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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (20542)	6/21/2005 12:03:40 PM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

Gem, we were discussing what Locke and others have described as the "natural" rights of all individuals, endowed in each of us, according to Locke, by God and including life, liberty, health and property. Of course, regarding life and health, the right is really to the means of sustaining life and health rather than life and health themselves (those are God's only to give or take away, Locke said). By the time Jefferson was writing, the wording changed to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness", but he was still speaking of the concept of "natural law". Within the concept of liberty as a natural right are all sorts of freedoms including of one's own person (e.g. being able to freely move about rather than being confined against one's will), of thought and speech, of religion (or lack thereof), etc. Anyway, the dispute was over whether such natural (or "inalienable") rights of individuals can conflict, which question came up because Solon said an unborn child can't possibly have ANY rights as a person because that would mean "aborting" the "inalienable" rights of the mother. He argues that both can not have rights because then those rights might conflict, which is not permissible, and since the mother already has rights as a person and since "inalienable" rights can NEVER, by definition, be forfeit, then consequently it is impossible for the unborn child to have any rights at all. Solon's position, it appears, is that "inalienable" rights can NEVER conflict because, by some unspecified (but not of society's choosing, apparently) mechanism, one right evaporates as soon as it is about to conflict with another. So, it seems, conflicting rights are impossible because one of them ceases to exist before conflict occurs. That's what I termed "defining away the problem." Interestingly, however, he also says these rights can NEVER be taken away, surrendered or limited by society because they are "inalienable." Never mind that they ARE limited or taken away by society all the time - as punishment for crime, as restrictions on behaviors in the public interest, as seizures of property in the public interest (including taxation), etc. What he is arguing is that they can't be limited by society, but that, at the same time, they are nevertheless limited such that they can never conflict. Which is where my question, which you quoted, came in. Hope that helps.