YOU have NO RIGHTS!

[wesmorris]

Wes, you are a romantic if you think the poor and undeducated without any support can rise above their given staus with ease,

Please note that nothing was mentioned of any sort of ease involved, or that it was even possible for people to do. I didn't say they can "rise above their status". I said their status is in the minds of other people, and implied that their status in their own mind is their own choice. I also stated directly that they are free to do what they think they can get away with, and live with the consequences. This would imply that one should learn the consequences/risks involved in their potential actions and behave within their comfort level given their risk tolerance.

If you are born with society telling you you're a slave, is it within your risk tolerance to brave the dogs and guards to be "free" (going to a place where others do not tell you you're a slave), knowing you could be killed or captured and tortured as part of the risk?

You have the right to try to escape. You have the right to think of yourself however you like. You have the right to try to overcome your situation, but you may sacrifice your life or current level of comfort (or lack thereof) in the process. *shrug* They have the right to try and stop you. They think you are their slave. You think you are a person who doesn't have to be their slave. They are willing to kill you over it. You are willing to kill them over it. Blah blah blah. You have the right to do what you think you can get away with and live or die by the consequences.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

Wes there is a diffrence between having an 'assumed' right to do something and just doing something....... have you read this thread? I am being awfully repetative.

You have the right to try to escape. You have the right to think of yourself however you like. You have the right to try to overcome your situation, but you may sacrifice your life or current level of comfort (or lack thereof) in the process. *shrug* They have the right to try and stop you. They think you are their slave. You think you are a person who doesn't have to be their slave. They are willing to kill you over it. You are willing to kill them over it. Blah blah blah. You have the right to do what you think you can get away with and live or die by the consequences.

re-write of the above

"You can try to escape. You can think of yourself however you like. You can try to overcome your situation................" and so on and so forth.

Having the 'right' to do so? NO

 

[wesmorris]

Once upon a time, in the olden days people were born into slavery, where were their alleged 'rights' to do as they please?

Yes, but they might be beaten or killed for it.

They had no such right, right is a concept created by humans, it is not a thing that exists outside of our human consciousness.

All the words here, all concepts are created by humans. Point?

You may call it 'freedom' if you wish, that does not exist either except in the minds of men.

You are free do do whatever you want, silly girl. It's just that you may be killed for doing it. That is freedom. Your limitations are in your mind. You can go try to kill whoever you want if you like, or do any crazy type of shit you want. You just might suffer because of it. Simple stuff.

The only time you'd be truely free is if you resided on an island by yourself, with no one watching or dictating how you live.

Or if you are limited by your mind into not really understanding the topic at hand.

Every married man knows he ain't free to do as he pleases

Bullshit. He's completely free to do as he pleases at any time, just like any one else. However he may CHOOSE not to act in certain ways in order to avoid certain consequences, or gain desired consequences.

Every married woman knows she can remove certain 'right's and privilages at a whim, and so it goes with all things.

? lol. You mean every controlling bitch with a superiority complex, who thinks of her man as a child or a dog?

A right is a word and concept, but the reality is we are afforded privilages, nothing more.

*sigh* No dear, the reality is that privelages are just controlling manipulations of consequence, agreements, negotiations of future behavior, etc. The reality is.. you can do whatever the hell you want until circumstance changes such that you no longer have the option, like you're dead, injured, whatever.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

Look what I found perhaps this explains the matter more clearly for the hard of understanding:

"...................


Political theory usually starts with a theory about rights. It is usually not clear where these rights come from. They just popped out of the sky. Theorists like Friedrich August Hayek, Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard all claimed that man have certain rights, but I have yet to find in their writings how man got his rights. Ayn Rand claimed that the power of reason gives man objective rights, but she did not explain why that is a fact. The fact that A is A (which, according to Rand, should have something to do with rights), that a thing is itself and nothing else, that existence exists (if you accept these statements as facts) does not prove that man has objective rights.

Claiming certain rights, you need to be absolutely sure. You need to have a theory that is beyond any doubt. Such a theory must prove which rights certain persons have, and why. The English political philosopher John Locke tried to solve this problem by deriving his concept of individual rights (and his so-called social contract) – life, liberty, property and health – from God. Deriving rights from God works if God's existence is unquestionable, and if you know God's will (and have not we been told that God's ways are mysterious?).

