Murf76
Senior Member
- Nov 11, 2008
- 2,464
- 593
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I agree that people have a right to property but how does that right exist exaclty?
The thing that stands out for me in contemplation of unalienable rights is the difference in outcome between when these rights are respected and when they are not. When people are respected in their natural rights, there's peace and harmony. When they are not, there's tumult and chaos.
Consider the error in our original constitution which allowed human beings to be deprived of these natural rights. This was a compromise done to bring slave-holding states to the table in an expedient manner. I imagine our framers thought it was a problem that could be solved later on down the pike after they got all the states on board. But this 'kicking of the can' was an affront to the meaning of the document itself, based as it was upon man's natural state of freedom. In depriving human beings of freedom, a state of peace and harmony could not exist, not for long anyway. On a large scale, the destabilizing influence of tyranny can thrust an entire society into chaos, as we've seen. We become less predictable animals.
On the smaller scale, if someone takes your property, the outcome of their action becomes variable as well. You might respond with legal recourse or you might respond with illegal violence. Human beings have the propensity for both reason and rage. But all in all, human nature becomes less predictable when wrongs are committed.
I think, it's probably not enough to try and define natural rights as simply what we're born with as human animals. In context, it's the absence of respect for these unalienable rights which determines whether human beings, social critters that we are, can actually maintain a functional, civilized society. And so, in absence, they further define themselves.