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Natural rights

If we just go by nature, then there are no real social constructs whatsoever, just kill or be killed.

But since we're so-called sentient beings, we can choose to cast our lot with anything we want. The founding fathers created the bill of rights with the existential assertion that certain human rights are in-born and unalienable. I don't really disagree, actually. The reason being that if you study the history of human civilizations, there are basic conditions that humans will not tolerate, that they will perceive as unjust and that they will ultimately rebel against. The aristocracy knows this well and the continual cycle of revolution and civilization is all based on refining this understanding.

So, we can claim that there are no "real rights", but when society devolves to the point where that belief becomes true and life becomes devalued, then it leads to violence and uprising simply because all of us possess a moral core beyond what we were taught which will dictate what is right and wrong.

I think we're just at a point right now where people have become so comfortable and so intellectually lazy that they no longer perceive rights as values, but simple ideas that we can accept or toss out based on momentary mental masturbation and semantic manipulation. Once people eventually have to fight and die for those rights again, they will understand their value and why they are in-born. If you've never had to experience living evidence of their importance, then you aren't likely going to see the point.
 
I don't use the term "natural rights", but I do believe that morality is a logical construct based upon the establishment of a basic principle that applies to all people and is best argued through a dialectical process that proceeds from this basic assumption. It's the golden rule distilled through rational argumentation rather than being a case of simple normative ethics.

The moral relativists who try to argue that morality is completely subjective fail to understand that their viewpoint is essentially nihilistic in nature. If morality is based upon nothing more involved than the establishment of arbitrary social constructs, then the entire notion becomes completely meaningless. It is a circular argument where something is moral because we say it's moral and because we say it's moral, it's moral. When people cannot argue WHY actions are moral beyond this simplistic "because people say it is" viewpoint, all they prove is that their lack the intellectual capacity to think beyond a certain level.
 
ecofarm said:
1. The rights are socially natural. This means more than one individual, an agreement. It does not mean what a man might "naturally" be capable of himself, such as property etc.

2. Inalienable does not mean inviolable. It means inseparable from being part of mankind. Natural rights are violated, yet they remain inalienable.

3. It's self evident because one can ask the person next to them or any others (barring insane, it's sociological).



Life, expression and defense.

Would anyone like to add anything? Do we have objections.

That's the basis of the free world, politically. It's not a lie. One ins't super-smart and intellectually destroys the foundation. Natural rights exist.
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For anything akin to "natural" rights, they would have to be assured for all living things, because if you are trying to focus just on humans, we haven't been "natural," since the caveman days. Therefore I think it's safe to say there is no such thing as a natural right.

There's no right to be born, nature is full of miscarriages, still births, and mother&child death during delivery.
There's no right to be safe as a child, nature is full of infant mammals being the dinner of other mammals, seedlings dying in drought, etc.
There's no right to food or water or safe harbor/housing....
And so on.....

I guess first you'd have to quit using the term "natural" with regards to the constitution or any document or social/governmental system, as those systems do not in any way represent the "natural" world.
 
Cephus said:
It's imaginary, there is no such thing as natural rights.
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Oh yeah!?!?!?!? Next thing you are gonna tell us that there are no such things as faeries either?

Or what about Santa Claus?

Or elves?

And what about gremlins?

And I know what you would say about the Easter Bunny.

The grinch has nothing on you.... but then you probably think he does not exist either.... do ya? ;)
 
Natural rights were a concept that helped to take mankind from the era of Diving Right of Kings to a modern idea of the right of people to have their own government and create their own protected behaviors knows as rights. It was simply a bridge that helped take people away from something that was considered as law etched in stone to lesser restrictive idea paving the way for mans own self rule.

Sadly, some folks got stuck in the 17th and 18th centuries and have never broken out of that time lock.

Lets get real here: how do you know you have a right? Because you can exercise it and use it and see it in action and its protected by the government of your land. If you don't have that - you don't have that right and all the pie-in-the-sky believing will not change that reality.
 
Cephus said:
Sure you do. If everyone agrees, you have whatever rights everyone agrees to.
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Not everybody will ever agree.

There is a criminal element in every society.

There are also hostile criminal nations on your borders. Look at the extreme Islamists now. Saddam before them. The ayatollahs. The North Koreans. Adolf. Tojo. The Kaiser. Prussia. Napoleon.

You cannot survive long without guns and ammo. Nor can your society or your nation.
 
