Summations Only

You didn't even comment on what I actually said. Here it is again:"It is still there even in those suffering pain. If they felt there was another option to end their pain I am sure they would take that option instead of death." Your premise that people go on carnival rides because they risk death is falsified. My premise remains. We can use empathy to understand that people in great pain still would rather not die if there was any other way to rid them of pain. The premise still stands. Perhaps you should not make claims that rely on a universal negative. I have supplied three: life, liberty, and property.

EvC Forum: radical liberals (aka liberal commies) vs ultra conservatives (aka nutjobs) Just as people have been imprisoned for violations of human rights. The actions taken by the government were based on consensus. They were justified by the principle of human rights which are universal and inalienable. They existed the entire time. That is why sanctions were put in place, because the government was violating their human rights.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Current events at the International Criminal Court:

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Gbagbo is charged as an indirect perpetrator on four counts of crimes against humanity: murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution, and other inhuman acts, committed by his supporters in the aftermath of last year’s presidential election.
Homepage - Haguejusticeportal.net

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If human rights do not exist then what justification did we have for placing sanctions on South Africa?

There is also the possibility that one of the opinions is wrong. No one is saying that human rights are easy to figure out, and certainly not myself. Human rights have been the subject of debate for a long time, and will continue to be. However, just because they are difficult to define does not mean that they don't exist. You are confusing an is with an ought. Whether or not anything happens in Columbia has nothing to do with what ought to happen. I fully understand the pragmatic view that your are putting forward, the idea that human rights are useless if they don't result in action. However, without human rights no actions can ever take place. The reasoning behind justice disappears without universal and inalienable rights, at least in my view. Why institute one legal right over another? Which legal rights do we choose to enact or not enact, and who are they granted to? What is the justification for these decisions? Very much so, and the justification for the treaty are universal, inalienable rights.

Perhaps "all" is too far reaching because there are those who suffer from psychoses where they are incapable of fearing death, or their fear of death is seriously impaired. However, your example of people who want to die because of intense and chronic pain (physical or emotional) fails to falsify my premise. The fear of death is still there. However, the fear of living in pain is greater. If they had the option of stopping the pain by means other than death they would take that option. People don't die in the normal operation of carnival rides, so how can there be a fear of death? Being executed for following the religion of your choice is a very negative experience that should not be visited upon others. They are intersubjective, that I will grant. However, I don't see how a fear of death is really debatable. Yes, you can find an extreme minority that fail to meet the criteria, but this is a case of the exception proving the rule. I would hope that you do not want public policy based on the emotions of psychotics.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

No, I didn't. Thanks for the heads up.

To those who are not mentally ill, it is intrinsic. I don't see how pointing to phobias has anything to do with human rights. Care to explain?I don't see anyone at the state fair lining up to share needles with HIV positive drug user. Have you? Then the age of the Earth is also subjective since young earth creationist disagree with geologists. So my arguments on fearing death do not apply to the mentally ill. How does this undermine the idea of fundamental human rights? No, they aren't. People fear death. People are able to determine that others fear death. Those are the premises that lead to the conclusion. Our ability to determine that other people do not want their stuff stolen, their lives taken, or be thrown in jail for no good reason makes it objective.

Through the application of reason. They are based on empathy and reason. Surely you can figure out that if you don't like your stuff stolen that other people don't like it either. Sure we do. We can interview the girl and find out if she understood what was happening to her and able to consent. If not, then it is wrong. Not that hard actually. Her rights were violated, not taken away. What is Order, other than a set of rules based on human rights? How do we determine which rules to live by, and who gets to determine those rules? Allowing a consensus to make rules for society is, in itself, a human right. Locke and others were arguing against a system where a ruling elite made the rules for the majority. Locke argued that the natural state of man is people forming a consensus based on natural human rights. No, it is not. The ICC is an extension of the UN which was initiated to protect human rights in the wake of the atrocities in both world wars. The tribunals in both Tokyo and Nuremburg were models for the ICC. People convicted in these tribunals were not punished simply because we could do it. Rather, they were convicted because they violated human rights.

I already posted a definition. I have looked it up. I guess you are incapable of remembering as well? My evidence is that the vast, vast majority of people do not like to be killed, do not like to have their stuff stolen, and do not like to be put in jail for no good reason. Would you agree that the vast majority of people do not want to be killed, do not want their stuff stolen, and do not want to be put in jail for no good reason? The fact that the exceptions are the mentally ill does not negate the argument. The fact that we can determine that there is something wrong with the mentally ill only stresses the conclusion that human rights do exist. Otherwise, how could we say that they are mentally ill? If it all just subjective, why can't we say that they are normal? They are objective observations of the human condition. I have supplied three: life, liberty, and property.

