Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[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.

.

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.

Why the modifier 'legitimate'? Who decides that? You?

Tracing the evolution of the human species will show that social structures developed from the natural rights. The lone wolf is a viable, all be it inefficient, social structure. These human structures became more complex over time, eventually evolving into things called civilized societies, but the quid pro quo was always the same. The governing social structure protected the individual rights in exchange for a degree of co-operation.

Are you denying that evolution ever occured?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

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.

Yeah. That's only like the 100th time that claim has been made on this thread. Heard that. Dealt with that. Got the T-shirt.

You're making a bald assertion that is actually contingent upon a relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition.

What none of you on this thread have ever done is provide a rational justification for that claim. There it is again suspended in midair.

What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?

Here's an easier one for you: how does one distinguish the formal difference between civil liberties and civil rights? Note: the question is not what they are, respectively, though one must begin with the what, but how one distinguishes the former from the latter.

 

[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.

Why the modifier 'legitimate'? Who decides that? You?

Tracing the evolution of the human species will show that social structures developed from the natural rights. The lone wolf is a viable, all be it inefficient, social structure. These human structures became more complex over time, eventually evolving into things called civilized societies, but the quid pro quo was always the same. The governing social structure protected the individual rights in exchange for a degree of co-operation.

Are you denying that evolution ever occured?

Because you inserted the qualifier that "[g]overnment was invented to protect existing individual natural rights". Hitler or Stalin certainly wouldn't have agreed with that. I don't believe that Hitler's or Stalin's concept of government is legitimate or congruent with the form of government that would affect the protection of "existing individual natural rights". Do you?

As for the rest of your post, shifting to the pertinent dichotomic terms thereof, you're still confounding a similar ontological distinction: the difference between mechanism and agency.

 

[G.T.]

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.

So easy, wuddnt it?

 

[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.

So easy, wuddnt it?

I see your problem now, you only read the last few words part of a sentence, thus missing the entire meaning of the sentence.

 

[percysunshine]

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.

Why the modifier 'legitimate'? Who decides that? You?

Tracing the evolution of the human species will show that social structures developed from the natural rights. The lone wolf is a viable, all be it inefficient, social structure. These human structures became more complex over time, eventually evolving into things called civilized societies, but the quid pro quo was always the same. The governing social structure protected the individual rights in exchange for a degree of co-operation.

Are you denying that evolution ever occured?

Because you inserted the qualifier that "[g]overnment was invented to protect existing individual natural rights". Hitler or Stalin certainly wouldn't have agreed with that. I don't believe that Hitler's or Stalin's concept of government is legitimate or congruent with the form of government that would affect the protection of "existing individual natural rights". Do you?

As for the rest of your post, shifting to the pertinent dichotomic terms thereof, you're still confounding a similar ontological distinction: the difference between mechanism and agency.

Actually, that was not a qualifier. It was a statement, backed by millennia of evolutionary change. Your assertion of a dichotomy of ontological distinction would benefit if you could provide an example. There was no conflation at all. I have provided the 'lone wolf' example as being before the 'we are all a team' example. The agency came later. You get the next 'at bat'.



,

 

[Sallow]

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.

Yeah. That's only like the 100th time that claim has been made on this thread. Heard that. Dealt with that. Got the T-shirt.

You're making a bald assertion that is actually contingent upon a relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition.

What none of you on this thread have ever done is provide a rational justification for that claim. There it is again suspended in midair.

What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?

Here's an easier one for you: how does one distinguish the formal difference between civil liberties and civil rights? Note: the question is not what they are, respectively, though one must begin with the what, but how one distinguishes the former from the latter.

There's no argument really.

You guys have to rely on esoteric constructs which have little or no meaning in the real world.

"Rights" aren't even universal and differ between human cultures.

The fact that this country had slavery absolutely destroys your argument. Even moreso that this country participated in torture in the modern age.

Governments are human constructs set up to protect human rights. But even that construct doesn't work out all the time. If right were "natural"? That simply wouldn't be the case.

 

[Traditionalist]

They exist, but the government is there to protect them through the rule of law. However, the government can just as easily take them away, so that is why the government must be accountable to an active, engaged citizenry.

 

[Sallow]

They exist, but the government is there to protect them through the rule of law. However, the government can just as easily take them away, so that is why the government must be accountable to an active, engaged citizenry.

That's the only part of this post I disagree with..

The rest is spot on.

 

[TemplarKormac]

There is no such thing as a natural right.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-2.html#post5796207
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-4.html#post5799892
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-5.html#post5805092
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-7.html#post5806946
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-8.html#post5814461
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-8.html#post5818474
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-8.html#post5824790
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-8.html#post5950608
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-9.html#post5977824
http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean-debate-zone/239966-listening-to-paul-ryan-9.html#post5997532

Then you should have no problem addressing the actual arguments in this thread instead of trying to prove you are smart by linking to another thread.

Windbag - I've read your posts in the past, you're not the sharpest tool in the shed, but you're certainly not as dumb as your performance on this thread would have people believe - either explain your point more eloquently or just give it up .

So, you plan to defeat him with a purely genetic argument?

