Natural rights: Do they exist? Where do they come from? Are they relevant today?

There is of course a distinction between a legal right and a moral right. Positive law gives us a right to self defense we can use in court if charged with homicide. Most moral systems allow for a right of self defense. (But see the Sermon on the Mount: turn the other cheek.)

 

Lawless society?


The Weimar era began with one of the most democratic constitutions that had existed up to that point. But by 1933, Germany was poised to become a dictatorship.Oct 27, 2016

The Weimar Republic: The Fragility of Democracy
https://www.facinghistory.org › resource-library › weimar...


Degenerate art - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Degenerate_art
During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, was removed from state-owned museums ...

[emphasis added]
The majority of people in Germany, as elsewhere, did not care for the new [filthy] art, which many resented as elitist, morally suspect, and too often incomprehensible.[8]

Wilhelm II, who took an active interest in regulating art in Germany, criticized Impressionism as "gutter painting" (Gossenmalerei)[10] and forbade Käthe Kollwitz from being awarded a medal for her print series A Weavers' Revolt when it was displayed in the Berlin Grand Exhibition of the Arts in 1898.[11] In 1913, the Prussian house of representatives passed a resolution "against degeneracy in art".[10]

Once in control of the government, the Nazis moved to suppress modern art styles [sort of like we ban pedophilia here in the US] and to promote art with national and racial themes.[28]

The government according to your standards has 100% the 'right' to do exactly what hitler did!

Hitler's rise to power on 31 January 1933, was quickly followed by actions intended to cleanse the culture of degeneracy: book burnings were organized, artists and musicians were dismissed from teaching positions, and curators who had shown a partiality for modern art were replaced by Party members.[34]


Berlin became the country’s Sodom and Gomorrah put together, a sure sign of the land’s degeneracy.

On the stages of Berlin, the Tiller Girls showed off their legs, dancing a Rockettes-style performance that amazed and titillated spectators. In crowded cabarets, audiences admired “tableaux” of women posing naked or watched actors telling risqué jokes and singing lewd songs

Clubs full of men wearing powder and rouge as well as shorthaired women dressed in tuxedoes offered images of a world seemingly turned upside down. For the general public, this world was bewildering—and quite possibly terrifying.

For Germany’s gay men and lesbians, though, Berlin represented promise. Its gay scenes offered exciting places to hunt for love and happiness. Christopher Isherwood, whose short stories based on his stay in Berlin eventually became the basis for the 1972 film Cabaret, with Liza Minnelli, put it simply enough: “Berlin meant boys.”
A Peek Inside Berlin's Queer Club Scene Before Hitler Destroyed It


Histler and the greater majority of people in germany hated the decadence once any country goes beyond a certain point its irreparable. hitler was duly elected, the reichstag passed the enabling act, much the same as we passed the patriot act. Now you better get your jabs because the government deemed itself the authority to 'dictate' what you can do with your body.

They granted themselves the power to legislate my womb!

Just a little history on Hitler that most koolaide drinkers have no clue

 

What?????
Sermon on the mount?
Another stretch beyond all recognition!
So Tish advocates that you should turn the other cheek and simply allow someone to murder you!
Over another cliff we go!
Religious right also gives us legal recourse in any court they just rebranded it to homicide to pretend its secular.

 

What makes you think so?

 

For the difference, see
What’s the difference between natural law and a law of nature?
People who equate them commit the naturalistic fallacy of confusing "ought" with "is".
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results
naturalistic fallacy - Yahoo Video Search Results

 

So the natural response to someone about to take your life is self defense and you think that traditional acceptance of delf defense as a natural right is a misguided fallacy?
Looks like we are back to over the edge again!

The term “natural law” is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two kinds of theory are logically independent. It does not refer to the laws of nature, the laws that science aims to describe.

Natural Law | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://iep.utm.edu › natlaw

 

haha



Both natural law and law of nature!

 

Well said!

 

Not really, it omits the fact that math as an example is purely abstract and relates to the material world.
Lots of things are purely abstract and relate directly to the material world.
The text you are reading here is purely abstract and relates directly to the material world.
Thats the tiny 800pound gorilla in your theory.

