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richardhutnik on 17 August 2012
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badgenome said:
richardhutnik said:

Can you show that Locke stood for negative rights alone?

Who said "alone"? I don't know why you keep insisting that negative rights have to be the totality of a system based on negative rights.

"The general welfare" =/= the welfare system that we know.

The discussion focused on negative rights as an out to saying that rights need not conflict.  In response to that, this came up:

richardhutnik said:

First, I had been saying that rights-based ethical systems don't provide any basis for duty.  They PARTICULARLY don't in the case where someone only believes in negative rights.  The people most likely to fulfill the demands of a negative ethical system, are corpses in a graveyard (unless they turn into zombies of course). 

And you said this:

I think basically all ethical systems (save hedonism, perhaps) provide a basis for duty, though what that "duty" is might differ. If one believes in negative rights, then at the very least one has the duties of being self sufficient and not a burden on others and of respecting the rights of others.

The discussion ended up being focused on a subset of a rights-based ethics system, to one being a negative-rights based ethics system.  This was done to try to avoid the original issue raised about rights conflicting, typically said because the rights were positive.

In regards to "promote the general welfare" that speaks to the government doing actions to improve to collectively improve the quality of life.  It is in the preamble of the U.S Constitution to state the goals of the Constitution itself.  And that is a proactive response by government to deal with issues that may arise, and be able to prevent.  It is positive in nature and is going to lead to possible conflicts you discussed.  That part is a basis to say the government CAN do programs to educated children, and help the poor, but it doesn't mean that the verse says the government is REQUIRED to do it.  It just brings it up as a fairly reasonable argument for having the Constitution, because why would people come together under a Constitution, if it made the general state of being worse?