Nydhogg
New member
Mary has challenged me to write down a list of all rights we have on other threads. She's disputing my theory that unless someone's rights are directly violated no crime can, legitimately speaking, take place.
My first post was poorly worded and incomplete, so I'll rewrite it. I left rights out. This is the full list.
- Right to life and physical integrity. This is an obvious one.
- Right to liberty. As long as you do not infringe anyone else's rights, do what you will. This includes the right not to be forced into stuff.
- Right to property. As long as you legitimately acquired your stuff, no-one can take it away from you. Getting stuff from State fiat is not legitimate. Fraud is not legitimate. Paying slave wages to starving people is not legitimate. Coercion is not legitimate.
- Right to redress. When our rights are violated we have the right to right the wrongs made. This also includes protecting your other rights through any means neccessary and proper.
- Right to privacy. No-one has the right or authority to pry on your life uninvited unless there is a compelling need to do so (protecting another person's rights).
- Right to due process (It includes equal treatment before the law, jury trial, protections against self-incrimination and all that lawyerspeak stuff)
Now, a clarification: Those are what I think of as "natural rights".
Any violation of those without valid redress is tyranny.
This does not mean there are other good things to have aside from that and that is sensible to provide, like free education and affordable health care, and roads, and various infrastructures, and...
But they're not actually rights, not in the same sense of those I described above. They're entitlements: Things that are provided by third parties. They are usually good to have, but they're not natural rights.
Mary raised some more specific concerns:
Mary, I'm sad to inform you that you do not have a natural right to be free from annoyance or not to be offended. Being annoyed by idiots sucks, but as long as they're "neither picking your pocket nor breaking your leg", so to speak, their right to liberty prevails.
I'm highly critical of the concept of "disturbing the peace". This would also include public nudity, as long as it does not amount to sexual harassment (which would violate your right not to participate in unwanted sexual activity, implicit in your right to liberty)
As for child porn, it involves sexual abuse of children. We ban child porn because CHILDREN ARE HARMED to produce it. Thus, its production is illegal. If kids were not harmed producing it there would be no reason to ban it.
As for nondiscrimination: Equal pay for equal work is a good thing to have. It's also supposed to be a labor conquest, not a concession through State fiat. You want to achieve that, I'll gladly help you organize the workforce.
Nondiscrimination in hiring: The State should not enforce quotas or enact preferences (they violate equality before the law), though if we're actually going to have a State public employment should be barred from discriminating and their criteria for hiring should be open and public.
Letting the State dictate to people who they should hire and who they shouldn't opens a big can of ugly worms that we don't want open. As for equal pay, see above.
Repeat after me: State fiat is NO SUBSTITUTE to the labor movement.
I'm not sure if you agree with me, but at least you'll be more able to understand where I'm coming from.
My first post was poorly worded and incomplete, so I'll rewrite it. I left rights out. This is the full list.
- Right to life and physical integrity. This is an obvious one.
- Right to liberty. As long as you do not infringe anyone else's rights, do what you will. This includes the right not to be forced into stuff.
- Right to property. As long as you legitimately acquired your stuff, no-one can take it away from you. Getting stuff from State fiat is not legitimate. Fraud is not legitimate. Paying slave wages to starving people is not legitimate. Coercion is not legitimate.
- Right to redress. When our rights are violated we have the right to right the wrongs made. This also includes protecting your other rights through any means neccessary and proper.
- Right to privacy. No-one has the right or authority to pry on your life uninvited unless there is a compelling need to do so (protecting another person's rights).
- Right to due process (It includes equal treatment before the law, jury trial, protections against self-incrimination and all that lawyerspeak stuff)
Now, a clarification: Those are what I think of as "natural rights".
Any violation of those without valid redress is tyranny.
This does not mean there are other good things to have aside from that and that is sensible to provide, like free education and affordable health care, and roads, and various infrastructures, and...
But they're not actually rights, not in the same sense of those I described above. They're entitlements: Things that are provided by third parties. They are usually good to have, but they're not natural rights.
Mary raised some more specific concerns:
That's it?
Okay, so would you support laws against disturbing the peace? Public nudity? Child porn (those cases where the child wasn't harmed in any way)? Public drunkenness? Any and all laws restricting gun ownership or use? Equal employment opportunity?
I could go on and on. You'll have to expand your list of "rights", I think.
Mary, I'm sad to inform you that you do not have a natural right to be free from annoyance or not to be offended. Being annoyed by idiots sucks, but as long as they're "neither picking your pocket nor breaking your leg", so to speak, their right to liberty prevails.
I'm highly critical of the concept of "disturbing the peace". This would also include public nudity, as long as it does not amount to sexual harassment (which would violate your right not to participate in unwanted sexual activity, implicit in your right to liberty)
As for child porn, it involves sexual abuse of children. We ban child porn because CHILDREN ARE HARMED to produce it. Thus, its production is illegal. If kids were not harmed producing it there would be no reason to ban it.
As for nondiscrimination: Equal pay for equal work is a good thing to have. It's also supposed to be a labor conquest, not a concession through State fiat. You want to achieve that, I'll gladly help you organize the workforce.
Nondiscrimination in hiring: The State should not enforce quotas or enact preferences (they violate equality before the law), though if we're actually going to have a State public employment should be barred from discriminating and their criteria for hiring should be open and public.
Letting the State dictate to people who they should hire and who they shouldn't opens a big can of ugly worms that we don't want open. As for equal pay, see above.
Repeat after me: State fiat is NO SUBSTITUTE to the labor movement.
I'm not sure if you agree with me, but at least you'll be more able to understand where I'm coming from.