"You didn't build that" - Obama

[richardhutnik]

Aielyn said:

richardhutnik said:
Actually, if you follow the reasoning of Locke, then rights are inalienable things given to humanity by God.  It is not something that is given by anyone, but something that comes with being human.

Of course, if one wants to define ethics in a context beyond rights, then you get freed of all the limitations and weaknesses of right based ethics systems.  Right-based ethics systems do a poor job of prioritizing, because it will often come down to the person who fights the strongest getting what they want.  Individuals who maybe shouldn't be harmed, who fail to defend themselves, get overrun.

Well, being an atheist, I'm not all that concerned with Locke's opinion. But even if you believe that there are inalienable rights "given by god", I don't think any reasonable person is going to claim that the right to an attorney is a right "given by god". The rights I talk about are the ones given by society. The more elementary rights can be seen rather obviously to be inherent in the basic survival of society, and thus could be explained by logic, by religion, or by sociology - doesn't really matter, they're elementary in any case.

It is important to understand Locke's views, and the ideas behind rights-based ethics, because this ethics is at the core of modern western civilization.  Decisions on what laws to pass, and so on, ar argued out of this.  The rights given by society, and laws, flow out of the basic rights seen as being core to humans.  You can have a Libertarian view where every right can be bargained away in exchange for something else though.  And in modern western civilization the rights are found primarily in individuals, and not collectively.  From these individual rights flows out collective rights also.  But in modern western civilization (classic liberal), the rights of the individual override all other rights.