The Glade 4.0

Then why are you suffering massive shortages and rationing, in comparison the United States? Your entire system is currently being overhauled in a way that makes basic proceedures performed nearly on demand here in America nearly unavailable in the UK.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

You have the right of it when you speak to virtues such as justice being built around man's "instinctive sense of intrinsic rights" (I like that phrase, and I'm going to borrow it). However, speaking to the second part of your post, you are correct... though in a limited sense. Correct in that those virtues have nothing to do with rights, yet incorrect in your introduction of them into the conversation. They have nothing to with a man's direct relationship to other men. They are confined to the spiritual, and man's relationship with himself or his diety structure. In this way those values are no different than any faith based values of today, which in no way invalidate an intrinsic rights construct.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I'm not following you here.

If rights are exclusively established by man/society/government, or "not innate", then they can be changed over time. Changing rights over time means that rights can be removed. That's all I'm saying.



1) I dispute this as "self-evident" and,
2) I dispute that one should not therefore think that legal torture and bigotry are "ok."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Which is correct. But your philosophy says that, too. When someone commits a crime, for example, they remove their rights. It's the justification libertarians use to justify applying any level of force to an attacker, for example. "Well, he's violating my rights, so he's waived his own, so I can shoot him".

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

That isn't changing the person's rights. That's the criminal surrendering his rights by choosing to violate another's.

That is not the same as government saying "Well, we've decided to cut back on freedom of the press because it's just too inconvenient when they cricticize our tax increases." That's just changing everyone's rights for no better reason than someone's agenda.

That isn't saying that rights changing over time is necessarily bad; since inherent rights have no power outside of what society wants them to ahve anyhow, the rights that actually are protected change over time regardless of whether they do philisophically. However, when society sets down the rights that it demands government must protect, and then puts limits on its own ability to change them without massive effort and consensus, that's much better than letting the government change them whenever it damn well pleases. In fact,, it's about as good as its going to get in actual practice.

By the way, just to clarify, when you arbitrarily give one group of citizens a "right" that another doesn't have for no reason connected to anything involving behavior or the actual exercise of the right, it's really not a right, it's a privilege. For example, when you say "criminals can't have guns", that's still a right; the person's behavior directly affects their ability to exercise the right responsibly. "Blacks can't own guns" means that owning guns is then a privilege of non-blacks in that society.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Racist!

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

in·her·ent/inˈhi(ə)rənt/Adjective
1. Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute: "inherent dangers".

If something is a permanent, essential attribute, it can't just be surrendered. You cannot merely surrender your DNA. If rights are an inherent quality of man, then they cannot be surrendered. They can only be restricted by force.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

Monte:

That is the difference between the state of natural rights, and the legal application of them. We only honor and respect the rights of those who honor and respect the rights of others, and refuse to allow them to hide behind the legal protection of their rights when it becomes clear that they have violated the rights of others, and broken the code that protects them.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Disclaimer: The following is anecdotal (i.e. recollection from reading newspapers, personal use of the NHS, watching the news, etc - I have not gone and googled or done research)

I'm not aware that we are. I can walk in and get an MRI and ECG tommorow (am, actually ,as I passed out and the doc wants to confirm its not epilepsy). The state is actually cutting back on visas for foreign medical workers.

I have full private cover through my employer. Haven't had to use it yet.

Now , there's a tonne going on to reprice medicines using the clout of the NHS as a bulk buyer, and the current government is restructuring as part of an overall massive state spend cost cutting exercise to reduce the deficit the last one built as part of the credit crunch, but generally, medical care is easily available and free at point of use.

There are of course high profile **** ups, but that's true of every institution; in general the NHS provides pretty effective and comparatively well priced service to all citizens of the UK.

That said, the very best of healthcare in the US is, as I understand it, the very best of healthcare available anywhere in the world. Its not my understanding that that is the generally available level though, and that in fact, the US spends more on healthcare per head, for lower 'return' than just about anywhere else either.

Precisely what Rynar says. Rights can be surrendered, but they can't be removed from the person. The government can act with force to take rights away from individuals who choose to do the same to others.

Do you know what the philosophy phrase, "state of nature" is Montegue? If so, what's your vision of a state of nature?

[/quote]

Was a joke around the declaration of independence holding truths to be self evident - sorry ;-p



Fair enough. That may be your opinion - but it isn't mine.

SuiNeko:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7908742/Axe-falls-on-NHS-services.html

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I can easily remove someone's right to free speech. I can easily remove someone's right to their property, their body, etc. What Rynar and you are talking about isn't "rights". It's ability. You have the ability to speak. You have the ability to create. You have the ability to move from place to place. The only thing standing between you and your ability to do those things freely is force.

