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richardhutnik said: If you look at the arguments in this thread, people would argue that only negative rights are rights, and they never conflict, because if everyone lived by the motto of being left alone, everyone would leave each other alone, and no one would have any rights violated. |
Negative rights have more tradition and are usually more accepted. Even if positive rights are used, they are usually less prioritized than negative rights. Human rights are negative rights. And yes, negative rights are seldom conflict. It's possible, but very hard. And in the end you can find for every system situations, that let the system conflict in itself. So I see no point in this.
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richardhutnik said: In regards to conservatives, they will argue, for example, they have a right to raise their kids a certain way, and keep the public square clear of obscenity. They say their rights as parents warrant this. And there are others also. They ARE personal rights. For the conservative, values they have personally, also belong in society as a whole, because they are collectively shared. Again, the value of tradition, ends up being elevated above the values that progressives have, for example. A progressive, for example, would have little qualms going into a church and disrupting a religious service, for political or reasons of ethical concerns. |
"For the conservative, values they have personally, also belong in society as a whole..." - so they are no personal rights and no negative rights. At this point the discussion ends. Clearly positive right and rights that you have over others have far more potential to conflict. See, your right to slave a person conflicts with the right of the person to be free. A system of positive rights (the right to own slaves, the right to rule the country from birth = monarchy, ...) is not a free society. The conservatives in your example want to force their opinion on others. You might call that legitimate, but the slavery in the united states was legitimate back then too.
What you do here in the thread is the opinion, that stuff should be forced on others, then you label it 'rights' and say that a rights-based-system is flawed. That's an strawmen-argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
So, if you want to challenge the idea of a ethical system based on personal rights, you should choose examples from such a system.