The Randian theory derives man's rights (life, liberty and property), as mentioned above, from the power of reason. Objectivist-Randian theory also claims (like Rothbardian theory) that man has rights, but that animals do not. To prove this (in the Randian case), the power of reason must be objectively defined – and I would like to know how that will be done. Also, I would like to know why the power of reason should create rights.

One must not forget that the Randians also claim the State has excluding rights, i.e. the right to monopolize defense (the army), the creation of law (government), legal services (courts) and the enforcement of law (the police). I would really like to know how these excluding rights of the State are derived. From the State's power of reason? From the objective judgments of the voters?


First, the fact that man does not have rights does not mean that he should obey the State. Actually, it can just as well mean the opposite. For the State is dressed in legality, derived from the rights of its citizens; the State is Locke's sovereign, against who no uprisings are allowed. According to Locke, you are allowed to secede from the State, and go back to a 'natural state of order', but it is only the State (the sovereign ruler) that has the right to use any kind of coercive defense, which means that you are not allowed to create your own defense agency, or ask (or hire) another defense agency or State to defend you against force. The social contract does not allow competing defense agencies, and it does not allow States to compete peacefully on the same territory.


Secondly, Locke did not create the natural law philosophy. The common law is ancient. It has existed in medieval Iceland and Ireland, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, in pre-Norman England, in Somalia, and in many other places. I do not question that John Locke was a great philosopher, but he did not invent the so-called natural law.

The fact that voluntary cooperation is beneficial to all involved parties was understood already by our first ancestors. Without rules like "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal," that cooperation might soon turn into chaos.

Influenced by the same ancient common law that inspired Locke, the colonists in the New World ended British rule over parts of North America in 1776, and the French ended Bourbon monarchical rule over France in 1789. The Lockean influence did not, however, stop the French rule of terror, or the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, and it did not stop the growth of American state interventionism, either at home or abroad. ........."

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

*sigh* No dear, the reality is that privelages are just controlling manipulations of consequence, agreements, negotiations of future behavior, etc. The reality is.. you can do whatever the hell you want until circumstance changes such that you no longer have the option, like you're dead, injured, whatever.

Dear boy (you started with the patronising sexist shit )

you can do what you want, it is just not your 'right' to do it.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

http://www.spectacle.org/0400/natural.html

and there is more:

""Rights" language, as these two philosophers illustrate, is among the trickiest of human concepts: it is an area in which we all think we know what we are talking about when in reality we have no idea. Hobbes starts by saying that in a state of nature, there is no Justice, no property, etc., therefore no possible founding of "rights"; but in his next chapter he appears to say that without human rulebooks (criminal laws, laws of property) we each should have the right to do whatever preserves our life and our enjoyment.

Hobbes (and many others) seems to me to confound three concepts: what we physically can do; what we desire, which may be different; and what we ought to do, which again may be entirely distinct from the first two categories.

Looked at this way, Locke and Hobbes commit very different versions of Hume's fallacy. Locke reverse engineers the way things are from the way he believes they ought to be: people should be peaceful and respectful of one another, and therefore are this way in a state of nature, which exists only because they lack a common judge. Hobbes goes in the other direction and elevates the way he believes things are (nasty and brutish, constant war of all against all) to a moral imperative, that we (ought to) have a right of mutual destruction until we adopt rules which say otherwise.

What we physically can do

This seems to me to be the single most dangerous foundation for a claimed "right", as we have the physical ability to do all the things we make rules against (there would be no point in banning them if we couldn't do them.)

If we regard rights as a human-generated rulebook, not engraven in the fabric of the universe, we can analyze many circumstances in which the rule-makers must mediate between conflicting interpretations. For example, our courts answer questions like the following every day: Does your right of free speech trump my right of privacy? In this scheme of things, rights are a binary switch, and the rulemakers simply decide which way to set the switch. If you have a right to do something, I have an obligation to respect it and not to interfere with it. It would be illogical to say you have a "right" to do something which I have a "right" to prevent.

