Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[Foxfyre]

...Of course, midcan is wrong as he can be, given the centuries-old understanding of their existence, their nature and their actual substance, but you are just as wrong as he....

In one sentence you nullified your argument. Understanding is a human event and thus no natural right would exist without the observer and chronicler. No where in nature is there a natural right and as animals that should be clear. If I believe in the Great Pumpkin there is no way you can prove me wrong, just as you hold on to your security blanket.

An old post but kinda related, change freedom to rights. And yes, DBlack debate must have a grounding in reality or it is meaningless, fun I grant you.

- The paradox of Freedom Is freedom real -

Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second totalitarian. All the woman believe that they live in complete individual freedom. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without a ticket. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.

One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissar and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their freedom two couldn't, yet each held the same value.

If our original premise is they all have equal freedom, why are the results within these two distinct states similar? While the answer is obvious can we then say a person with limited resources is free?

with apologies to Adam Swift

But again isn't it a question of what a 'natural right' is? The Founders, and the great philosophes they studied, defined natural rights it as that which requires no participation or contribution by any other.

To be Christian, to be Atheist, to be gay, to be straight, to be leftwing or rightwing, to be artistic, to be fascinated with the paranormal, to do housework in the nude, to be kind, to be bigoted, to be prejudiced, to be irrational, to be kind, to be hateful, or to be or do or think or speak of whatever requires no contribution or participation by any other. . . all that is what natural rights are.

Once participation or contribution is required of any other person, or another's rights are interfered with, it is no longer a right, but it becomes a privilege or social contract that should be negotiated with the other.

 

[dblack]

Notwithstanding, I do regret the way in which I spoke to you in that last post; I actually felt that way a few hours after posting it. It was unnecessarily harsh. I apologize.

Thanks for saying so. I look forward to reading your posts 'fresh'.

 

[PaulS1950]

Natural rights do exist.

evidence:
all animals and most plants have the ability and "desire" to protect themselves - self-defense is a natural right. No government gives a lion the right to defend itself against other lions or hyenas invading their territory or against an attack. There is a natural right to defend ourselves and that which we occupy or own. (three rights are covered - the second, fourth and third amendment rights)

All animals and plants express themselves in some way. We have a natural right to express ourselves. This covers the first amendment.

As you can see our natural rights are present in all of the natural world - they apply universally.

 

[dilloduck]

Natural rights do exist.

evidence:
all animals and most plants have the ability and "desire" to protect themselves - self-defense is a natural right. No government gives a lion the right to defend itself against other lions or hyenas invading their territory or against an attack. There is a natural right to defend ourselves and that which we occupy or own. (three rights are covered - the second, fourth and third amendment rights)

All animals and plants express themselves in some way. We have a natural right to express ourselves. This covers the first amendment.

As you can see our natural rights are present in all of the natural world - they apply universally.

Self defense isn't a right. It is an instinct.

 

[PaulS1950]

Self defense isn't a right. It is an instinct.

Because it is an instinct it is a right of birth. You just reinforced my point.

 

[dilloduck]

Self defense isn't a right. It is an instinct.

Because it is an instinct it is a right of birth. You just reinforced my point.

DOH

It is just what living things do. There are no rights involved. You're argument is akin to saying that because the sun shines it has a right to shine.

 

[PaulS1950]

Self defense isn't a right. It is an instinct.

Because it is an instinct it is a right of birth. You just reinforced my point.

DOH

It is just what living things do. There are no rights involved. You're argument is akin to saying that because the sun shines it has a right to shine.

The sun is not a living thing - it is a chemical/nuclear reaction that is defined by its composition and size. An ant or coral has the instinct (natural right) to defend itself.

 

[dilloduck]

Because it is an instinct it is a right of birth. You just reinforced my point.

DOH

It is just what living things do. There are no rights involved. You're argument is akin to saying that because the sun shines it has a right to shine.

