Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[G.T.]

oh...




gosh

 

[G.T.]

A proof is irrefutable, that's what makes it proof.

That ability = right is not proof.

It is supposition, and it's incorrect by virtue of the definitions of the actual flipping words.

Geebuz

 

[auditor0007]

A concept that even conservatives get wrong is that government is supposed to secure our rights. That is wrong. Government is supposed to leave our rights alone.

Government is nothing more than those who have control, whether it be one dictator or a duly elected free government. Either way, your rights are determined by whomever it is that controls the government. If you believe differently, then go tell the women of Saudi Arabia or some other strict Muslim country that they don't have to listen to men.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

A proof is irrefutable, that's what makes it proof.

That ability = right is not proof.

It is supposition, and it's incorrect by virtue of the definitions of the actual flipping words.

Geebuz

There used to be irrefutable proof that the sun revolved around the Earth, then evidence came along. Your problem is you want irrefutable proof, and think evidence is irrelevant.

 

[G.T.]

Wanting irrefutable proof is not a problem.

And it was not proven that the sun revolved around the earth. EVER.

 

[dblack]

How do you arrive at inalienable rights, dblack? Simply saying "we have inalienable rights" carries no justification. Assertions are not facts, they are assertions.

You're presuming the bloated, and in my opinion incorrect, definition of 'inalienable rights'. It's just free will, which is an innate property of human consciousness.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wanting irrefutable proof is not a problem.

And it was not proven that the sun revolved around the earth. EVER.

Which is why Galileo never got in trouble for saying it worked the other way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model

 

[G.T.]

Yea dude. We all know it was once thought.

It was neva neva eva proven. Unless you dont know what proven means.

Anyway....gotta run got a radio show to host this eve. Peace out. Shows link is in the media area for any interested.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Yea dude. We all know it was once thought.

It was neva neva eva proven. Unless you dont know what proven means.

Anyway....gotta run got a radio show to host this eve. Peace out. Shows link is in the media area for any interested.

I posted the link to the science that proved that the sun revolves around the Earth. I can also provide links to the science that proves that heavier objects fall faster than light ones.

The person who has a problem understanding proof is you.

 

[G.T.]

If you think the sun revolves around the earth......youre done dude.


Youre just


Youre done. Dont talk to me. Get off my internet with that lol wowza

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If you think the sun revolves around the earth......youre done dude.


Youre just


Youre done. Dont talk to me. Get off my internet with that lol wowza

Funny, I never said that the sun revolves around the Earth, I said that, at one time, there was irrefutable proof that it did.

 

[G.T.]

It wasnt irrefutable. It was refuted.

Two words you dont know now.

Irrefutable. And proof.

If it was proof, its fact. If it was irrefutable, it would not have been refuted. Jesus christ.

 

[Sallow]

This concept truly is beyond you, bro. If inalienable rights are egalitarian, and they involve the right to life and to property, how is it that any individual has the right to infringe upon the inalienable rights of someone else? They don't. That;s the entire point essentially. That EACH individual has such rights. No one has any right to infringe upon the rights of another in stealing and/or killing.

It's not beyond me,

you admitted they were abstract and not provable.

you were done, at that point.

I don't know if that's true. But I didn't, did I? Because they're not! They're concrete, and I don't have to appeal to God. They're embedded in nature. That's their immediate ORIGIN. Since you complain about links intended to save time, here it is again.
______________________________________

But they are quantifiable, and they have been specifically identified in the historical literature of natural law, repeatedly.

We know what they are. You know what they are.

They are self-evident because any given instance of their violation provokes the bonds of peace and justice, and at one level or another, a state of war between the respective parties necessarily ensues. Ultimately, they are the stuff of self-preservation.

Every sane person of normal intelligence on this board knows when their fundamental rights are being threatened or violated as the injustice of it and the consequences of it are very tangible, rationally apprehended and viscerally felt in the most immediate sense there is, for one is indisputably compelled to fight, flee or submit against what one would normally will for oneself.

All the claims to the contrary are baby talk, indeed, theoretical rubbish, sophomoric philosophizing, the womanish stuff of "To be or not to be."

The following are the fundamental, innate rights of man. They have been identified and established for centuries, indeed, long before the iteration of them in terms of natural law proper during the Enlightenment. It is readily self-evident that the innate rights of man would be of such a nature that the transgression of them would pose an immediate existential threat to one's physical survival or mental well-being.

They are not the civil/political rights afforded by government!