That is exactly my point. Human rights are intrinsic to being human. I am saying that human rights are intrinsic to being human. The observations that lead to the conclusion of human rights are objective making human rights an objective conclusion. Yes, please. Did I ever argue that no country was currently violating human rights? Part of the reason that the UN was formed was to put pressure on countries that were violating human rights. It is also dependent on a person's right to self defense as part of that liberty. When you threaten another person's liberty you can be punished. As Locke puts it:

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And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom -- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.--John Locke, An Essay Concerning the true original, extent, and end of Civil Government, 1690, para. 11
http://www.mcrkba.org/w0.html

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I would hope that we could come to the correct conclusion through discussions like these. Perhaps. This is why I was pointing to the universal-ness of people wanting life, liberty, and property (excluding the mentally ill for Panda's sake). I don't know of a fully functioning human who thinks nothing of being jailed for the rest of their life simply because they wore the wrong colored shirt one day. Do you? If you look back through the last 300 years of history, those oughts have been very powerful and very meaningful. It has shaped modern western civilization. In the US, we revere these ideas as the very meaning of what it is to be an American citizen. We are taught in government classes that we have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Why? Because we were born with those rights, not as Americans but as humans. They exist as much as any conclusion drawn from premises. The Nuremburg trial was founded on the London Charter which was further based on the Moscow Declaration: Statement on Atrocities:

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The final section of the Moscow Declaration is entitled Statement on Atrocities and it was signed by the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. They noted that "evidence of atrocities, massacres and cold-blooded mass executions which are being perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries they have overrun and from which they are now being steadily expelled". They went on to state that Germans would be sent back to the countries where they had committed their crimes and "judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have outraged".As for those Germans whose criminal offenses had no particular geographical localization, they would be punished by joint decision of the governments of the Allies.

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Obviously, they were disgusted by crimes against humanity that were being perpetrated in locations controlled by Hitler's Germany. They felt that people should be held accountable for these gross violations of human rights.

Sorry for the absence. . . now, where was I . . . How does being situational and conditional prevent these rights from being inherent and inalienable? Physical laws are situational and conditional. The force of gravity depends on the presence of mass and the distance from that mass. These are conditions and situations that affect the force of gravity. Does this make gravity subjective, or not an inherent property of the universe? Yes. That would be an outcome of the interactions between inherent, inalienable, and objective human rights.

Excellent find. From the article:"I only throw this proposition out in a spirit of humane enquiry - could it be that human rights simply don't exist? After all, in my understanding it's difficult to conceive of a person's rights as obtaining at all unless an effective sanction is in place in the event of their violation."This sentiment has been put forward by others in this thread. The problem is that this conflates two separate issues. One issue is whether or not human rights exist in the first place. The other issue is how we are punishing those who vioilate those rights. Again, these are SEPARATE issues.Also, the statement above all but confirms that human rights do exist. Why? How did the author determine that human rights violations were going unpunished in the first place? If I asked anyone for examples of people who went unpunished for human rights violations would most people be able to name at least 1 person? Probably. Why is that? Obviously, we can determine that human rights have been violated without needing a legal finding from an official judicial system.What the author and others are really saying is what good are human rights if they are so easily trampelled. I think the last 200 years of European and American history demonstrate what happens when societies strive to protect human rights. Yes, there will be hiccups, atrocities, and mistakes along the way, but if we decide that human rights do not exist then they cease to be atrocities and mistakes. They just become every day occurences.Let's say you are at a little Mom and Pop diner. You are at the front counter getting ready to pay your bill and you notice that the cash drawer is ajar. You look around and no one is watching you. You know that you could take a few 20's out of the drawer and no one would be the wiser. If you will not be caught or punished does it make it OK to take the money? Does right and wrong cease to exist if punishment is not involved? More importantly, do we want to live in a society where morality is based on whether or not we can catch a perpetrator?

At least I attempt to add something of substance to the thread. Perhaps you could give that a try?

The problem is that you point to violations of human rights and claim that it is the same as taking those rights away. That is wrong. They are not the same thing. You are the one claiming that they are taken away. Why don't you show us how this is done.