The sun is not a living thing - it is a chemical/nuclear reaction that is defined by its composition and size. An ant or coral has the instinct (natural right) to defend itself.

So it doesn't have the right to shine ?

 

[gnarlylove]

...Of course, midcan is wrong as he can be, given the centuries-old understanding of their existence, their nature and their actual substance, but you are just as wrong as he....

In one sentence you nullified your argument. Understanding is a human event and thus no natural right would exist without the observer and chronicler. No where in nature is there a natural right and as animals that should be clear. If I believe in the Great Pumpkin there is no way you can prove me wrong, just as you hold on to your security blanket.

MD sorry I never got to your eloquent post. But this is my precise point. There is no such thing as natural rights. Humans are born, live and die. There are no rights that can be fundamentally and innately attributed to us any more than snakes attribute rights to other snakes. We must first exist AND possess conscious faculties in order to articulate natural rights in a coherent fashion. Only then do they take on meaning; and the meaning ascribed is not absolute. It changes from era to era.

Now the debate about what are natural rights takes on two tasks. A descriptive and prescriptive task. Descriptive is how our biological and innate structures gives rise to moral action. This has only begun to make progress since the 90s, likely having originated with Chomsky in linguistics during the 50s.

The prescriptive task has been a mostly fluid discussion and has sloshed from one side to the other for millennia. There is a range within most humans behave and this likely refers back to a biological component but is not determined solely by that. Our desire and abilities come into focus and help determine our actual action. This is what we are debating about.

The prescription is a question of ethics, not natural rights. Natural rights is a way of understanding prescriptive ethics, albeit a useful one. Nevertheless, it possesses no more inherent qualities than does any other passing thought. To be sure, I certainly agree to a universal norm and only then does moral action take on a sensible. That's why you think natural rights are inherent, because they must exist universally in order to carry weight. But don't mistake universal for inherent qualities. I doubt I need to explain them to you...

 

[gnarlylove]

DOH

It is just what living things do. There are no rights involved. You're argument is akin to saying that because the sun shines it has a right to shine.

The sun is not a living thing - it is a chemical/nuclear reaction that is defined by its composition and size. An ant or coral has the instinct (natural right) to defend itself.

So it doesn't have the right to shine ?

That is not a meaningful question. Inanimate things don't possess "rights" as rights are the result of consciousness. However, Locke proposed a very interesting dilemma: thinking matter. Perhaps our brain simply is designed to pick up thoughts of matter and so all matter, not just us, is thinking. We cannot empirically verify this (yet) and so the sun may have thoughts about shining. But as it stands, I don't think "right to shine" should be mistaken for "it does shine." In the way you use right it can only mean it's continues and will continue to shine day in and day out because that's what it does i.e. "its right."

Like your avatar. Do you consider yin and yang to be meaningful to your life or just a "cool symbol?"

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

...Of course, midcan is wrong as he can be, given the centuries-old understanding of their existence, their nature and their actual substance, but you are just as wrong as he....

In one sentence you nullified your argument. Understanding is a human event and thus no natural right would exist without the observer and chronicler. No where in nature is there a natural right and as animals that should be clear. If I believe in the Great Pumpkin there is no way you can prove me wrong, just as you hold on to your security blanket.

An old post but kinda related, change freedom to rights. And yes, DBlack debate must have a grounding in reality or it is meaningless, fun I grant you.

- The paradox of Freedom Is freedom real -

Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second totalitarian. All the woman believe that they live in complete individual freedom. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without a ticket. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.

One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissar and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their freedom two couldn't, yet each held the same value.

If our original premise is they all have equal freedom, why are the results within these two distinct states similar? While the answer is obvious can we then say a person with limited resources is free?

with apologies to Adam Swift

But again isn't it a question of what a 'natural right' is? The Founders, and the great philosophes they studied, defined natural rights it as that which requires no participation or contribution by any other.