But this is exactly the case in the Hobbesian state of nature. I have a "right" to kill you if you get in my way, but you have an equal "right" to kill me. If I am stronger and I succeed, your family nonetheless has a "right" to take revenge, and so forth. ("An eye for an eye," said Gandhi, "makes the whole world blind.")

But if we think strictly in terms of language, what do we add by speaking of "rights" in this context? When we are speaking of human rulebooks, it is much easier to answer that question. A right can be defined as a rule which protects you in taking an action and prevents me from interfering with it.

But in a Hobbesian state of nature, the word "right" seems to be stripped of any content not already contained in the word "can". Compare these two statements:

In a Hobbesian state of nature, I can kill you.

In a Hobbesian state of nature, I have a right to kill you.

There is no meaning communicated by the second statement not already contained in the first. But there appears to be. I have written elsewhere that the word God is often used as a semantic stopsign, meaning simultaneously "Stop asking questions" and "I have won this argument." The word "right" is used similarly. People frequently use it in a context where it has no other possible meaning, like a child at the dinner table proclaiming angrily "I have a right to speak!" "

 

[wesmorris]

Wes there is a diffrence between having an 'assumed' right to do something and just doing something....... have you read this thread? I am being awfully repetative.



re-write of the above

"You can try to escape. You can think of yourself however you like. You can try to overcome your situation................" and so on and so forth.

Having the 'right' to do so? NO

I specified in my original post of the thread that I was using a loose definition of the term, as IMO - 'rights' can be of different natures. Some are granted by society, some are granted by individuals. "rights" in the way you seem to have changed to using the term, cannot be other than "granted". To have a 'right' in the context of a system in which you exist, the system must grant that right. Then again, you could just grant it to yourself. *shrug*

The systems in which we exist, societal convention, organizations, etc... all exist in our minds however. We ultimately grant our own rights to ourselves. You are in charge of your behavior and navigating the consequences of your environmet. You for instance, must allow society to grant you a "right". This is because you have to accept societie's offer to be a member. Of course it might be forced upon you, but you still don't have to accept it. You can opt for death or discomfort, or whatever consequence you incur for your choice.

As you said before, you can opt not to be a member of society. You can also for instance, be a member of society in the parts of it with which you agree, but ignore the rules you dislike, as you grant yourself the right to ignore them. Again however, you may have to deal with unfavorable consquences for having done so.

... and PS, I thought this was the sexist thing that started it "Every married woman knows she can remove certain 'right's and privilages at a whim, and so it goes with all things."

 

[Prince_James]

Bowser:

"BS. In other words, no way. "

One single man in Virginia managed himself to evade being found in the woods by the combined efforts of the Federal Marshalls, the FBI, and local and state police, for nearly three years. A single man outwitting all of them, only to be caught when he briefly let his guard down.

Are you telling me that a dedicated group of revolutionaries could not then stage things which would result in the government being unable to respond, without such force as would so rally public opinion against them, that it would devestate them even if they did act? That they could not, through political, monetary, or religious inclusions, gain more and more followers, using both elective and non-democratic processes, to seize power, even after committing acts of terrorism and crime?

It is a fallacy to think that governments are unconquerable. The 20th century showed that was not so. Even the United STates, with all her armies, all her nuclear weapons, could not use any of that force on an internal problem as they might external problems, and without not careful planning, could well fall victim to any such internal struggles.

 

[lixluke]

Thus again proving that 'human rights' never existed in the first place.

You are right that I haven't read the thread.
Regardless, your proof is illogical.
Try using actual logic to prove that human rights never existed in the first place.

 

[Oniw17]

Bowser:

"BS. In other words, no way. "

One single man in Virginia managed himself to evade being found in the woods by the combined efforts of the Federal Marshalls, the FBI, and local and state police, for nearly three years. A single man outwitting all of them, only to be caught when he briefly let his guard down.

Are you telling me that a dedicated group of revolutionaries could not then stage things which would result in the government being unable to respond, without such force as would so rally public opinion against them, that it would devestate them even if they did act? That they could not, through political, monetary, or religious inclusions, gain more and more followers, using both elective and non-democratic processes, to seize power, even after committing acts of terrorism and crime?

