{"id":1107,"date":"2003-05-01T10:43:44","date_gmt":"2003-05-01T14:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2003\/05\/01\/1107.html"},"modified":"2003-05-01T10:43:44","modified_gmt":"2003-05-01T14:43:44","slug":"conservative-tenet-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2003\/05\/01\/conservative-tenet-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative Tenet # 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before the server crashed, Your Humble Blogger was picking up the Conservative Tenets<\/a> where we left off, with:\n\n

8. The rights of man as something earned rather than given.\n\n

This involved defining the Rights of Man (Human Rights or Natural Rights), detailing how one would earn them, and who would decide whether one had earned them or not, and who would give them and whether they could be taken away.\n\n

OK, I didn't do any of that.\n\n

I did talk a bit about Human Rights, which is a topic I've been thinking about for a couple of years, now. I have a lot of trouble defining Human Rights in any way that is coherent and consistent, and also fits in with my instincts of what Human Rights are or ought to be. If I want to list them, I can make a stab at it: dissent, religious freedom, education, health care, due process, and equality before the law, along with the negatives (things that you are protected from others doing to you), such as murder, torture, false imprisonment, and slavery). I'm missing some I had typed in on Monday but which aren't coming to mind now, and I'm probably missing others that I didn't think of either time.\n\n

The question is how I know that these are Human Rights. The tricky part is when a new item is proposed (and please, propose new ones), how to judge whether is belongs. Criteria. Preferably, criteria arising naturally (thus Natural Rights) out of what it means to be human, and what it means to have a right.\n\n

One of my magnificent correspondents (Chris, actually) was swift enough to respond before the original note was removed, and pointed out that (in his view, and a good one) Human Rights are of divine origin, and thus bringing them into the policy sphere is only a way to secure, rather than confer those rights. I also, on the whole, think that humans are endowed by their Creator with certain rights \ufffd I just don't know what they are, or even how to know what they are. \n\n

Still, that's enough to reject Tenet 8. Whatever the rights of man are, they are, by their nature, inherent in humanity, and cannot be earned or removed. Given, or, if you like, simply there, the way the universe is (or, if you like, given the way the universe is).\n\n

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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