To be Christian, to be Atheist, to be gay, to be straight, to be leftwing or rightwing, to be artistic, to be fascinated with the paranormal, to do housework in the nude, to be kind, to be bigoted, to be prejudiced, to be irrational, to be kind, to be hateful, or to be or do or think or speak of whatever requires no contribution or participation by any other. . . all that is what natural rights are.

Once participation or contribution is required of any other person, or another's rights are interfered with, it is no longer a right, but it becomes a privilege or social contract that should be negotiated with the other.

And that is a brilliantly crafted summary of the dichotomic means by which the exact identity and parameters of natural rights are apprehended: light and transient transgressions-prolonged and existential transgressions and its correlate initial force-defensive force.

 

[Foxfyre]

In one sentence you nullified your argument. Understanding is a human event and thus no natural right would exist without the observer and chronicler. No where in nature is there a natural right and as animals that should be clear. If I believe in the Great Pumpkin there is no way you can prove me wrong, just as you hold on to your security blanket.

An old post but kinda related, change freedom to rights. And yes, DBlack debate must have a grounding in reality or it is meaningless, fun I grant you.

- The paradox of Freedom Is freedom real -

Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second totalitarian. All the woman believe that they live in complete individual freedom. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without a ticket. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.

One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissar and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their freedom two couldn't, yet each held the same value.

If our original premise is they all have equal freedom, why are the results within these two distinct states similar? While the answer is obvious can we then say a person with limited resources is free?

with apologies to Adam Swift

But again isn't it a question of what a 'natural right' is? The Founders, and the great philosophes they studied, defined natural rights it as that which requires no participation or contribution by any other.

To be Christian, to be Atheist, to be gay, to be straight, to be leftwing or rightwing, to be artistic, to be fascinated with the paranormal, to do housework in the nude, to be kind, to be bigoted, to be prejudiced, to be irrational, to be kind, to be hateful, or to be or do or think or speak of whatever requires no contribution or participation by any other. . . all that is what natural rights are.

Once participation or contribution is required of any other person, or another's rights are interfered with, it is no longer a right, but it becomes a privilege or social contract that should be negotiated with the other.

And that is a brilliantly crafted summary of the dichotomic means by which the exact identity and parameters of natural rights are apprehended: light and transient transgressions-prolonged and existential transgressions and its correlate initial force-defensive force.

LOL. I am not quite certain what you said here, but I think you might be agreeing with me on what a natural right is????

But if we accept the definition of a natural right as anything that does not require participation or contribution by any other, then we also have a working defiinition of what tolerance is.

Tolerance is that which recognizes and accepts the natural rights of others to be who and what they are so long as no contribution or participation is required of others.

To extend that to inanimate objects or creatures who have no choice but to be who and and what they are--the sun that shines, the bee that buzzes, the bird that sings, etc.--is just silly.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

no i didnt get that from your post,.......just read some about it on wikipedia and I dont think it was him that took it all the way to the supreme court.
He maybe was being a bit inconsistent, but I think hes mainly pointing to idea that rights are dependent on governments and I would like to think he agrees with Jefferson in what he says in the picture I posted previously.

You are free to believe whatever you want, just don't expect the world to change simply because you believe something that isn't true.

So You dont think Carlin agreed with Jefferson...perhaps not,.... I'm not sure I do entirely...but I do agree with him in the picture below....and I agree with Hobbes that life without government would be nasty brutish and short .

http://www.usmessageboard.com/membe...ture5998-jefferson-on-mtrushmore-w-quotes.jpg

So did Locke, but Locke, unlike Hobbes, understood why life was like that in the state of nature.

 

[Derideo_Te]

While I believe in God, I have struggled with the idea that Thomas Jefferson put forth:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Unalienable means (from the net): incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another.

Now, if China chooses to be communist....and forbids your rights, what difference does it make if they can't "repudiate" them (refuse to accept that they exist) ? You still don't get to exercise them....and, in effect, they have been removed.