Northern Light said:
If we just go by nature, then there are no real social constructs whatsoever, just kill or be killed.

But since we're so-called sentient beings, we can choose to cast our lot with anything we want. The founding fathers created the bill of rights with the existential assertion that certain human rights are in-born and unalienable. I don't really disagree, actually. The reason being that if you study the history of human civilizations, there are basic conditions that humans will not tolerate, that they will perceive as unjust and that they will ultimately rebel against. The aristocracy knows this well and the continual cycle of revolution and civilization is all based on refining this understanding.

So, we can claim that there are no "real rights", but when society devolves to the point where that belief becomes true and life becomes devalued, then it leads to violence and uprising simply because all of us possess a moral core beyond what we were taught which will dictate what is right and wrong.

I think we're just at a point right now where people have become so comfortable and so intellectually lazy that they no longer perceive rights as values, but simple ideas that we can accept or toss out based on momentary mental masturbation and semantic manipulation. Once people eventually have to fight and die for those rights again, they will understand their value and why they are in-born. If you've never had to experience living evidence of their importance, then you aren't likely going to see the point.
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People fighting and dying for beliefs also do not make them inherent. Plenty of psychopaths strapping bombs to their chests certainly believe that it's their right to dictate morality for those they kill. But when tanks and jets level their sand pits, they might think twice. Such is nature. As sentient beings, we are not above this plane of existence.
 
Riveroaks said:
Not everybody will ever agree.

There is a criminal element in every society.

There are also hostile criminal nations on your borders. Look at the extreme Islamists now. Saddam before them. The ayatollahs. The North Koreans. Adolf. Tojo. The Kaiser. Prussia. Napoleon.

You cannot survive long without guns and ammo. Nor can your society or your nation.
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That is something often ignored. It is especially often forgotten with respect to international security and foreign policy.
 
joG said:
That is something often ignored. It is especially often forgotten with respect to international security and foreign policy.
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Most people ignore it at their own peril. Especially the anti gun crowd.

In colonial America when John Locke's political philosophies were being embraced, the colonies had local militias. These easily evolved into a Continental Army.

They had relied on the Royal Navy for sea power however, and so there was no real Continental Navy to speak of, other than John Paul Jones the pirate raiding England.

The French navy eventually allied with Gen. Washington and bottled up Cornwallis at Yorktown Virginia where Washington could then surround him and deliver the coup de grace.

Point being, every nation needs their own army and navy, and the people need their own arms as well. Back then the issue was Indians.

Today it is criminals and unabated crime which is the issue.

Anyone can philosophize all they want, but unless their Maslow safety needs are met their whole Maslow pyramid will tumble down on top of themselves.
 
Cally said:
People fighting and dying for beliefs also do not make them inherent. Plenty of psychopaths strapping bombs to their chests certainly believe that it's their right to dictate morality for those they kill. But when tanks and jets level their sand pits, they might think twice. Such is nature. As sentient beings, we are not above this plane of existence.
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*face palm*

Not what I'm talking about whatsoever. I'm thinking the U.S. revolution, French revolution, other actual revolutions... not terrorists being terrorists in multi-state wars.

Try to keep up.
 
Cephus said:
It's only true so long as the particular society you are talking about accepts it as true. If you think you have a particular right, then you have it so long as those around you agree. If they don't, then you just don't have it, no matter how much you wish you did. People with guns may be required to enforce those rights against those who disagree, but it certainly isn't necessary.
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Ex-muth-f'in-zactly.....

You have only the rights you can negotiate with those around you. Fortunately, humans are capable of a level of understanding that allows them to see the benefit of mutual cooperation. The understanding that failure to extend rights to others puts your own safety in jeopardy. It is this cooperation, put into words and exalted to a level of the supernatural that makes it appear that "rights" are something beyond ourselves. The idea of innate or natural rights, of all the things that people believe without justification, this is probably one that has resulted in the most good...But having said that, we are coming of age. We, as a specie, need to recognize exactly where our rights come from so we can take the next step......
 
Riveroaks said:
Not everybody will ever agree.

There is a criminal element in every society.

There are also hostile criminal nations on your borders. Look at the extreme Islamists now. Saddam before them. The ayatollahs. The North Koreans. Adolf. Tojo. The Kaiser. Prussia. Napoleon.

You cannot survive long without guns and ammo. Nor can your society or your nation.
Click to expand...

