First off, I do think that violence is messed up and unacceptable, but I don't think that there is such a thing as "objective (aka "natural") rights". Can anyone give a solid argument that rights are objective/"natural"?
A right identifies what men are morally able to do without anyone's permission. Leonard Peikoff states this in the following way: Your thread title states a conclusion but your OP fails to support that conclusion. Can you elaborate?
Why is it that people who think rights are objective always are so sexist as to say "a right identifies what MEN are morally able to do" and "only 'free' (whatever it means to be "free") MEN do this and that"? Why can't women or transexuals or hermaphrodites or even intelligent feeling animals have rights? Anyways. Ayn Rand was a twunt (combination of two very derrogatory words there for ya), but back to the main point, that's your subjective definition of a "right" (that is, "what MEN are 'morally', whatever morality is, able to do without anyone's permission"). I didn't intend to give my reasoning for why rights are not objective in the OP.
The principle of multiple definitions is in play. The term "men" is defined by it's use here as an identifier of all human beings regardless of race, sex, color or orientation. Don't have a cow. Women, transexuals and hermaphrodites ARE men in this context. Substituting ad hominens for reasoned arguments against a particular view or postion reflects badly on you. If you intend this to be a debate, then debate the topic or delete your own thread for the benefit of everyone here.
In America, the Founders declared that certain inalienable rights are bestowed on human beings by the Creator. It does not say 'objective' or 'natural' rights. This is a statement of morality 'backed' by a higher power than any human being and is based on belief as well as the natural fact that human beings flourish when not oppressed by other human beings. You question, however, begs a 'black or white' answer and there really is none IMO.
There is something subjective about what rights people "should" have. One person could say you have the right to live, another could say you have the right to stab little kids with an ice pick on a whim.
You missed the part about me saying that your definition of "rights" as being subjective. You gave your subjective interpretation of what rights are lol
The Right to Life is not subjective. The Right to Freedom is not subjective. The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness is not subjective.
A natural right is the right to do whatever you want. Everyone has the right to do whatever they want. That's messy. That obviously needs to be limited since we live in socities.
If we are equal then our rights cannot interfere with other rights then the basis of all men being equal would be shattered and they wouldn't be rights at all, they would be privileges. All men being created equal means ones rights cannot interfere with anothers rights, that would go against the natural flow of things and bring disharmony and imbalance to the world.
I sure can't. If you think you have the right to criticize the government, do not move to North Korea. Rights are nothing more than what the government allows people to do.
I have said to people many times, "You are washed up on the shore of a deserted island. Walk up the beach and shout out what Rights you have". Then after that when no one heard, go build a shelter, a fire, gather some food and prepare some sharp sticks to fight off predators that couldn't give two hoots what they shouted out as rights. As you say, it's what you are allowed to do within your own society, set by your government.
I think you'll find that you're confusing law of the jungle with natural law. Law of the jungle is strictly survival kill or be killed natural law on the other hand is between parties capable of contracting which includes law of the jungle in a civilized fashion such that if I kill a deer and eat it and you try to steal it from me chances are I'm going to fight you for it and do whatever it takes to get it back why because I killed the deer it belongs to me it's rightfully mine and anyone who tries to steal it from me will be in big trouble. Natural law and unalienable rights are very close to synonymous, unfortunately the 14th amendment if you're living in America pretty much abolished natural rights of Man, stated in the context of all human beings, and converted them to privileges under the government, see spies versus spies.
Rights are nothing more than what the government in power chooses to allow. If you think you have an inalienable right to criticize the government, travel to North Korea, exercise natural law, and see what happens to you.
I think you are confusing rights with liberty. The problem is that because most of America is sleeping most of the time they morphed everything into exactly what you say, but its not what was intended. Big business for the legal industry. This is what happens when a government sets up Judges that work for the government to judge the contract and expect a fair and impartial hearing on Natural rights. We have the 14th pretty much abolished Natural rights as adjudicable law. (also see Dyer) Courts will kick you out if you have no statute, (positive law) to back you up. Unalienable rights are very clearly placed under negative law. They pulled a fast on us years ago and we were none the wiser.