While recently reading Ezra Taft Benson's talk on the proper role of goverment, he states that the most important function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individuals.

Can someone explain to me how we don't have secure rights without government ?

I just don't see it.

We the People secure our own individual rights because We the People are the government.

That is the concept. Reality is where things become less cut and dried.

 

[gnarlylove]

Marx RESPONDS to dblack:

A Critique of Classic liberal principles of free competition...inevitably hindering capitalism, ambivalent ingredients to capitalism:

the absurdity of considering free competition as being the final development of human liberty....The development of what free competition is, is the only rational answer to the deification of it by the middle-class prophets, or its bedevilment by the socialists. If it is said that, within the limits of free competition, individuals by following their pure self-interest realize their soical or rather their general interests, this means merely that they exert pressure upon one another under conditions of capitalist production and that collision between them can only again give rise to the vonditions under which their interaction took place. Moreover, once the illusion that competition is the ostensible absolute form of free individuality disappears, this proves that the conditions of competition i.e. production founded on capital, are already felt and thought of as a barrier, as indeed they already are and will increasingly become so. The assertion that free competition is the final form of the development of productive forces, and thus of human freedom, means only that the domination of the middle class is the end of the world's history--of course quite a pleasant thought for yesterday's parvenus [rich]!

Grundrisse pg. 31

In other words, if you think we attain our self-realization through free markets and private pursuits, we will be naturally led back to the conditions of enslavement by those to whom capital attracts. As capital accumulates to these individuals, they find freedom and free competition increasingly a threat to capital accumulation. Thus, as Marx says, it becomes a fancy thought to those who have become wealthy, "yesterday's parvenus" although it is not based in reality.

Hence your ideology rests on a fundamental flaw and willful blindness to history and reality. That's why so many people think your ideas are not grounded in reality or maybe it's me signing in as other people making the same claim. Either way, loads!

 

[Foxfyre]

Marx RESPONDS to dblack:

A Critique of Classic liberal principles of free competition...inevitably hindering capitalism, ambivalent ingredients to capitalism:

the absurdity of considering free competition as being the final development of human liberty....The development of what free competition is, is the only rational answer to the deification of it by the middle-class prophets, or its bedevilment by the socialists. If it is said that, within the limits of free competition, individuals by following their pure self-interest realize their soical or rather their general interests, this means merely that they exert pressure upon one another under conditions of capitalist production and that collision between them can only again give rise to the vonditions under which their interaction took place. Moreover, once the illusion that competition is the ostensible absolute form of free individuality disappears, this proves that the conditions of competition i.e. production founded on capital, are already felt and thought of as a barrier, as indeed they already are and will increasingly become so. The assertion that free competition is the final form of the development of productive forces, and thus of human freedom, means only that the domination of the middle class is the end of the world's history--of course quite a pleasant thought for yesterday's parvenus [rich]!

Grundrisse pg. 31

In other words, if you think we attain our self-realization through free markets and private pursuits, we will be naturally led back to the conditions of enslavement by those to whom capital attracts. As capital accumulates to these individuals, they find freedom and free competition increasingly a threat to capital accumulation. Thus, as Marx says, it becomes a fancy thought to those who have become wealthy, "yesterday's parvenus" although it is not based in reality.

Hence your ideology rests on a fundamental flaw and willful blindness to history and reality. That's why so many people think your ideas are not grounded in reality or maybe it's me signing in as other people making the same claim. Either way, loads!

The rebuttal to your argument here, however, is that in Marx's day, there was no such concept as self governance by the people in existence, nor had there ever been such in the history of the world.

The whole of the Constitution is a concept of a government that will provide the common defense to secure our rights, that will enact sufficient regulation to allow the various states to function as one strong nation, and then will recognize the unalienable right of the people to form themselves into whatever sorts of societies they wished to have and govern themselves.