1. The right to be secure in one's life, fundamental liberties (3, 4, 5) and property.

2. The right to use deadly force to defend one's life, fundamental liberties and property.

3. Freedom of religion/ideology.

4. Freedom of expression.

5. Freedom of movement.
_____________________________________

It's your contention that rights are mere social constructs or perhaps the civil/political rights afforded by government that's the stuff of theory, abstraction, mamby-pamby philosophizing.

Once again, if what you say is true regarding the nature of rights, then prove it by showing how your underlying relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition about the reality of things is true.

But you just want to argue against straw men, right?





BTW, in case some of you are imagining a contradiction in my posts, the essential aspects of liberty (3, 4, 5), as distinguished from those of life and property, are commonly or idiomatically referred to in the historical literature of natural law as the freedom of religion/ideology, the freedom of expression and the freedom of movement. They are not freedoms proper, but the inalienable rights of human liberty. In other words, the are the natural, inalienable rights of exercising human liberty.

Nothing you cited is natural.

"Rights" by their very nature are a human construct.

 

[oldfart]

You know... I was glib with you earlier, but this really is very frustrating, because it's not even a real debate. It's just a confusion, a category error. The 'inalienable rights' that Jefferson references are an entirely different sort of thing than the concept most people are referring to here when they discuss 'rights'. Most people, Rabbi and the rest who insist rights are state creations, are thinking of rights as those freedoms we designate for protection - and that protection certainly isn't 'inalienable'. As soon as there isn't a government around to provide the protection, it goes away. But the freedom itself is simply a by product of free will.

The key thing about the inalienable rights is that no one needs to do anything for you to have them - all they need to do is leave you alone. That's what makes them different than nonsense like the 'right to health care' or other imagined rights that require others to serve you. Again, inalienable doesn't mean 'sacrosanct' or 'off-limits' - it just means 'innate', essentially something that is an extrapolation of the ability to think for yourself.

I agree that the discussion is mainly a case of semantic confusion. You bring up a point that bears further comment when you use as an example a "right to health care". Although the concepts are a lot older, Americans associate them with Wilson's Fourteen Points in international relations and FDRs Four Freedoms in domestic affairs. The third point is "Freedom from Want". This was further advanced in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

In FDRs formulation, "freedom from want" had equal standing and was parallel to "freedom of speech", "freedom of religion", and "freedom from fear". By calling them freedoms, FDR implied that they were aspirational goals, not enforceable rights. The UDHR was an international attempt to convert such aspirations to enforceable rights, or at least causes of action.

Now as aspirations, I see no problem in declaring a goal of providing any person the basic necessities of life. This is irrespective of what we call them. The objection seems to be to regarding them as enforceable rights, which imply a structure for enforcement. Presumably enforcement would be by governmental action. Personally I have no objection to this either; I see no sense in declaring objectives for society or government and then having no way of implementing them. I realize that this opens the door to a discussion of the redistributive effects of government action, but most government actions have distribution effects whether we discuss them or not. Usually such effects are deleterious to society as a whole and to the mechanisms of government itself if such control is hidden.

A long tradition in political philosophy holds that quite different rights are combined in a package, and that any social contract that exists has as a prerequisite that most members agree to accept the compact. The Bill of Rights was a bargain struck to ensure passage of the Constitution. In Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, he recognized the people's rights to change the government both by constitutional and by revolutionary means. We cannot cherry-pick which rights are absolute and which are negotiable. We should not try to live under the slogan "What's mine is mine and what is yours is negotiable!"

For example, property rights are never off the table. Should the American society decide to confiscate wealth over a certain level or of a certain type, it can do so by either constitutional or revolutionary methods. There is no "right" that can stop it.

This is the essence of the Declaration of Independence, which is in essence a declaration of a revolutionary "right" to restructure the arrangements of power and government when a sufficient number of citizens decide to do so and have the ability to succeed in the ensuing test of arms. No ever said that revolutions had to be peaceful, or successful, or even to achieve their original goals. Often they are failed and enormously destructive. But as a matter of "natural law" the founding fathers believed that they had a "natural right" to rebellion, if they could persuade the world that it was justified and attracted sufficient resources to win the test of arms. This is the one "right", rooted in the use of force, political, economic, and military, which rests on no political theory at all. This is the one right which requires no agreement or permission of others. All it requires is the willingness to lose everything, including one's life and family, in the following conflict.

So where does a "right" to a bearable standard of living come from? From the consent of most of society if it can be garnered, and after that only from a revolution. Those who cannot negotiate the first are likely to be disappointed with the second.

This is a sword that cuts both ways. A society that cannot resolve its conflicts within the bounds of political processes will find those conflicts resolved outside of those political processes. Anyone who believes a certain outcome in their favor is foreordained is engaging in self deception. Those who believe that they must prevail as a matter of "right" are the most deluded of all.