Might makes right in a state of Nature. And that sucks. So we changed the game.

We have to come together collectively to say "our might ensures your individual rights". Without that collective establishment and protection, there are no rights.

Our understanding of what is and is not a right has evolved alongside our society. That supports my position. Once upon a time, only white, landowning males had the right to vote in this country. Now we understand that right to include every adult citizen. We established that right for all people, collectively. And we collectively defend it.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

[edit: montes post popped in while I was typing this - it wasnt a response to his, but rather the more conservative posts preceding it]

Interesting.

So if we agree that natural rights may or may not exist in the absolute, but are expressed solely in their enforcement, acceptance and practical implementation by society at large, how do they differ from determined rights?

For what its worth it seems plausible to me that certain 'natural rights' are evolutionarily determined behaviours as a product of collaboration, jealousy, fear, etc, etc - and that they may be variably expressed, felt and acknowledged differently by folks with different geneological lineages.

I assume you are talking about something more fundamental than that? I.e. genuinely universal rights?

Do they extend solely to human beings or all self aware creatures?

What is their source?

I realise that's kinda getting off topic a bit, but I think it begins to get to the core of why I (currently) believe all rights are societally and personally determined, rather than universal and immutable.

The source is my biggest objection, because no one has been able to objectively show a source of the so-called inherent rights. The founders of this philosophy named the Creator as the source, but provide no objective proof of the existence of this Creator. It's difficult for me to accept the existence of the magical, inherent "rights" without objective proof of the source of those rights. And such proof has never been shown.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

We'll see how it shakes out - I have a friend who works for an NHS trust.

Basically, it used to be run under the last government as a state administered corporation - GPs, hospitals, etc, were run by mini corporations called 'trusts', which were regulated by strategic health authorities.

It's being dismantled at the trust and SHA level, and the funding is being handed directly to GPs and hospitals to self administer.

This could be great - permitting them more flexibility to respond to demand, better use of money ,etc - or it could be a disaster as medical professionals are suddenly forced to become, or recruit, business professionals, we lose central oversight of statistical death rates/prescipriton rates, etc to highlight best and worse case practices, and lose the clout of uniform practice across the country making kit/medicine cheaper.

An important thing to note in the article you posted is:
"The Government has promised to protect the overall budget of the NHS, which will continue to receive above-inflation increases, but said the service must make “efficiency savings” of up to £20 billion by 2014, which would be diverted back to the front line."

There is enormous change going on right now, and there are very significant very vested interests who will push back against it. I have no idea if it will be net positive - but I do not imagine basic care will cease being provisioned, long term, while the current funding levels continue to rise.

There may be a lot of trauma during transition though.

There is no explicit right to vote in the constitution.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

This, combined with the 9th Amendment lead me to believe that the right to vote in fundamental and established. It would be nice to have a specific amendment, mind you.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html#vote



Just thought it was interesting. It's a pet peeve of mine up there with people think that "separation of church and state" is actually in the constitution.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

No. You can easily remove someone's *ability* to speak, hold property, move from place to place. You've done nothing to their right to do so except infringe upon it.

Rights don't hold that their existence makes it impossible to infringe them. They hold that it is wrong to infringe them, and that doing so is doing harm to the holder of the infringed right.


I emphasized the only important and correct word in this quote. Jews always had a right to life. Germany just didn't understand that, and was thus wrong. Blacks always had a right to the pursuit of liberty. Our nation just didn't understand it until the mid-1800's, and didn't have a complete grasp of what implications that has until the mid-1900's. And "we" (in the national identity sense) were wrong, too. Nobody *established* anything. We only got around to getting it through our thick skulls what was already true. Now that we have acknowledged it, yes, we have a government that can defend it with the force it takes to prevent (or at least exact justice after the fact, the threat of which acts as a preventative measure) others from infringing it.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I think we are one of 11 democracies out of a total of about 120 in the world that does not guarantee that right explicitly. It's silly.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

You can't remove it. You can infringe it. The rest of your post beyond that is bunk.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Silly or not, my statement remains true.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

The United States is not a democracy. I mean, come one, it's a simple request: use the word "Republic" or "Democratic Republic", but do not use the word "democracy". We're not ... it remains a bad conflation.

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[edit: jesus - its hard to have a conversation in this thread. Im going to have to learn the quote button]

re: Rights being infringed, but not 'removed', when a rightsholder cannot excercise said right

While I'd agree, that does seem to fall rather foul of the principle of falsifiability. How do you prove something to be a right, rather than just an assertion?