This is a very interesting read https://ia801202.us.archive.org/35/items/29AmJur2dEvidence/14th_amendment_dyett.pdf Some fun stuff: “No state shall convert a liberty into a license, and charge a fee therefore.” (Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105) “If the State converts a right into a privilege, the citizen can ignore the license and fee and engage in the right with impunity.” (Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, Alabama, 373 U.S. 262) and more on rights: BILL OF RIGHTS DO NOT APPLY TO YOU Fundamental Rights History of a Constitutional Doctrine https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Rights-History-Constitutional-Doctrine/dp/141280647X
crap missed the edit timeframe, I noticed they dont let you read this anymore on amazon, basically all our rights today have been converted to privileges which I think is what you said. If I find Blackstone there is more on Natural rights and the formation of this country. Three years later, in 1876, the Court decided, what was perhaps the first case in which the claim was explicitly made, that one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights formulated a privilege or an immunity which a State may not infringe. In Walker v. Sauvinet,2 the defendant claimed that Louisiana had denied him a trial by jury in violation of the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed $20, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” The Supreme Court, by 7-2 vote, held that a trial by jury in suits at common law in State courts is not a privilege or immunity of national citizenship. Justice Field and Justice Nathan Clifford dissented from the judgment and opinion, but it is noteworthy that Justice Bradley did not dissent. A possible inference from this fact may be that he had not meant, in his Slaughter-House opinion, that all of the amendments comprising the Bill of Rights were to be given equal dignity and that all were to be enforced against the States—a view which later came to be known as “selective incorporation.” In the same year the Court decided the famous case of United States v. Cruikshank,3 in which defendants had been indicted under a Federal statute for having deprived certain citizens of their right peaceably to assemble “for a peaceful and lawful purpose.” The Court held the indictment inadequate because it failed to allege that the assembly was for a purpose related to the Federal Government. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite wrote: The right of the people peaceably to assemble for the purpose of petitioning for a redress of grievances, or for anything else connected with the powers or the duties of the national government, is an attribute of national citizenship, and, as such under the protection of and guaranteed by, the United States If it had been alleged in these counts that the object of the defendants was to prevent a meeting for such a purpose, the case would have been within the statute, and within the scope of the sovereignty of the United States. The reasoning here, as in Slaughter-House, was restrictive of the idea of fundamental rights, nationally guaranteed and nationally enforced. It concedes only that The very idea of a government, republican in form, implies a right on the part of its citizens to meet peaceably for consultation in respect to public affairs and to petition for redress of grievances. This is the right of assembly as it was seen by Justice Miller in Slaughter-House, viz., like the right of an American citizen to travel to Washington to transact some official matter. In Hurtado v. California,4 decided in 1884, the defendant had been found guilty of first-degree murder in a proceeding in the California courts that had been initiated by information rather than by grand jury indictment. Hurtado contended that execution of the judgment would mean the deprivation of his life or liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld the judgment of conviction, stating that the process guarantees “not particular forms of procedure, but the very substance of individual rights to life, liberty, and property,” and held that the substitution of a proceeding by information for indictment by a grand jury is not a denial of the “very substance” of an individual right. The Court took note of the wording of the Fifth Amendment: that it provided for proceeding by presentment or indictment by a grand jury in cases involving a capital or otherwise infamous crime, that it prohibited double jeopardy, that in criminal cases a person shall not be compelled to be a witness against himself, and that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation; and the amendment contains the general provision that a person shall not “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Court reasoned that the requirement of proceeding by indictment must have been excluded from the concept of due process, otherwise it would have made no sense to require it so explicitly. Justice Harlan wrote a strongly-worded dissenting opinion, in which he contended that the Court’s reasoning would lead to the absurd and malicious conclusion that double jeopardy, compulsory self-incrimination, and expropriation of private property without just compensation would also not violate the due process requirement. But Justice Harlan went beyond questions of constitutional interpretation. He pointed out that the Court’s reasoning indubitably leads to the conclusion that but for the specific provisions made in the Constitution for the security of the personal rights enumerated, the general inhibition against the deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process of law would not have prevented Congress from enacting a statute in derogation of them. Justice Harlan thus broached the idea of the Due Process Clause, whether in the Fifth or in the Fourteenth Amendment, being open-ended and receptive to ideals of human decency not specifically enumerated in the written Constitution. Furthermore, Justice Harlan contended for a single standard of due process whether one reads the guarantee of the Fifth Amendment against Federal abridgment or of the Fourteenth Amendment against State action. ‘“Due process of law,’ within the meaning of the national Constitution,” he wrote, does not import one thing with reference to the powers of the States, and another with reference to the powers of the general