discovered and developed by John Locke among others.

 

You're holding out yourself as a example of reason logic and ethics?