You should look up negative income tax and research the libertarian arguments for it. The fact that I oppose a right to a minimum standard of living does not mean I would object to a sensible approach to government actually delivering on the concept.

Actually, I've followed the "negative income tax" from when Uncle Milty proposed it over fifty years ago. No need to research, I've posted his arguments for it in terms of administrative efficiency/cost and libertarian ideals of minimal government interference.

I agree with you that if a society accepts a goal of providing a minimum standard of living to all members (which you do not, or at least not as a "matter of right"), then the negative income tax has a strong case as being most efficient and least destructive of personal liberties.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

It wasnt irrefutable. It was refuted.

Two words you dont know now.

Irrefutable. And proof.

If it was proof, its fact. If it was irrefutable, it would not have been refuted. Jesus christ.

Umm, what?

Proof is not fact. It can be evidence that something is true, but it is not, in and of itself, a fact.

1 a : the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact
b : the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning

2 obsolete : experience

3: something that induces certainty or establishes validity

4archaic : the quality or state of having been tested or tried; especially : unyielding hardness

5: evidence operating to determine the finding or judgment of a tribunal

6a plural proofs or proof : a copy (as of typeset text) made for examination or correction
b : a test impression of an engraving, etching, or lithograph
c : a coin that is struck from a highly polished die on a polished planchet, is not intended for circulation, and sometimes differs in metallic content from coins of identical design struck for circulation
d : a test photographic print made from a negative

7: a test applied to articles or substances to determine whether they are of standard or satisfactory quality

8a : the minimum alcoholic strength of proof spirit
b : strength with reference to the standard for proof spirit; specifically : alcoholic strength indicated by a number that is twice the percent by volume of alcohol present <whiskey of 90 proof is 45 percent alcohol>

Proof - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary

It is entirely possible to prove something that isn't true. It has actually happened in real life, more than once.

Casandra Kennedy Recants Rape Charge Against Her Father, Freed After 9 Years - The Daily Beast

I really hate repeating myself, but you are not getting the message.

You
do
not
understand
proof.
​

 

[G.T.]

read 1a over and over and over to yourself

do so, for a really long long time

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

However, make no mistake about it, they are ultimately endowed by God, as He is the Creator of nature. The reason that in the natural law of the Anglo-American tradition of our nation's founding this idea is advanced is because it emphasis the fact that government is not the Source and Guarantor of these rights, to emphasize the fact that they are inalienable, inviolable, sacrosanct, inviolable, absolute beyond the imperatives of nature as well.

Like M.D., in order to claim inalienable rights exist one must either assert an absolute deity who grants these "inalienable" rights or they are not inalienable.

False. One doesn't have to "assert an absolute deity" in order to demonstrate the actualities of inalienable natural rights! That's essentially the same challenge that G.T. raised, and he has yet to substantiate the relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition underlying this claim. God's existence or non-existence is not immediately relevant, but thanks for conceding the fact, as did G.T., that they would be absolute beyond all doubt were they endowed by a Creator. I'll remind you of that later should you attempt to substantiate what G.T. won't concerning the claim that innate rights are mere social constructs or the civil rights afforded by government.

(But the point that Quantum makes, concerning one's personal decision about divinity, in response to your sentiment is profound . . . for those who apprehend it. Some of you won't.)

gnarlylove, the pertinent portion of the entire quote, which you left out, is in bold:

As I've shown, it's self-evident that they [inalienable natural rights] obtain in nature as a matter of the pragmatic, everyday exigencies and consequences of human life and conduct; that is to say, they exist in nature or exist as immediate, natural extensions of the same. They are not granted by or derived from government.

However, make no mistake about it, they are ultimately endowed by God, as He is the Creator of nature. The reason that in the natural law of the Anglo-American tradition of our nation's founding this idea is advanced is because it emphasis the fact that government is not the Source and Guarantor of these rights, to emphasize the fact that they are inalienable, inviolable, sacrosanct, inviolable, absolute beyond the imperatives of nature as well.

Hence, the so-called divine right of kings is hokum, and the right of revolt against tyranny is absolute.

The latter portion of the quote is an afterthought.

There is no need to appeal to God in order to demonstrate the reality of inalienably natural rights!

Inalienable means they are universal rights that under no circumstances be revoked.

Fallacious predicate. See below.

However, we act and the government certainly carries out action that negates inalienable rights in supposedly justified scenarios. So either humans are breaking god-given rights through our free will or inalienable rights are not de facto not inalienable--incapable of being infringed.