In such a society, there cannot be prevention of competition, except on a very small scale via social contract, and nobody is able to be opportunistic more than anybody else because the unalienable rights of all are protected and defended. Thus the people themselves are unrestricted in seeking and striving for whatever goals do not infringe on the rights of others.

 

[dilloduck]

The sun is not a living thing - it is a chemical/nuclear reaction that is defined by its composition and size. An ant or coral has the instinct (natural right) to defend itself.

So it doesn't have the right to shine ?

That is not a meaningful question. Inanimate things don't possess "rights" as rights are the result of consciousness. However, Locke proposed a very interesting dilemma: thinking matter. Perhaps our brain simply is designed to pick up thoughts of matter and so all matter, not just us, is thinking. We cannot empirically verify this (yet) and so the sun may have thoughts about shining. But as it stands, I don't think "right to shine" should be mistaken for "it does shine." In the way you use right it can only mean it's continues and will continue to shine day in and day out because that's what it does i.e. "its right."

Like your avatar. Do you consider yin and yang to be meaningful to your life or just a "cool symbol?"

People are damned and determined to interpret what things do as a "right".
Yin and yang are simple concepts in a meaningless existence. I like them.

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Believe me, that rifle has looked pretty good now and then, but alas, I have always been one to fight more with ideas and reason than via fisticuffs and bullets and stuff like that.

But no. Rights do not come from government, because I (as well as the Founding Fathers and those great minds they studied) reject that one person, no matter who he/she is, can confer a 'right' upon another.

Rights either exist--have always existed--or they do not. So governments do not confer rights. What a government confers is rather a privilege or something that is allowed at this time, and that can just be as easily taken away tonight or tomorrow or some other time.

The concept of unalienable or God-given or natural rights is the essential core of what liberty is. That each of us can and will be who and what we are and are unlimited in what we do unless we interfere with who and what somebody else is. A natural right cannot require contribution or participation by any other because that negates the very concept of what a natural right is.

A government that recognizes natural rights and protects them is not at all the same as a government that assigns the 'rights' that the people will have.

I understand your position. It is mine too.

However, if you were a masochist....you'd read this thread. It is a mess.

While the question of who confers what is always going to rage...the real issue is what your ideology drives.

LOL. I read enough of it to see the mess.

I don't think ideology has that much to do with it though our ideology does seem to be a component on whether a person is able to focus on and analyze and intelligently discuss a concept or will rather focus on and attack/criticize/belittle/ridicule/blame other people.

For instance I think the leftists/political class/statists/progressives/modern day liberals cannot wrap their mind around a concept of natural or unalienable rights. They don't understand it, can't define it, and certainly can't appreciate it. Which is why they are who they are I suppose. They will most often describe a right as what people ought to embrace, ought to require, ought to defend in their opinion. A concept of live and let live just isn't in their psyche.

And I hasten to add that there are also some on the right who are just that fixated in their ideology and just as inflexible in their understandings.

But I do think more on the right can and do understand what unalienable rights are and why recognition of them and defense of them is necessarily for liberty to exist.

LOL!


It's the Is-Ought dichotomy of what is mine verses what ought to be the state's according to the psychological trappings of progressivism.

The imperatives of natural law and the inalienable natural rights thereof are the Is. As translated from the state of nature, the latter are the civil liberties that are not to be abridged by Congress.

The leftist's slate of extra-constitutional rights piled on top of the fundamental civil rights of political necessity are the ought systematically suppressing the free exercise of civil liberties.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Marx RESPONDS to dblack:

A Critique of Classic liberal principles of free competition...inevitably hindering capitalism, ambivalent ingredients to capitalism:

the absurdity of considering free competition as being the final development of human liberty....The development of what free competition is, is the only rational answer to the deification of it by the middle-class prophets, or its bedevilment by the socialists. If it is said that, within the limits of free competition, individuals by following their pure self-interest realize their soical or rather their general interests, this means merely that they exert pressure upon one another under conditions of capitalist production and that collision between them can only again give rise to the vonditions under which their interaction took place. Moreover, once the illusion that competition is the ostensible absolute form of free individuality disappears, this proves that the conditions of competition i.e. production founded on capital, are already felt and thought of as a barrier, as indeed they already are and will increasingly become so. The assertion that free competition is the final form of the development of productive forces, and thus of human freedom, means only that the domination of the middle class is the end of the world's history--of course quite a pleasant thought for yesterday's parvenus [rich]!