It is a fallacy to think that governments are unconquerable. The 20th century showed that was not so. Even the United STates, with all her armies, all her nuclear weapons, could not use any of that force on an internal problem as they might external problems, and without not careful planning, could well fall victim to any such internal struggles.

But the revolution would be pointless IMO, because there would have to be a government in order to avoid the risk of another government taking control. As long as there is a government, no one has all of their rights, only those that the government is willing to give them. Freedom can never be acheived, at least until after apocolyptic events, such as, a large scale nuclear war.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

Bowser:

"BS. In other words, no way. "

One single man in Virginia managed himself to evade being found in the woods by the combined efforts of the Federal Marshalls, the FBI, and local and state police, for nearly three years. A single man outwitting all of them, only to be caught when he briefly let his guard down.

Are you telling me that a dedicated group of revolutionaries could not then stage things which would result in the government being unable to respond, without such force as would so rally public opinion against them, that it would devestate them even if they did act? That they could not, through political, monetary, or religious inclusions, gain more and more followers, using both elective and non-democratic processes, to seize power, even after committing acts of terrorism and crime?

It is a fallacy to think that governments are unconquerable. The 20th century showed that was not so. Even the United STates, with all her armies, all her nuclear weapons, could not use any of that force on an internal problem as they might external problems, and without not careful planning, could well fall victim to any such internal struggles.

If peopel stopped paying taxes en masse the government would fall, as the governemnet adopts certain rights which we permit, but as with all rights (which do not really exist) we can remove them from them just as they do with us routinely.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

You are right that I haven't read the thread.
Regardless, your proof is illogical.
Try using actual logic to prove that human rights never existed in the first place.

'in the first place' define what you mean by this?

 

[Prince_James]

Oniw17:

"But the revolution would be pointless IMO, because there would have to be a government in order to avoid the risk of another government taking control. As long as there is a government, no one has all of their rights, only those that the government is willing to give them. Freedom can never be acheived, at least until after apocolyptic events, such as, a large scale nuclear war."

No one suggests that absolute freedom is a possibility, only that there are degrees of freedom to be had in different political systems. Contrast the freedom afforded in Western democracies with those in Maoist China or Stalinist Russia or even in present day Stalinist North Korea.

TheoryOfRelativity:

"If peopel stopped paying taxes en masse the government would fall, as the governemnet adopts certain rights which we permit, but as with all rights (which do not really exist) we can remove them from them just as they do with us routinely. "

The government cannot remove any rights which we have. They cannot say "we cannot do something", only "we will punish you if you do". If this is too aggregious, a popular movement can change said government, by legal or extra-legal processes. Or rather, governments only rule by force, but are incapable at all of stopping human freedom, only make it -really- ill condusive to do said behaviour.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

The government cannot remove any rights which we have. They cannot say "we cannot do something", only "we will punish you if you do". If this is too aggregious, a popular movement can change said government, by legal or extra-legal processes. Or rather, governments only rule by force, but are incapable at all of stopping human freedom, only make it -really- ill condusive to do said behaviour.

Governements change our rights all the time, in the Uk, parents can nolonger 'smack children' it is an offence. Previously it was not an offence, it was an assumed 'right' now it is not. Thus they removed it.

While I agree with this 'law' within reason to deter child abuse, the parents assumed 'right' to discipline their child as they consider necc, has been removed.

If a parent leaves a 'mark' after a smack' they can have child removed and themselves be imprisoned.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

Did I miss much?

I have not bothered to read the entire thread for want of the hope to encounter what I'd not seen somewhere else before.

This page may help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights

--- Ron.

That link is very funny, it starts off talking about 'natural rights' and then says this:

"
Conceptions of natural rights
Many philosophers and statesmen have designed lists of what they believe to be natural rights"

I do think you ought to read the thread Ron, the dismissal of these assumed or 'granted' natural rights is what is being discussed.

 

[perplexity]

People often go to Courts of Law to seek "Natural Justice" but with nothing more than that upon which to base their case and it is almost always a costly mistake to try. Judges despise the idea because it is nothing but trouble.

--- Ron.