False on both counts. (1) Free will is the stuff of volition or choice. Free will and rights are categorically two different things. In no construct or system of law--for example, natural law, common law, constitutional law or the case law of the Constitution--is free will a right of any kind. It's an inherent fact of sentient beings, and falls under the heading of freedom. (2) Obviously, any right can be violated or infringed. The inalienable rights of natural law do not obtain in the sense you're going on about at all and never have.

So Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Locke, Sidney, the Founders and many others were all retards, arguing that inalienable rights were absolute because they were "incapable of being infringed"?

That's ridiculous.

Think very carefully about the contents of the following paragraph.

They obtain in the sense of their nature: inalienable rights--being endowed at the very least by nature, and, thus, being inherently benign and fruitful--cannot be legitimately violated. That's all. Checking the illegitimate behavior of criminals by imprisonment or death does not constitute a violation of their inalienable rights. There is no such thing as an inalienable right to violate inalienable rights or legitimate civil rights, which, ultimately, is what you're unwittingly suggesting. That's absurd. Rather, it's the exertion of justice, provoked by criminality, via the due process of law.

Precisely because certain people misbehave, we revoke their inalienable rights and we count this as justified. Thus, inalienable rights are not universal and therefore are not inalienable.

False. There's a dichotomy here: defensive force-initial force. You're hobbling around on one leg of it. The body politic of the social contract, the people collectively, have the same inalienable right under the rule of law in the state of civil government as the individual has to exert defensive force against the initial force of criminality, up to and including the use of deadly force. Once again: what is being arrested pertains to the violation of inalienable rights or legitimate civil rights.

Go back to the drawing board, and don't pass Go.

In my view, inalienable rights are derived from biological principles that propagate what we call morals. Take toddlers for instance, that they pick up language and learn it without being taught its grammar and structure, this shows biology has innate principles that we have a certain immediate access to though we do not understand the innate biology behind it. In the same manner, we can construct these rights we speak of but we must keep in mind that we don't have clear access into what these principles are, only that we have access to our interpretation of them which can be very different. I'm not speaking of English, I'm speaking of the general principles of language. So I'm not speaking about Western version of codified inalienable rights, I'm speaking of universal, inalienable rights that are innate to human beings.

That's the kind of rights the proponents of natural law are talking about too. You seem to be bouncing all over the place. In any event, I addressed this notion too in response to something G.T. wrote:

Uh, currently, the reigning opinion in the epistemological literature, due to recent advances in the neurological sciences, holds that along with a universal baseline of geometric-logistic predilections: humans are born with a universally innate moral code latently embedded in the structures and consequent biochemical processes of the human brain. The traditional, Aristotelian blank slate of Empiricism, at least in this respect, is dead.

But there's no need to linger on that as the imperatives of natural law are extrapolated from the self-evident exigencies of human nature, human interaction and historical experience.

In short, I'm not raising "a God debate." You missed my point entirely.

My contention has absolutely nothing to do with any empirical proof of God's existence. There is no such thing anyway, beyond what is, nevertheless, a very powerful teleological argument backed by a very powerful ontological argument.

I have no interest in proving the existence of God to anyone or getting into any theological discussion as such. I don't have to prove Gods' existence in order to demonstrate the actualities of inalienable natural rights, as I have already demonstrated in the above . . .

here: http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...-exist-without-government-19.html#post8868367


. . . and again here: http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...s-exist-without-government-6.html#post8863497

Thus I think it makes sense to say food is an inalienable right because without food, the biological organism ceases.

I'm just going to pretend you never wrote that for now.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

read 1a over and over and over to yourself

do so, for a really long long time

Lets do that.

The cogency [quality or state of being convincing or persuasive] of evidence [that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief] that compels [force or drive] acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact.

Damn, I was right.

 

[percysunshine]

Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

This is a chicken/egg question.

Since Government was invented to protect existing individual natural rights, natural rights existed first, and government came second. So natural rights existed without government.

Of course, some forms of government go postal on the governed and try to destroy natural rights, but they ultimately self destruct ... as forms of government.

.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

This is a chicken/egg question.

Since Government was invented to protect existing individual natural rights, natural rights existed first, and government came second. So natural rights existed without government.

Of course, some forms of government go postal on the governed and try to destroy natural rights, but they ultimately self destruct ... as forms of government.

.

False. The role of a legitimate government is to protect and promote the rights of all the people concerning their individual, inalienable natural rights to be sure, but (1) protecting and promoting something is not the same thing as (2) being the origin of something. Note the categorical incongruity in that summary of your logic: the first predicate denotes action, the second denotes being. You're analogy is fallacious. It's inherently contradictory and self-negating. It's not a conundrum.