 

[GreenBean]

Then you should have no problem addressing the actual arguments in this thread instead of trying to prove you are smart by linking to another thread.

Windbag - I've read your posts in the past, you're not the sharpest tool in the shed, but you're certainly not as dumb as your performance on this thread would have people believe - either explain your point more eloquently or just give it up .

So, you plan to defeat him with a purely genetic argument?

Did you mean "generic" ?

 

[midcan5]

Still at I see. If any such thing as a 'natural right' existed I think you would have found it by now, let's face it rights are flexible things, man made things, and sometimes agreed upon and sometimes not. Just today I was reading a piece on the Abortion debate, I will link it below. Science mixed with politics made conception a person with rights in spite of the fact a great many conceptions end naturally. But facts don't really matter once someone assigns a right to anything at all.

Do animals have rights in this natural scheme for surely a cow or chicken feels pain and is a living being. Can we then argue animals have rights and we should act accordingly. If humans have natural rights wouldn't most actions that affect them negatively be a denial of natural rights? If property is a right why do so many have so little and what can we do to correct that injustice? If a person has a right to no harm is not the lack of adequate healthcare a denial of their natural rights? Consider children as they form a place where the topic gets even stickier. Do children have a natural right to well being or are they simply destined to live in whatever situation they find themselves in - feel free to extrapolate on that question.

"No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any." Friedrich Nietzsche

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government." Thomas Jefferson to A. Coray

"Toleration was certainly the term of choice in matters of religious liberty before American independence. It had been made popular by writings such as John Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration and copied into the first draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776 by George Mason. Young James Madison objected, however, and when he succeeded in changing the word tolerance to the words free exercise, he advanced the cause of religious liberty by light-years. Tolerance is too condescending and uncertain. It is the gesture of the strong toward the weak, the government toward the citizenry, and the majority toward the minority. Free exercise, by contrast, is inalienable because it is the inalienable right of everyone, the minority no less than the majority, the weak as well as the poor, and the citizens just as much as the government." Os Guinness

"Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. " Julius Caesar


"“God Does Not Regard the Fetus as a Soul” "Conservative evangelicals didn’t always care much about abortion or contraception. The strange story of how they came to be obsessed with them.' By Jamelle Bouie

Hobby Lobby and contraception: How conservative evangelicals went from not caring about abortion and birth control to being obsessed with them.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Natural rights only exist as ideas or opinions. No one can prove they exist; no one can even define them in the sense of what is or isn't a natural right.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

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.

Yeah. That's only like the 100th time that claim has been made on this thread. Heard that. Dealt with that. Got the T-shirt.

You're making a bald assertion that is actually contingent upon a relativistic-materialistic, metaphysical presupposition.

What none of you on this thread have ever done is provide a rational justification for that claim. There it is again suspended in midair.

What is the argument which actually demonstrates that the realities of human conduct and interaction are not governed by any absolute, universal imperatives at some level of being or another?

Here's an easier one for you: how does one distinguish the formal difference between civil liberties and civil rights? Note: the question is not what they are, respectively, though one must begin with the what, but how one distinguishes the former from the latter.

You have to admit though, it's fairly entertaining to watch these types try to undo 100s, maybe 1,000's of years of philosophical layering and understanding by making sophomoric claims.

 

[dblack]

Still at I see. If any such thing as a 'natural right' existed I think you would have found it by now ...

Is that really how you think of abstract concepts like freedom and rights? Like physical quantities that will be 'found'? Or are you just playing the demagogue for rhetorical flourish?

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Natural rights only exist as ideas or opinions. No one can prove they exist; no one can even define them in the sense of what is or isn't a natural right.

So, you're going to go the GT route of everything is abstract? That's fine. Revert to page 1, start reading then come back.

 

[NYcarbineer]

This debate always reminds me for some reason of the old joke about the difference between theory and reality:

A young boy went to his father and asked, "Dad, what's the difference
between theory and reality?"

"Well, son, the best way to explain this is a practical exercise. Go ask
your Mom if she'd sleep with a stranger a million dollars and come tell me
her answer."

The boy returned and said, " She said she would, Dad." "OK," replied the
father, "Go ask your sister the same question."

The boy returned and said that his sister also answered yes to the
question and then asked his Dad, "What's this got to do with theory and
reality?"

"It's simple, son. In theory, we're millionaires.

In reality, we live with a couple of sluts."

 

[TakeAStepBack]

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

oh, the delicious irony!

 

[dcraelin]

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.

also in declaration right after those words are these "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed".

The problem is... everyone has a different definition of natural rights

that's why we have to determine what the consent of the governed is, and Jefferson tells how he wants to in pic I post below.

no government = strongest rule = tyranny
to much government = elitist rule = tyranny

very wise post

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

 

[G.T.]

Natural rights only exist as ideas or opinions. No one can prove they exist; no one can even define them in the sense of what is or isn't a natural right.

So, you're going to go the GT route of everything is abstract? That's fine. Revert to page 1, start reading then come back.

No thats still a stupid interpretation.

Saying rights are abstract =\= saying EVERYTHING is abstract.

No wonder the conversation goes nowhere. Youre forced to be dishonest to appease your lack of wisdom.

I forgive you of your trespasses for you know not how you stretch.