pariah

yguy, it wouldnt take a stroke of pen. society would never agree wtih that...society has given the child the right to live

if our society did not give children the right to live, then it would be acceptable.

yguy

Get back to me when you manage to justify substituting "yguy" for "we" in the statement you find fault with.

If we elect a congress which legislates away the right of children to life, and the President signs the bill, and SCOTUS doesn't find it unconstitutional, that right has been destroyed at the stroke of the President's pen - but it is an expression of the collective will of society.

yguy

Why not, seeing how Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University - among others - has seriously argued for selective infanticide?

So having given it, we are unable to take it away because...?

So we CAN take it away? Which is it?

mhc

Rights are given by society. Who else? God?
Rights are a legal claim. The law bestows me with the power to claim something as being my right, and to defend it as such.
Of course rights can be taken away. We take away the "inalienable" right to liberty at a rate unprecedented in history. Every time we condemn a person to death we take away their right to life. The Iraqi children killed in our recent battles had no right to life, from our point of view. If we allowed them the right to life, then every war casualty would represent a potential lawsuit againt the US gov't., which is not an unthinkable scenario, but that's not the way we play it.
THe way I see it, there is no right to life for anyone. What we can claim is the right to not be killed unjustly by others.
Does cancer violate a person's right to life? A falling rock? Of course not, because rights make no sense and can't be understood outside a community of moral agents.

yguy

Not so. In principle, those guilty of capital crimes forfeit their right to life - the state does not take it away.

Presuming the Iraq war to have been a just one for the sake of argument, the responsiblity for those lives rests entirely on the shoulders of the now deposed Iraqi regime.

Must we split semantic hairs?

Does this somehow contradict anything I've said?

mhc

Forfeit their right to life? Hogwash. Talk about splitting semantical hairs. Their right is taken from them, of course. The idea of forfeiture simply helps sustain the illusion/propoganda that our rights are somehow ours, personally, and not subject to suspension or confiscation. Look again.
And I don't see a 5 year old child being responsible for the political crimes of the regime she is subjected to.
To say "You have forfeited your right to live by virtue of the political system you inhabit, so we can kill you," is completely nonsensical, imo.

yguy

Since you have here objected to the idea of forfeiture of the right to life on no other basis that it contradicts your initial premise, I would suggest it is you who needs to take a second look - at the definition of "circular logic", if nothing else.

The child hasn't forfeited that right, the regime has taken it from her, just as Andrea Yates took away the right to life of her children. It is precisely BECAUSE such rights are inalienable that it is considered murder. Obviously someone who would not respect, as you put it, "the negative right not to be killed" of another person hardly deserves that right themselves.

mhc

If right to life is inalienable, then it cannot be taken away.
So Andrea Yates' kids retained that right even as they were being murdered.
I agree that the idea of forfeiture is handy, but I don't think it's true. What happens when a man is executed for a crime he did not commit? No forfeiture happened, yet life was taken, unjustly.
And whether those with the monopoly on sanctioned violence take lives justly or unjustly, the idea of forfeiture is superfluous. It sounds good, but the fact remains that it is the regime that tells you under what circumstances you forfeit the right. There are no natural rights, and therefore no natural terms of forfeiture.
Somehow I doubt Iraq's constitution would offer the "inalienable" right to life. Yet in our Declaration of Independence, we declare this a right for all people, not just our people. So how would the forfeiture scenario work here? Is it that the girl has the right, but it is simply no recognized by the regime? If so, then how did she get it? From God? I contend that the State gives the rights, and the State takes them away.

yguy

Yes. Their right to life was violated - not taken away. If they didn't have any right to life, why is she thought of as having done something monstrous? Because there is a law on the books against murder? No, because people know intuitively that it's a hideous crime to take innocent life.

The state violates his right to life.

How could it be unjust since it was state-sanctioned, if your premise is correct?

Then we can never be anything more than slaves to those who hold the power, and the noble experiment which is America is doomed to failure - after which we can confidently look forward to a dark age of barbarism such as followed the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The Iraqi child doesn't forfeit her right, the Iraqi regime violates it by creating conditions for its own self-aggrandizement which endanger the child's life.

First things first. Let us realize that we can neither grant rights nor take them away; having that misconception out of the way, perhaps the alternative will reveal itself.

mhc

I can't hang with that. Those are the same terms the terrorists used to justify the 9-11 tragedy. It was OUR self-aggrandizing and arrogant posture that put the victims in danger, according to the terrorists.

Look at the 3rd Amendment to the Bill of Rights:
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
Obviously, we do grant rights, and take them away. There is nothing about being born human that is intrinsically tied to the conditions of obtaining soldier's quarters. I think we are talking about a certain kind of fundamental "inalienable" right that is inherent in our humanity, like the right to life.

If rights are not granted by a society, then apart from supernatural explanations, I don't see any. What are your notions of where rights come from?