Inalienable Rights

[Steve712]

Do you believe that some rights are so fundamental that no one may deprive anyone of them? Which rights? Why?

Do you then agree that those or some among those same rights are so fundamental that even you may not deprive yourself of those rights? Which rights? Why?

That is the definition of inalienable: unable to be taken from or given away by the owner. Inalienable rights are supposedly so fundamentally ours that even we cannot separate ourselves from them. This means that, if we agree that the right to liberty is inalienable, we cannot sell ourselves for someone else to own. If we feel this way about the right to life, then we cannot take our own lives or consent to someone else to take our own lives. The idea is that we don't own our lives and liberty as we do property which we can give away freely. Rather, the rights we have to them are as essential as our hearts or minds. Imagine trying to rid yourself of them!

The reason why such rights are inalienable is to restrict what the government can do. If we cannot consent to ending our lives, then why would any institution, including government, have that power over us? If we cannot consent to servitude, to ending our liberty, then where what would the government's justification for enslaving us be? Inalienable rights (of which there are more than the two I used as examples) are supposedly under the domain of natural law, their source being a god, or reason, or a product of unalterable behaviour which is as essentially human as eating or communicating.

Do you see problems with the concept of inalienable rights? Do you think that the consent of the individual is the highest law governing the rights of that individual, rather than natural law? What do you think of human rights in general?

I thought I'd start a nice discussion of this brain melter problem. Share your thoughts! I'm interested to see what they are.

[UnAmourFatal]

What if every individual had the right to rid him/herself of any rights? Wouldn't that solve anything?
Phew, this whole thing just killed my mind, it's just so abstract. It makes me think our society is fundamentally wrong, I mean what abominable creatures are we, having to make a law about not killing others? I really can't say anything, my brain is screaming 'error'.. :P

[Chouchou]

Sometimes I wonder why humans even try to govern themselves at all, because the human nature makes a mockery of everything.

Never mind every society, every person has a different set of values in which s/he sincerely believes. It's amazing how humans haven't already obliterated themselves already from all these genuine disagreements over natural resources and human rights.

David Duchovny was right: humans are too d**n complicated.

I'm being rather nihilistic today. Hmm...

---------- Post added 13th Nov 2011 at 07:21 AM ----------

We pride ourselves in being superior to animals, but really, we're not that much better. The most intelligent and/or controlled of us can be prone to fits of passionate rage and kill innocent people because of a betrayal or a long history of pent-up frustrations. There is no solution to this, including government. Forget death and taxes: human nature is the only inevitable thing in this world.

[Aya McCabre]

I don't think you can have a right that a person can't willingly give up. The most fundamental right is the right to life and I believe the only life you have a right to take is your own. If you can give that up you can give anything up. Whether you'd want to is another matter, but if you chose to you could.

[Rooni321]

4 words:
Don't trust your rights.

Haha that inailienable rights thing has been going on forever and look at the mess this coubtry has gotten itself into.

[VentinIntrovert]

This discussion of rights is very intriguing, especially since I’m Canadian. Although here in Canada we have the Charter of Human Rights and Freedom to protect us, nothing about it is absolute. Whether it’s the right to life, liberty and security of persons, everything has to be within reason. And this is particularly defined in section one of the charter, where a right “is subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” There are several limitations to the Charter, section being one of them, section thirty three (non withstanding clause), and the Wars Measure Act. This proves that inalienable rights do not exist.

A popular issue that had been brought up to the Supreme Court of Canada dealt with euthanasia. In Canada, it is unlawful to take one's own life, and also unlawful to give consent to someone else to take your life. What is lawful however, is to refuse medical treatment resulting in one’s own demise. So many cases have been appealed and rejected by the courts to allow terminal patients suffering from an illness to consent to dying. As a result many ended up dying in a long and grueling process. But in the bigger picture it’s for the better good. Most people who suffer from any illness may not see the better picture, as with victims of bullying. They way I see it is, it wouldn’t be much different than allowing teenagers to commit suicide because of homophobic bully. It does get better, but sometimes we just can’t see pass the pain and suffering.

Another debate that we can touch into is abortion. But I won’t go there today.

[Porphyrogenitus]

I find the whole 'human rights' rhetoric distracting and irrelevant. If I go up to someone and ask "Are you in favour of the right to life/freedom of speech/whatever?", I doubt I'd come across a single person who'd flat out say no. And yet, were I to ask about any of a number of more specific issues under one of those rights, I would likely find that everyone has wildly divergent opinions, which they nonetheless hold to extremely tightly. But everything that's important is decided in the quagmire of detail, in Dworkin's 'hard cases' (Hart's 'penumbra of doubt'). Yay, we have freedom of speech, but, oh what a pity, I can't shout 'Fire' in a crowded theatre.

But that's where all the real, significant important decisions are, defining the hard lines between what is within the content of a right and what is outside it. And, as i said, there are wildly divergent opinions on such things. Personally, I'm in favour of allowing euthanasia, at least in certain circumstances and with certain safeguards. But if a politician were to take this position publically, they'd immediately be accused by someone of condoning murder and destroying the right to life. You immediately polarise the discussion, each side dismissing their opposition with intense, emotionally loaded statements intended to destroy their case, while, ironically only making them more opposed as they do the same in return. And all the while, the real issues and reasonable discussion are ignored.

Now, I'm not saying that wouldn't happen anyway without the mantra of human rights, but at least they'd have to think up something new each time :P Certainly, the rhetoric of rights obscures matters, for no noticable gain.

Bills of Rights, such as have been mentioned, do not, in fact, 'protect people from the government.' Rather, they transfer a large quantity of decision making power from the legislature to the judiciary. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to you, and I'll leave this subject alone for now, unless anyone really wants to argue about it All I'll say on the matter is that Australia is (Thank God!) one of the last Western nations not to have one and I am extremely glad about the matter. Oh, and here's a small but (probably) representative sampling of material, if you happen to know nothing about the question (I know lots of people, especially in America, tend to just take them for granted): Aus Bill of Rights Stuff

[vyvance]

Can't say that I do. I think there are things that increase the quality of life, and are nice to have though. In the end your only rights are the ones any one individual gives you. Right to live? Only if no one decides to kill you, etc...