government. If particular proceedings conducted under the authority of the general government, and involving life, are prohibited, because not constituting due process of law required by the Fifth Amendment .... similar proceedings, conducted under the authority of a State, must be deemed illegal as not being due process of law within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. While Justice Harlan’s opinion cannot be read as an explicit argument for “incorporation" of the Fifth Amendment into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, his language strongly suggests “incorporation,” and certainly proposes a single standard of fundamental rights, as encased in the guarantee of due process, as against both the Federal Government and the States equally. As we have seen. Walker v. Sauvinet perhaps was, in 1876, the First case in which the explicit claim was made that a provision of the Bill of Rights—the Seventh Amendment, relating to trial by jury in civil suits—constituted a privilege or immunity which a State may not infringe. The second case to test the theory of “incorporation” was Presser v. Illinois,5 decided ten years later. The defendant in this case argued that the guarantee of the Second Amendment—’’the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”—was a guarantee also against the States, under the Citizenship and the Privilege or Immunities clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that the Second Amendment has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the Federal Government, and has no relation to the powers of a State. In the following year, 1887, a defendant who had been convicted of murder and sentenced by the courts of Illinois to be executed claimed that he had not been convicted by an impartial jury and had been subjected to self-incrimination, and had thus been denied privileges or immunities guaranteed to him by the United States Constitution. In Ex parte Spies6 the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Fifth Amendment guarantee against compulsory self-incrimination, and the Sixth Amendment guarantee to a speedy trial by an impartial jury, had no application to a State. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Waite said: That the first ten articles of amendment [the Bill of Rights] were not intended to limit the powers of the state governments in respect to their own people, but to operate on the National Government alone, was decided more than a half century ago. and that decision has been steadily adhered to since.... 7 It was contended, however, in argument, that "though originally the first ten amendments were adopted as limitations on federal power, yet in so far as they secure and recognize fundamental rights—common-law rights—of the man, they make them privileges and immunities of the man as a citizen of the United States, and cannot now be abridged by a State under the Fourteenth Amendment. In other words, while the ten amendments as limitations on power only apply to the Federal Government, and not to the States, yet in so far as they declare or recognize rights of persons, these rights are theirs, as citizens of the United States, and the Fourteenth Amendment as to such rights limits state power, as the ten amendments had limited federal power.” This was the first case in which a litigant contended that although admittedly the guarantees of the Bill of Rights were not, as such, limits on the States, yet in so far as the amendments declared what were fundamental righls of man, they were privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States and were, therefore, since adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, protected against abridgment by the State.8 The Court chose to by-pass this transcendently important question and to decide the case against the defendant on other grounds. But from this time forth the issue of fundamental rights, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against State action, will come up time and again. The argument for the defendant in Spies gathered up into itself suggestions, intimations, nuances, and gropings found earlier, as we have noted, in dissenting opinions of Justices Bradley and Harlan,9 and in those of Justices Field and Swayne, and first of all in the opinion of Justice Washington in Corfield, covering a span of over six decades. II. The argument for fundamental rights made on behalf of the defendant in Spies was lost on the Supreme Court but not on counsel practicing before the Court, and it was not long before the Court felt that it had to face the issue squarely. In 1890, three years after Spies, the Court had before it Ex parte Kemmler,10 in which the defendant, convicted of murder in the first degree, had been sentenced to die in the electric chair, under a statute adopted by the New York Legislature two years before. The defendant contended that the new means of execution were a form of cruel and unusual punishment, so that the statute was unconstitutional. The contention was summarized by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller in the following terms: It is not contended, as it could not be, that the Eighth Amendment [prohibiting the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments] was intended to apply to the States, but it is urged that the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids a State to make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, is a prohibition on the State from the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments, and that such punishments are also prohibited by inclusion in the term “due process of law.” Chief Justice Fuller, in an opinion for a unanimous Court, upheld the constitutionality of the New York statute and the decisions of the State courts against the claims of the defendant. The Court followed the reasoning of Slaughter-House and Cruikshank, and said: Protection to life, liberty and property rests, primarily, with the States, and the [Fourteenth] Amendment furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by the States upon those fundamental rights which belong to citizenship.... The privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from the privileges and immunities of citizcns of the States, arc indeed protected by it; but those are privileges and immunities arising out of the nature and essential character of the national government....
