It seems that in American culture, nobody remembers what happened 5 minutes ago, let alone 10 years ago. If one would look back at history, they would find out what rights really are. It is clear as day.
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/street/pl38/rights.htm
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI was reading the site and it made me think of something a high school teacher once told me: Where your right begins, another's right ends. He followed with an example of how you have the right to play your music loudly, on a boombox or radio, let's say, but the person next to you also has the right not to hear your music.
Today, not everyone has the right to think without coercive force (negative right). In other countries, if people spoke out against the government and its policies, they would be fined, arrested, or even sent to prison. In the past, people have been persecuted for their religious or political affiliations...and it is still happening in some places today! We like to think that such a thing isn't happening in the U.S., but itis. It is in the form of same-sex marriage. Even though gays and lesbians aren't necessarily being persecuted or arrested for their sexual orientation, but some states do not allow same-sex marriage. Isn't the pursuit of happiness given in the Constitution? Are we not free to love another being without someone else telling us otherwise?
We as a society have a long way to go before everyone can live as they choose.
Kevin and Karoline,
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to define a right as something everyone is entitled to. However, given how things are in society today, this doesn't mean that there aren't or haven't been problems in maintaining and keeping these rights. We often hear in the news about instances in which the government interferes with the exercise of our rights. Having human rights eliminates any kind of discrimination we may have based on racial, religious, ethnic or social factors and states that the only qualification we need in having these rights is being a human being.
In my Law and Justice class I took last semester, I learned about two kinds of rights. Positive rights are rights to have someone do something for or to you (according to some philosophers, positive rights do not exist). Negative rights are rights that permit inaction.
Here is a link to an article by Tibor Machan, a philosopher I studied in the class, about how positive rights may conflict with our basic rights to life, liberty and property.
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-perils-of-positive-rights/#