 

One thing I should explain is how the modern institutionalist and functionalist versions of natural law differ from the old-fashioned kind which I said fell victim to the naturalistic fallacy. The old fashioned natural law, including Locke and Jefferson's natural rights theory, tended to be teleological--attributing purposes) or goals to natural phenomena. It all started with Aristotle who taught that the best way to understand why things were the way they were was to figure what purpose they were designed to serve. Of course that made more sense when people believe everything was made by god[s) who had a purpose for making it. The Greco-Roman Stoics who developed the natural law doctrine were mostly Pantheists who thought the universe was god. When the Catholic Church took it over, of course, they knew God had a purpose for everything. Some of it, He revealed through scripture, the rest through reason in contemplation of nature. The Enlightenment thinkers tended to be Deists, who thought that God designed everything to run on its own, so that by discovering the laws of science we could also discover God's purpose.Of course all of this melted away with advances in science that led to abandonment of the teleological perspective. But the recent natural law thinkers--the functionalists and institutionalists--get around that by emphasizing human purpose inhrent in social institutions and the natural limits they impose on the particulars of governmental and legal operations as their basic premise. Of course there is some disagreement among sociologists as to what the basic functions are, but at least it's not based on metaphysical entities or god(s)'s plans.

 

Sure and today science rescues Natural Rights

There is no longer any need to get around anything!

Natural justice which is what natural rights/law is based upon is now proven!


We now know that although a fully developed sense of morality does not emerge until adolescence or later, babies already show signs of a rudimentary moral compass.
Are babies born with a sense of right and wrong?
https://www.sciencefocus.com › Everyday science




Babies are in fact born with an innate sense of morality, and while parents and society can help develop a belief system in babies, they don't create one.

A team of researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center, known as The Baby Lab, showed us just how they came to that conclusion.Feb 14, 2014

Are we born with a moral core? The Baby Lab says 'yes' - CNN
https://www.cnn.com › 2014/02/12 › baby-lab-morals-ac...


A new study says that children acquire a sense of fairness before they reach the age of two. An equal distribution of resources according to effort is innate and universal, say researchers.Feb 19, 2012

Babies' Innate Sense of Justice - Big Think
https://bigthink.com › surprising-science › babies-innate-s...



Psychologists say babies know right from wrong even at six months
by Lin Edwards , Medical Xpress

https://medicalxpress.com › news › 2010-05-psycholog...

May 10, 2010 — The researchers have found babies as young as six months old already make moral judgments, and they think we may be born with a moral code hard-...



A baby does not have to be taught right from wrong, its natural just like the rights that you claim to have fallen victim too!

So were you ever a baby?

Natural law looks pretty 'real' to me!

 

Based on common needs and instincts. Interestingly, even non-human species display instincts of empathy and reciprocal altruism which I suspect are the building blocks of morality. Shy's moralistic babies may be examples of similar tendencies in humans. These are the products of evolution contributing to the survival of social species which depend on others, E.O Wilson, evolutionary biologist, thinks that possibly before the evolution of homo sapiens, humans developed separate modules for self-interest and the internalized superego of society's norms. Hence our internal conflicts depicted in the cartoons with the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. Evolutionary psychologist Stephen Pinker agrees that humans are not born blank slates, and that the models of Freudian-psychology (id versus supreeg) and Judeo-Christian views of original sin conform better with human psychology than the tabula rasa of behaviorist psychology.

But are these the foundation of natural rights? At best, I think they may be the basis for our claims of right. As you say, you have a desire to live. Unless you're a sociopath, you may also have empathy for others whose lives are threatened. Good building blocks for a moral system condemning murder. And because even hunter-gatherer bands have a strong interest in discouraging members from murdering each other in their sleep,they develop strong norms against homicide that they inculcate early on to newborn members. This alone doesn't seem to deter them from murdering folks outside their own band. But as social units became sedentary and grew larger by commerce and conquest into great empires, there was a need to protect the lives of strangers who weren't included in natural empathy and local taboos. So cultural evolutions and ethical systems developed, with the idea of "rights', natural or otherwise. In his monumental Religion in Human Evolution, sociologist Robert Bellah showed , culture by culture over prehistory and history how more universalistic codes developed; e.g., Chinese emperors overthrowing others by claiming their predecessors lacked the "mandate of heaven". When that sort of premise is accepted, we're off and running for moral constraints on monarchs. In that sense, moral systems are man made. Nietzsche cynically said that "Love thy neighbor is based on fear of our neighbor", since we do have an instinct for self-preservation and want to encourage our neighbor to preserve us by reciprocal altruism. It's still a leap from that to natural legal rights. They exist to the extent a society believes in them.

 

So then you feel all judicial proceedings are a set up?

Ok so there you have it, nature takes over in 'normal' psychologically 'sound' people and conforms with the 'observed' laws of nature.

Its inherent in your genetic make up.
the mind is very powerful, you can train yourself to do anything, even go against your nature.
Going against and suppressing your nature does not make it your inherent nature disappear, it simply overrides it.

moral is another abstract title assigned to an observable condition.

