| I find natural rights a fascinating subject. I cannot believe in them (as an objective reality, unless you consider ideas to have objective reality), for they seem to me to be exactly like the subject of God's existence. You can say inalienable rights exist, but if the society in which you live does not recognize them, do they really, in the abstract? You could look at another civilization and say, "Look, they have the rights I want"- but that does not make mystical natural rights real, it just means that some people have some ideas about the kinds of rights they want, whether or not their ideas about the kind of rights they feel they should have are being satisfied. When people talk about natural rights, they generally use that as a shorthand for come kind of civilized body of rights they want, and think society should protect- no one actually has the recipe for the real deal, handed down on stone tablets, as it were. |