pt2 So much for the Privileges or Immunities Clause; but what of the applicability of the Due Process Clause? The Court on this question followed the reasoning of Hurtado. The Fifth Amendment provides for due process, but it also expressly guarantees grand jury indictment, prohibits double jeopardy and compulsory self-incrimination. So that the due process provision should not appear to be superfluous, the Court in Hurtado held that due process does not embrace the other three express guarantees. Now Chief Justice Fuller seemed to argue that since the Eighth Amendment expressly prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, this guarantee must be excluded from the reach of the due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. What, then, does the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment mean? The words, said the Court, refer to that law of the land in each State, which derives its authority from the inherent and reserved powers of the State, exerted within the limits of those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. Undoubtedly the Amendment forbids any arbitrary deprivation of life. liberty or property, and [by the Equal Protection Clause?! secures equal protection to all under like circumstances in the enjoyment of their rights; and, in the administration of criminal justice, requires that no different or higher punishment shall be imposed upon one than is imposed upon all for like offenses [again, under the Equal Protection Clause?]. In the following year, 1891, another defendant11 sentenced to death under the same statute of the State of New York, contended that the provision in the statute requiring his solitary confinement for some weeks before the time of his execution constituted cruel and unusual punishment and brought the statute “within the inhibition of the 8th Amendment to the federal Constitution.” Again the Court unanimously rejected the argument; but again, the case is significant because of the nature of the claim made for the defendant—as restated by Chief Justice Fuller, that so far as those [first ten] amendments secure the fundamental rights of the individual, they make them his privileges and immunities as a citizen of the United States, which cannot now, under the Fourteenth Amendment, be abridged by a State; that the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments is one of these; and that that prohibition is also included in that “due process of law" without which no State can deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. The Court held that the Kemmler case was decisive of this case, and took occasion once more to state that; The first ten articles of amendment were not intended to limit the powers of the States in respect of their own people, but to operate on the federal government only. This proposition did not really answer defendant’s contention, which was not simply that the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporated” the Eighth Amendment, but rather that the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the Due Process Clause guaranteed individual fundamental rights against abridgment by the States. It was in O’Neil v. Vermont,12 decided in 1892, that two Justices, Field and Harlan, took occasion to formulate explicitly and definitively, what has come to be known as the “incorporation” doctrine. Like the several preceding cases, this case, too, involved the claim of cruel and unusual punishment. The defendant, a resident in the State of New York, received orders for small quantities of intoxicating liquors from persons residing in Vermont. He sent the liquors by express. These transactions had extended over a period of three years. O’Neil was convicted by the Vermont courts of 307 offenses under the State’s statute regulating the sale of intoxicating beverages and was fined twenty dollars and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment for each offense; and for failing or refusing to pay the fines and costs, he was to be confined three days for each dollar, making a total of 19,914 days of imprisonment—a period of over fifty-four years. While a majority of the Supreme Court held that the issue of cruel and unusual punishment had not been properly raised, they took occasion to say: The mere fact that cumulative punishments may be imposed for distinct offenses in the same prosecution is not material upon this question. If the penalty were unreasonably severe for a single offense, the constitutional question might be urged; but here the unreasonableness is only in the number of offenses which the respondent has committed. We forbear the consideration of this question,... Moreover, as a Federal question, it has always been ruled that the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States does not apply to the states. In a long dissenting opinion, Justice Field acknowledged that previous to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it had been settled 13 that the Bill of Rights was not applicable to the States. This would still be the case, he went on, but for the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. What are these privileges or immunities? “It may be difficult,” he said, to define the terms so as to cover all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, but after much reflection I think the definition given at one time before this court by a distinguished advocate—Mr. John Randolph Tucker, of Virginia—is correct, that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States are such as have their recognition in or guaranty from the Constitution of the United States. This definition is supported by reference to the history of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and of the amendments which followed the late Civil War.... Then Justice Field tied together the Citizenship Clause and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: those who are, by constitutional provision, citizens of the United States are entitled to all the privileges and immunities of such citizens. While, therefore, the first ten amendments, as limitations on power, are applicable only to the Federal Government, yet, so far as they declare or recognize the rights of persons, they are rights belonging to them as citizcns of the United States under the Constitution. And the 14th Amendment, as to all such rights, places a limit upon state power by ordain-ing that no Stale shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge them. If I am right in this view, then every citizen of the United Stales is protected from punishments which are cruel and unusual. It is an immunity which belongs to him. against both state