Grundrisse pg. 31

In other words, if you think we attain our self-realization through free markets and private pursuits, we will be naturally led back to the conditions of enslavement by those to whom capital attracts. As capital accumulates to these individuals, they find freedom and free competition increasingly a threat to capital accumulation. Thus, as Marx says, it becomes a fancy thought to those who have become wealthy, "yesterday's parvenus" although it is not based in reality.

Hence your ideology rests on a fundamental flaw and willful blindness to history and reality. That's why so many people think your ideas are not grounded in reality or maybe it's me signing in as other people making the same claim. Either way, loads!

The rebuttal to your argument here, however, is that in Marx's day, there was no such concept as self governance by the people in existence, nor had there ever been such in the history of the world.

The whole of the Constitution is a concept of a government that will provide the common defense to secure our rights, that will enact sufficient regulation to allow the various states to function as one strong nation, and then will recognize the unalienable right of the people to form themselves into whatever sorts of societies they wished to have and govern themselves.

In such a society, there cannot be prevention of competition, except on a very small scale via social contract, and nobody is able to be opportunistic more than anybody else because the unalienable rights of all are protected and defended. Thus the people themselves are unrestricted in seeking and striving for whatever goals do not infringe on the rights of others.

That is factually inaccurate. The term Democracy is from the ancient Greek where all citizens had a vote to elect the leaders of their city states. The Athenian democracy was even more direct where all citizens voted on the laws themselves.

The Magna Carta written in 1215 is the basis for the Constitution and many of the concepts stem from there. The Constitution itself was written in 1787 and had been in effect for 60 years by the time Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in 1848. Self governance was also in effect in France during most of that period too.

 

[gnarlylove]

The rebuttal to your argument here, however, is that in Marx's day, there was no such concept as self governance by the people in existence, nor had there ever been such in the history of the world.

The whole of the Constitution is a concept of a government that will provide the common defense to secure our rights, that will enact sufficient regulation to allow the various states to function as one strong nation, and then will recognize the unalienable right of the people to form themselves into whatever sorts of societies they wished to have and govern themselves.

In such a society, there cannot be prevention of competition, except on a very small scale via social contract, and nobody is able to be opportunistic more than anybody else because the unalienable rights of all are protected and defended. Thus the people themselves are unrestricted in seeking and striving for whatever goals do not infringe on the rights of others.

I don't think you know what you're talking about. It centers around a religious notion that the Constitution was the first holy document of autonomy. Marx wasn't around during 19th century is like saying you don't exist now. Since you didn't know, Marx was born half a century after the founding of America and that holy document.

But to think human beings had not discovered autonomy until 1776 just shows how little you know about history. I refer you to Aristotle's Politics. "Discovering" self-governance is like saying human beings woke up and realized they control their own life. Do you think that didn't exist until 1776? What did humans do before this sudden "realization?"

Plus your idea of self-government doesn't hold water. Show me anything that remotely resembles self-governance among the elite, who, in a free market, accumulate capital inevitably. It hasn't been done. Not in 1929 in the first major market crash and certainly not under our current world of Goldman's Sachs high frequency trading. Self-governance is fictions among those who are attracted to wealth and power.

I respect your try but you need to do more self-education to make conversation worthwhile, unless, of course, you don't think reality matters--and there are many who watch Fox and believe it though it has few ties to reality. Non-reality based belief systems and Oprah like fideism are becoming increasingly popular as reality increasingly encroaches on us, starting with the vulnerable.