These are innate, as in inherent, simply by the fact we are human.

Innate/inherent means that there could be only one person alive on the planet and she would have those qualities, society is not required.

Look it up, thats what innate means, its now scientifically proven.

 

I think it might be useful to step down from Plato's heaven for awhile and look at these purported metaphysical absolutes through realist and consequentialist lenses. By realism, I mean efforts to (as Justice Holmes once put it, cease to look at law as "a brooding omnipresence in the sky" and bring it down to earth, wash it in "cynical acid" and consider how people actually use it in the real world. Our ideal of natural inalienable rights took political form in 1776, when a group of highly educated colonists decided that it was no longer in their interest to be subjects of the British crown. The government of the mother country was taxing them to death without their reputation and didn't seem to be doing much in return to justify it. Of course, revolution is a big step, and to get the bulk of the population on board for it requires a good rationale that appeals to their idealistic side, as well as well as their pocketbooks. A book they had read by that fellow John Locke seemed to be just the thing to provide the rationale. As Jefferson summarized it:" WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Cynics have noted that the Jefferson who penned those words about all men being created equal and possessing natural rights to "life ,liberty and the pursuit of happiness' owned 600 slaves. But no matter. Stirring rhetorc! Suitable for getting people into the streets and rebel army ranks, and plenty of Fourth of July rhetoric for generations to come. Wallace remarks: "Had Jefferson written, 'We want the following rights,' he would have been making a simple, clear statement easy to understand. Language allows us to construct phrases which are grammatically correct but which do not mean anything (or do not mean what they appear to). Does the statement "We hold these rights to be self-evident" in fact mean anything more profound than "we want them?"Natural Rights Don't Exist

Anyhow, when the Revolution was over, the victorious elites toned down their rhetoric, for obvious reasons. The men who gathered in Philadelphia found that the Articles of Confederation were cramping their style by creating a government so feeble that our national existence, not to mention their economic interests, were in peril.. They set about creating a new one, talking it up in The Federalist papers, and getting support for it outside the constitutional channels of the existing government. They made some concessions to get their Anti-Federalist opponents on board--the Bill of Rights. Some of these may have been borrowed from Jefferson's Declaration; others were taken from the English Bill of Rights, which were based on customary law imposed on the English monarchy. And when incorporated into the Constitution, they became positive law, enforceable by the new courts.
In his Who were these men? In his An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, historian Charles Beard examined the delegates'tax and census records, news accounts,from the period and biographies,and found that they were a rather cohesive elite, with common interests in a strong national government to protect federal bonds and other economic interests. Over half of them were college graduates--nine form Princeton, others from English universities. graduated from College with nine from Princeton and six from British Universities. They consisted in several subgroups which Beard categorized as ublic securities interests; lending and investments; mercantile,manufacturing and shipping; Planters; and Real estate and land speculators. And they drafted a document in the name of "We the people". (Who else?"). Wisely, the provisions were mostly written in general language,which they left to the new courts to interpret. Chief Justice John Marshall played a critical role in providing interpretations that strengthened the federal government, on grounds that he was interpreting a constitution--meant to last for posterity. This is one of the things ShyOne complains about as a violation of the sacred contract. It allowed the U.S. to become a great nation. Somehow, I think it would be impractical at this point to powder our wigs and go back to the eighteenth century.

Now for a consequentialist look. Edmond Burke and Jeremy Bentham were first to look at natural rights in terms of their consequences. These they saw first hand, as the French Revolutionaries, with their lofty rhetoric of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and the Declaration of the Rights of Man kept Madame la Guillotine in business. They didn't like what they saw, which they described as anarchy. Those lofty words can easily become a pretext for insurrectionists like the motley mob of MAGA maggots, Q-anon conspiracy nuts, white supremacist and election deniers, waving Nazi and Confederate flags and using ours as spears, who invaded our Capitol on Jan.6, 2001 to take the law into their own hands after being whipped up into a frenzy by a corrupt and demented demagogue. Chants of 1776 were heard too often as they bent, folded,spindled and mutilated our Capitol police.

The natural rights doctrine is useful, as I said, in calling attention to the principle that governments that ignore the fundamental interests of their citizens are cruising for a bruising . It becomes dangerous when invoked to attack this or that policy of the government that we don't like, or to justify a resort to mob rule by misguided minorities thinking they are "the People". As a practical matter, these self-appointed guardians of our rights are currently the greatest threat to our lives, liberty and property.