I don't think he literally meant everyone. Just enough need to agree that can enforce the will of the majority, though it should be noted, that this describes democracy. When the will of the minority is what is being enforced, you have something different.
 
csbrown28 said:
I don't think he literally meant everyone. Just enough need to agree that can enforce the will of the majority, though it should be noted, that this describes democracy. When the will of the minority is what is being enforced, you have something different.
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I can't really tell what he means.
 
joG said:
That depends on what you mean by natural rights.
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What is usually defined as natural rights. If you have another definition, go for it.
 
Riveroaks said:
I can't really tell what he means.
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10 people in a room, 7 of them see the mutual benefit in agreeing that murder is wrong and set down consequences for anyone in the group that fails to abide by that rule - Democracy.

10 people in a room, 1 has the has the power to oppress 9 others and decides, on his own that when he commit's murder it is ok, but when others do it, it's wrong. - Dictatorship.
 
csbrown28 said:
10 people in a room, 7 of them see the mutual benefit in agreeing that murder is wrong and set down consequences for anyone in the group that fails to abide by that rule - Democracy.

10 people in a room, 1 has the has the power to oppress 9 others and decides, on his own that when he commit's murder it is ok, but when others do it, it's wrong. - Dictatorship.
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Ok thanks for interpreting.
 
ecofarm said:
2. Inalienable does not mean inviolable. It means inseparable from being part of mankind. Natural rights are violated, yet they remain inalienable.
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Violating a right demonstrates that it is alienable. Thus inalienable means inviolable. All rights can be violated, so no right is inalienable.

While I agree that natural rights exist, they exist only within social contracts and are alienable.
 
ecofarm said:
1. The rights are socially natural. This means more than one individual, an agreement. It does not mean what a man might "naturally" be capable of himself, such as property etc.

2. Inalienable does not mean inviolable. It means inseparable from being part of mankind. Natural rights are violated, yet they remain inalienable.

3. It's self evident because one can ask the person next to them or any others (barring insane, it's sociological).



Life, expression and defense.

Would anyone like to add anything? Do we have objections.

That's the basis of the free world, politically. It's not a lie. One ins't super-smart and intellectually destroys the foundation. Natural rights exist.
Click to expand...

Inalienable : unable to be taken away from the possessor

Inviolable : never to be broken

The two mean the same in your usage. It is nonsense to say a right can be violated but cannot be revoked.

Japanese internment camps during WW2 and gitmo torture stand as proof that your supposed rights mean ****all without a human authority to enforce them, making natural rights an exercise in frivolity.
 
Cephus said:
What is usually defined as natural rights. If you have another definition, go for it.
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Well, the rights are based on values and there are values that seem to be genetically communicated and such that are socially transferred.
 
joG said:
Well, the rights are based on values and there are values that seem to be genetically communicated and such that are socially transferred.
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Then they would be universal, which they aren't. Try again.
 
Cephus said:
Then they would be universal, which they aren't. Try again.
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That is the interesting thing about it. Some value judgments seem to be nearly universal in the sense that very high and constant proportions of populations hold them independent of their culture. What is also interesting and probably relevant to your assumption is that various such seemingly inherited judgments are inconsistent and may logically contradict each other under certain circumstances. This could lead to a variance in the way the contradictions were dealt with in rational legal systems.
 
Cephus said:
Then they would be universal, which they aren't. Try again.
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Nope, dominant genetic traits are more prevalent but are not universal. While most folks are right handed, due to dominant genetic traits, that does not mean that no folks are wrong handed.
 
There is a good chunk of the natural rights believer crowd which also is rather anti-government in many ways. The idea that government is key and essential in protecting what people want seen as a RIGHT is something which they do not want to admit to since it then gives us a great reason for governments and their powers and functions. So they come up with this fiction of natural rights to avoid having to give government credit and thus upset their fragile ideological structure causing it to crumble to the ground.

My favorite is the phrase "Pre-existing natural right" that was there but the government just stumbled onto and is not protecting. Oh yeah? Where did it exist before government decided to call it a right and protect it? Maybe as an idea - but an idea exists only in the mind and does nothing for anyone until it comes into action in the real world and takes shape. I can have a thought about a dragon as big as the Empire State Building who destroys ISIS in Syria in one afternoon of fire breathing destruction...... but at the end of the day - ISIS is still there just the same.
 
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