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oh, so you have it within you to create a right?
Well, the way it arose involved theft on a grand scale, and so what they did is not justified by natural rights. Still, someone could in theory own all that land and not violate anyone's rights.
Yes, that is correct.
I don't concede your point, but, regardless, it has no bearing on the validity of the argument concerning the existence or not of natural rights. It's faulty logic, whether you want to admit it or not. I mean, if you're arguing that "There is no such thing as natural rights because the founders were hypocritical scumbags who clearly didn't believe in them" then my retort is "There are natural rights because Honest Abe and Martin Luther King did believe in them."
It's within people as a group. It's a collective concept. Rights don't really exist unless you have more than one person in consideration, and then their existence comes from the power to enforce or exert.
If you are by yourself, no other people anywhere on the planet, do you need rights? No. Because there is no one else there. But as soon you add that second or more people, you start to consider their relationship to you and how they can affect you or you them. That is where rights come into play. And it is dependent on power and ability to defend them, as well as willingness.
I don't concede your point, but, regardless, it has no bearing on the validity of the argument concerning the existence or not of natural rights. It's faulty logic, whether you want to admit it or not. I mean, if you're arguing that "There is no such thing as natural rights because the founders were hypocritical scumbags who clearly didn't believe in them" then my retort is "There are natural rights because Honest Abe and Martin Luther King did believe in them."
I don't concede your point, but, regardless, it has no bearing on the validity of the argument concerning the existence or not of natural rights. It's faulty logic, whether you want to admit it or not. I mean, if you're arguing that "There is no such thing as natural rights because the founders were hypocritical scumbags who clearly didn't believe in them" then my retort is "There are natural rights because Honest Abe and Martin Luther King did believe in them."
So you're saying, "In the absence of government" rights exists. And that human's aren't capable of creating rights for themselves???
None of which matters. Whether someone you like believed in a thing or not has no bearing on whether that thing actually exists in the real world. It's just throwing around the argument from authority and that's fallacious. What matters is if it can be demonstrated, entirely separately from who might have liked the idea or not.
Who makes that distinction?The only diference between a Natural Right and a Human Right is that a Natural Right cannot be taken away or given up. Other than that they are identical.
No, I am comparing natural rights to civil rights to distinguish between the two, just as you brought up human rights to distinguish between the two.You're talking about Civil Rights, which are not the topic of this thread.
Where are you getting that this is a distinction between natural and human rights that people actually use? I don't know of any natural rights philosopher that uses the term in the way you are. You are saying natural rights do not exist by redefining the term.A Natural Right is any Human Right which cannot be forcibly denied by any means whatsoever. That distinction is the reason for the diferent lables. Can you think of any Human Rights which cannot be given up or forcibly denied?
The dictionary.Who makes that distinction?
The dictionary.Where are you getting that this is a distinction between natural and human rights that people actually use?
I don't know any philosophers who have written modern dictionaries.You are saying natural rights do not exist by redefining the term.
Actually it is key and central to any claim that the founders believed in natural rights because without that statement from the Declaration you have zip - nothing - squat.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Rights are whatever you can defend, be it through individual strength or collective teamwork.
You can support establishing and extending civil rights without attributing them magical powers and origins. The two are not mutually exclusive.Fidel Castro would agree with you that he earned the "right" to oppress the population of Cuba using such "logic". Rights are inalienable and God-given.
fine if you bellive in that, can you express that concept IN america and in american law.
:doh Okay, if you really want to go here, I have Lincoln...
... and Martin Luther King:
But this, I think, is still the best part:
That passage is absolutely orgasmic. :july_4th:
But, anyway, yeah, I've got something.
Fidel Castro would agree with you that he earned the "right" to oppress the population of Cuba using such "logic". Rights are inalienable and God-given.
:doh Okay, if you really want to go here, I have Lincoln...
This is still just you relying on people you admire as support for natural rights. It doesn't prove anything. They were great men in many ways, but still just men and subject to being wrong like the rest of us.
You are badly missing the point. Many here have stated that our founding fathers believed in natural rights. Proof of this is the clear statement in their document - The Declaration of Independence. You bringing up both Lincoln and King does not impact this at all since both men were NOT Founding Fathers.
You're right. Lincoln and King weren't Founding Fathers. They got their inspiration from the Founding Fathers, among others, not so much from who they were but from what they wrote. But then where do you think the Founding Fathers got their inspiration from? Marvel Comics?
I have no idea - nor does it matter. People get so called inspiration from many different things - some of them very different from one another and even contradictory. So it really does not matter.
Which "God", and what proof do you have that rights came from that God?
In reality, you can't prove a God exists, let alone that he/she/it gave us "natural rights". Plus, why would this higher power give us "natural" rights, but not other animals?
General mayhem doesn't increase productivity of desirable resources.
If humans had a natural right to life, then God could never have killed anyone since natural rights cannot be alienated.Which is why everybody who understands the concept of 'natural rights' do not need God in the equation in order to understand them. Many people of faith do believe that God created humankind and the natural laws that allow humankind to be the best that it can be. But others who do not believe in God came to the same conclusion of the concept but called it 'natural rights' instead of 'God given rights' or 'rights endowed by their Creator.'
"Natural rights" are not the same thing as civil rights or Constitutional rights or legal rights just as 'social contract' is not the same thing is a legal or informal contract or 'financial institution' means something specific and different from other kinds of institutions. Those who get caught up in the word used instead of the concept demonstrate a lack of understanding and get it wrong.
You are misunderstanding the concept of innate rights. My right to life does not mean you have no ability to take that life. It simply means that my life belongs to me, by right. My thoughts belong to me, by right. My hands belong to me, by right. My labor belongs to me, by right. That is what is meant by the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is 'to secure these rights that governments are instituted among men.' The important aspect of that statement is to demonstrate that rights exist outside of the state and are not created by the state.If humans had a natural right to life, then God could never have killed anyone since natural rights cannot be alienated.
Are you saying natural rights don't exist, or that God doesn't exist?
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