| richardhutnik said: You want to show that the Founding Fathers considered that negative rights are the only rights people had? Apparently in the Declaration of Independence, life and the pursuit of happiness were named with liberty as inalienable rights. Life and the pursuit of happiness, combined with what is in the constitution leads to an expectation of society, and governance to enable these pursuits. The preamble speaking of a forming a more perfect union also speaks to it. It isn't just a matter of everyone doing what they please. In regards to a rights-based ethic systems, it is all about rights. It judges ethicalness of decisions based on how much the actions uphold rights. AS I SAID BEFORE, this does not mean a society or individuals only would believe and argue that a rights-based ethics system is the ONLY system used by an individual or society. And it would be fairly certain, Locke likely would end up saying society has other things involved. As far as relevance today, in American society, rights are THE basis by which everything is argued for the basis of moral conduct. The abortion issue is framed in right to life or right to choice. Cruelty to animals is framed in a context of animal rights (http://www.peta.org/about/default.aspx). Want to argue for environmental standards and recycling, argue the earth has rights. The entire basis of doing things in American society is my rights vs your rights. And you see this with the issue originally discussed in the original post, regarding contraception. Can people argue beyond just rights? Yes, they can. But do they. Show where it is done differently on common ground. Ethical issues are settled in courts, based on rights. |
It's worth nothing that the Declaration of Independence is not a governing document, but life in that context a negative right. It means that you shall not be deprived of your life. If it were a positive right, society would be obligated to keep you alive no matter the cost. This is pretty obviously not what the founding fathers advocated or practiced. Pursuit of happiness is also a negative right. You are to be left to your own devices to pursue your own happiness, so long as you do not infringe on the rights of others.
I'm not arguing that people don't claim everything under the sun as rights, and of course if you are arguing that you have a right to everything under the sun, then people's "rights" will come into conflict. But as positive rights are almost always an infringement on negative rights, which are the most basic rights (and I'd argue the only real rights), they ought to be discarded altogether. If we're not willing to do that, then they must always be secondary to negative rights.
Legal matters, not ethical ones, are the jursidiction of the courts. Sometimes the legally correct decision is also the ethically correct one, but very often it is not. So I'm not really sure where you get that.
