Seems like it's all about those rights... My rights are violated... It's my right... So, how do we get rights anyway? Who or what determines rights? In my search for this answer, I found a post on quora.com...
http://www.quora.com/Who-determines-what-constitute-human-rights-By-what-authority
http://www.quora.com/Who-determines-what-constitute-human-rights-By-what-authority
4 Answers
Some think rights are granted by government. That cannot be; in that case they would be privileges, not rights. A right can be neither granted nor legitimately restrained.
Rights proceed from the human condition -- or from "nature's God' in the language of the US founding fathers. We live, hence we have a right to life. We have speech and thoughts, hence we have the right to speak our minds. We have our own opinions, hence we have self-ownership.
Other negative rights emanate from these. Having self-ownership, we have a right to the product of our labor. We have a right to consume it, exchange it, or give it away. Having the right to life, we have the right to defend ourselves.
My right to free speech does not entitle me to a printing press or website paid for by somebody else. My right to life does not come at the expense of somebody else's -- unless that person is attempting to kill me, in which case his violation of my right has abrogated his.
These are negative rights. That is, they do not come at the expense of anyone else. All are entitled to these basic functions. An interference with any of these is therefore a constraint of fundamental rights.
Some imagine the existence of positive rights -- that is, rights that come at the expense of somebody else. This opens a bottomless can of worms. To force somebody else to pay for your "right" you must violate his right of self-ownership. You deny him the product of his labor to pay for your "right" to birth control or whatever.
Positive rights are not rights at all; they're declarations of privilege. They must come at the expense and constraint of negative rights. Somebody's "right" must always come at the expense of somebody else's. Here you have a recipe for eternal conflict.
Some would have it otherwise. They imagine positive rights that trump negative rights. They think that an invented "right" is sufficient reason to abrogate self-ownership, confiscating the product of other people's labor to pay for it. This creates the situation wherein some are first-class citizens -- the confiscators of the product of other people's labors -- and second-class citizens -- the confiscatees. There is a word for that: slavery.
Governments always grant privileges, often calling them "rights". For example, corporations are granted subsidies at taxpayer expense, purportedly because of the "right" of the people to have a certain GDP number. Rather than address these violations of natural rights people are tempted to posit conflicting positive rights. That is, they gird for battle in the eternal conflict over antagonistic "positive rights", and fundamental negative rights be damned.
Rights proceed from the human condition -- or from "nature's God' in the language of the US founding fathers. We live, hence we have a right to life. We have speech and thoughts, hence we have the right to speak our minds. We have our own opinions, hence we have self-ownership.
Other negative rights emanate from these. Having self-ownership, we have a right to the product of our labor. We have a right to consume it, exchange it, or give it away. Having the right to life, we have the right to defend ourselves.
My right to free speech does not entitle me to a printing press or website paid for by somebody else. My right to life does not come at the expense of somebody else's -- unless that person is attempting to kill me, in which case his violation of my right has abrogated his.
These are negative rights. That is, they do not come at the expense of anyone else. All are entitled to these basic functions. An interference with any of these is therefore a constraint of fundamental rights.
Some imagine the existence of positive rights -- that is, rights that come at the expense of somebody else. This opens a bottomless can of worms. To force somebody else to pay for your "right" you must violate his right of self-ownership. You deny him the product of his labor to pay for your "right" to birth control or whatever.
Positive rights are not rights at all; they're declarations of privilege. They must come at the expense and constraint of negative rights. Somebody's "right" must always come at the expense of somebody else's. Here you have a recipe for eternal conflict.
Some would have it otherwise. They imagine positive rights that trump negative rights. They think that an invented "right" is sufficient reason to abrogate self-ownership, confiscating the product of other people's labor to pay for it. This creates the situation wherein some are first-class citizens -- the confiscators of the product of other people's labors -- and second-class citizens -- the confiscatees. There is a word for that: slavery.
Governments always grant privileges, often calling them "rights". For example, corporations are granted subsidies at taxpayer expense, purportedly because of the "right" of the people to have a certain GDP number. Rather than address these violations of natural rights people are tempted to posit conflicting positive rights. That is, they gird for battle in the eternal conflict over antagonistic "positive rights", and fundamental negative rights be damned.
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