and Federal action.... These rights, as those of citizens of the United States, find their recognition and guaranty against Federal action in the Constitution of the United States, and against state action in the 14th Amendment. Justice Harlan concurred in these views but added his own dissenting opinion, in which he said that since the adoption of the 14th Amendment, no one of the fundamental rights of life, liberty, or property, recognized and guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, can be denied or abridged by a State in respect to any person within its jurisdiction. These rights arc, principally, enumerated in the earlier amendments of the Constitution.... The Constitution was ratified in the belief, and only because of the belief, encouraged by its leading advocates, that immediately upon the organization of the Government of the Union, articles of amendment would be submitted to the people, recognizing those essential rights of life, liberty, and property.... Among those rights is immunity from cruel and unusual punishments, secured by the 8th Amendment against Federal action, and by the 14th Amendment against denial or abridgment by the states.14 Justice Field seems to have urged simply the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporates” the guarantees of the first ten amendments as privileges and immunities of American citizens—a view, as we shall see, later urged by Justice Black. Justice Harlan, however, urged a broader principle; namely, that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees “the fundamental rights of life, liberty, [and] property”; that these fundamental rights are only principally enumerated in the Bill of Rights. This position, as will be seen, was due to have much wider appeal and acceptance. In a case decided in 1900 Justice Harlan reinforced his position in elaborate and vigorous terms. In Maxwell v. Dow15 the defendant had not been indicted but was tried on information charging him with robbery, and was convicted by a jury composed of only eight jurors, under proceedings authorized by laws of the State of Utah. The defendant contended that the prosecution by information and the trial by a jury of only eight persons abridged his privileges and immunities under the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and that his trial and subsequent imprisonment deprived him of his liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. By a vote of 8- 1 the Supreme Court rejected these claims and affirmed the judgment of conviction. The contentions on behalf of the defendant were summarized in the Court’s opinion as follows: It is claimed ... that since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment the effect of [the first ten] amendments has been thereby changed and greatly enlarged. It is now urged in substance that all the provisions contained in the first ten amendments, so far as they secure and recognize the fundamental rights of the individual as against the exercise of Federal power, are by virtue of |the Fourteenth] amendment to be regarded as privileges or immunities of a citizen of the United States, and therefore the slates cannot provide for any procedure in state courts which could not be followed in a Federal court because of the limitations contained in those [first ten] amendments. The Court, reviewing and re-affirming its precedents, such as Slaughter-House, Cruikshank, and Walker v. Sauvinet, held that the asserted privileges and immunities did not arise out of the nature or essential character of the National Government, and therefore were rights which rested with the State governments and were not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. “These are matters,” said the Court, “which have no relation to the character of the Federal government.” In his dissenting opinion Justice Harlan asked What are the privileges and immunities of “citizens of the United States?" Without attempting to enumerate them, it ought to be deemed safe to say that such privileges and immunities embrace at least those expressly recognized by the Constitution of the United Slates and placed beyond Ihe power of Congress to take away or impair.16 Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was one of the privileges or immunities of American citizens that they should not be tried for crime in any Federal court except by a jury composed of twelve persons.17 How can it be, asked Justice Harlan, that a citizen of the United States may be now tried in a state court for crime, particularly for an infamous crime, by eight jurors, when [the Fourteenth] Amendment expressly declares that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge Ihe privileges or immunities of citizens of Ihe United Slates"?... I am also of the opinion that the trial of the accused for the crime chargcd against him by a jury of eight persons was not consistent with the “due process of law" prescribed by the Fourteenth Amendment. With extraordinary prescience, Justice Harlan anticipated the consequences of the Court’s decision—unless, as was to be the case, the Court would in the future adopt a different principle with respect to The Bill of Rights: A Bill of Fundamental Rights i. We have seen that, despite rebuffs. Justices of the Supreme Court, time and again in strong dissenting opinions, affirmed their belief that fundamental rights are privileges and immunities guaranteed by the Constitution against denial or abridgment by the States. What are these fundamental rights? Perhaps the fullest and broadest enumeration of such rights was formulated by Justice Bradley in Slaughter-House His dissenting opinion is historically notable, however, for another reason, for we find in it, for the first time, the contention that Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment somehow “incorporates” the first eight amendments of the Constitution, that the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or what is still stronger for the force of the argument, the rights of all persons whether citizens or not. Since Justice Bradley made this contention in 1873, it has had an erratic career in constitutional jurisprudence, and has been disputed and refined, but the essence of Justice Bradley’s idea has won out and has become firmly fixed as constitutional doctrine. We can trace here only the main lines of this highly significant aspect of the idea of fundamental rights. https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Rights-History-Constitutional-Doctrine/dp/141280647X
We the People never voted for our Natural rights above the State (negative law) to be converted to privileges under the state. (positive law)
