Are There Natural Human Rights?

New York Times ^ | May, 29, 2011 | MICHAEL BOYLAN

[1010RD]

This has been a year of uprisings. The series of popular revolts, struggles and crackdowns by governments, which continue to this day...

But whether or not every person on earth has certain rights just by virtue of being a person alive on the planet — a concept I will refer to here as natural human rights — is a question of some controversy. In these times, when new questions of rights, complaints and subsequent conflicts seem to arise anew each week, it’s worth knowing where we stand on the matter.

Philosophers and legal scholars have intensely debated this issue over the past few decades. One important starting point for this discussion is H.L.A. Hart’s controversial 1955 article, “Are There Any Natural Rights?” The article argued that natural rights (what we typically call human rights) were an invention of the European Enlightenment, mere social constructions...

There are two avenues by which to address the truth of the natural basis of human rights: (a) whether authors argued for human rights before the European Enlightenment, and (b) whether there is a logical basis for human rights that would demonstrate its applicability to all people regardless of when it was recognized to be correct.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"I don’t understand why they have to change it to “natural human rights”."

Natural rights is a term that comes from Locke and the other philosophers of the Enlightenment. Over the centuries it has been converted into the term we hear more often today "human rights". Which means the same thing, though leftist today want to include all kinds of things in it that were never meant to be. You don't have a right to other people's earnings in the form of food stamps for instance. Natural Human rights is sort of a combining of the two terms I guess.

[ctdonath2]

They want to deny a Creator, lest they be subject thereto.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Bill,

If I were in charge of this professor, he would be fired and you would be hired to teach his courses the right way...

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"At least. I would even venture to go back to the Old Testament and the insistence on the care given to widows and orphans."

One of the tennants of Memorial Day as stated in General Logan's order number 11 establishing the day was

"let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan."

[57 Red States]

A distinction without a difference. People never found it difficult to justify slavery, genocide, etc, as “God’s Will”.

[1010RD]

But an interesting thing happened on the way to the future, those same or very similar people used God to justify liberty, unity, etc. as God’s Will.

You’re not allowed single entry accounting in finance or history.

[stevie_d_64]

In their own image???

Now that is a frightening thought...

A liberal God???

Hmmm...Wait...I’m getting an answer here...

God says I make him laugh...;-)

[PENANCE]

They are rights negotiated out of the barrel of a rifle. The author is an idiot, but he represents a large group of influential idiots running academies, think tanks and businesses. The threat of bad ideas is obvious to us and would, if there were a free market of ideas, have been disposed of long ago and recognized for trash today. Instead our government school system which reaches deep into graduate school repackages this stupidity and insulates it promulgators from harm or retribution.

Excellent comment! Exactly "right"!

[NFHale]

Utlimately, when it comes to dealing with liberals and other socialist/communist/fascist mentalities, it comes down to this:

You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

If a people (society, group, civilization, etc) are willing to passively sit back and not aggressively, immediately (and violently, if necessary) defend their rights at the slightest signs of subversion, be sure that there are those amongst them who WILL step up and try to take those rights away.

We’re witnessing it now. The “progressives” - let’s call them what they are, and that is communists - and their Useful Idiot liberals have been steadily eroding our rights and our liberty for decades now; and yet they still exist...

Enumerated Rights are nothing more than words on paper unless the willingness to defend them at all costs is resident in the spinal column.

It’s reality.

[MeganC]

My Canadian (read: liberal leftist) acquaintances argue that no one has any rights at all that are not GIVEN to them by their beneficient rulers.