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The fifth and sixth sentence of the article explicitly states the concern of child protection being used as an underhanded and emotional tactic. While I disagr

• TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > fundamental rights Genuine question because I never understand what people mean when they use that phrase: how is a right fundamental? Does the cold universe assign them to us or do a set of people agree such-and-such are fundamental. If the latter, were the same rights fundamental 20,000 years ago? (Because if they are fundamental, they should stretch back to early man… earlier than even 20,000 years ago)
  • azernik 5y ago
    We assign those rights as a society and, more relevantly here, as a political system. The people who draft our constitutions and (like for all political norms) those who create our political discourse have more influence in defining them than the general population, but these norms have to be agreed to by a fairly large swathe of society to be effective.
    • briefcomment 5y ago
      > fairly large swathe of society I don't think a majority necessarily carries power. The uber rich and intelligence agencies carry far more power than any mass of citizens.
      • azernik 5y ago
        a) I said "fairly large swathe" b) Elites exert control by persuasion; they control the discourse, they organize larger movements, &c. There are still limits to what popular opinion will go along with. c) Intelligence agencies are, in most rich democratic countries, not a major lever of political power. Government economic institutions, police, courts, and the like are much more influential in both day-to-day lives and in shaping popular conceptions of the "rules of the game".
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      You are speaking of rights. I’m speaking of “fundamental rights”. How are they different?
      • azernik 5y ago
        "Fundamental" rights are the ones whose existence is not considered a matter for debate in society.
        • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
          No such right exists. Can you name one?
          • azernik 5y ago
            In the US in particular: The right to life (in a negative, the government-shouldn't-take-it-away) is quite universally recognized - in cases where it's violated, defenders of that violation work very hard to craft a strong justification. The right to free speech (again, in a negative the-government-shouldn't-take-it-away) sense is also a fundamental part of political discourse. The right to private religious practice is broadly fundamental, though the right to religious practice of various sorts in the public domain (as well as the definition of that public domain) is hotly disputed. Notably, the right to certain social goods are "fundamental" in parts of Western Europe (e.g. healthcare in the UK), but very much are not in the US. My general impression is that positive (the-government-should-provide-it) rights are much more rarely "fundamental" in the sense of being deep in a polity's consensus.
  • briefcomment 5y ago
    No rights are objectively fundamental. It's subjective. If people in power don't agree to act as though certain rights are fundamental, they cease to be enforced, even if lip service is paid.
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      Excellent point. So I’ll ignore “fundamental right” next time I read it. I note that the United States uses “inalienable rights”, meaning ones which can’t be given or taken away. The only things that can’t be given or taken from me without a lobotomy are my education and internal thoughts and beliefs (that includes things like self-worth and dignity).
      • WalterBright 5y ago
        You have a right to liberty regardless of whether you are enslaved or free.
        • sifar 5y ago
          You are free or not, regardless whether you have a right to liberty or whether your are enslaved or free.
        • DubiousPusher 5y ago
          A right without a remedy isn't a right at all.
          • dredmorbius 5y ago
            I don't see either your claim or WalterBright's as clearly grounded. Each of you needs to define how you mean "right". (NB: The definition in the OED spans 8 pages.)
            • DubiousPusher 5y ago
              Can you explain to me the context in which an unenforceable right has meaning? I think by any definition, a right without a remedy is meaningless. If you have a right to expression but the state taxes printing presses so excessively that only the rich can print, what good is that right? If you have the right to an attorney but cannot afford one or the cops won't let that attorney talk to you, what good is that right? If you go to trual and they say, "it's fine, your attorney is here, representing you" and you've never seen that person before in your life, that's what we call a kangaroo court. Many would agree that you have a right to rebel if someone tries to enslave you. How did that work out for Nat Turner? These rights matter in an idealistic way? Was that Nat Turner's goal? To get 21st century people really thinking? Or did he want a family he could keep with him, his own home, his own food? We are used to telling ourselves over and over the stories of people who believed in their rights, fought and won them. We conspicuously ignore the stories of people who believed in their rights, fought and lost and then were not just denied their rights but made into villains. And don't even get me started on Operation Paper Clip, U.S. intelligence supported Nazi rat lines and Nuremberg. Perhaps if you believe there is some philosophical cosmic central plexus where your case will be adjudicated after death you can believe in capital R "Rights". I do not. And so in my opinion, all rights depend on the right to enforce them.
  • mkoubaa 5y ago
    It assumes the geopolitical domination of a group who asserts the right as fundamental. In other words a world order.
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      A world order or just a political system like a country?
  • dane-pgp 5y ago
    I think that "fundamental" doesn't mean "naturally occurring" or "universal", but rather "foundational", in the sense that more nuanced rights are based upon their basic principles. So for example we have the principle of "freedom of speech", which might be accepted by courts and society as including a right to publish literary works that some deem offensive, but that could be considered a subsidiary or supplementary right which doesn't have the same level of protection. More relevantly, a society might accept the principle of a "right to privacy", but might not think that grants a "right to privacy from warranted surveillance" or from "warrant-less automated mass surveillance". Of course there will always be a tension, as rights activists will instinctively claim that denying some specific right is undermining a fundamental right, since they are sure that everyone agrees that the new right is an inherent consequence of that fundamental right, but the government will always claim that its policy doesn't impinge upon any fundamental right and that the specific new right that the activists believe in doesn't need to exist at all.
    • nucleardog 5y ago
      The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms actually enumerates the "fundamental" freedoms separately: freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association. Contrast these with the rights enumerated e.g., democratic rights (the right to vote), legal rights (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, right to counsel), mobility rights (right to live in any province and enter and leave Canada). The rights granted are those that build _a_ society that supports those fundamental freedoms. The fundamental freedoms themselves are not something that exist in support of anything, but are simply accepted as something that stand alone as something we demand of our government.
      • sam345 5y ago
        Do you mean that fundamental rights are anything we want them to be ? So if we want, we could decide that the right to be free of criminal activity (particularly ones that encourage or lead to degradation, depression, death, etc. of children) is more fundamental than the right of privacy ? I think there's something more to being fundamental. Otherwise it seems all very arbitrary. Calling something fundamental could change at the whim of the majority.
  • WalterBright 5y ago
    > how is a right fundamental? They are inalienable and bestowed by their Creator. I.e. they are part of the innate nature of human beings. Governments can either protect those rights or abrogate them - it cannot invent them. And yes, they stretch back to when humans became human. Though it took a while for people to formally recognize them.
    • WalterBright 5y ago
      How do we know what those fundamental rights are? By observing what happens to societies that have various formulations of rights. The societies that thrive are closer to the mark than societies that are mired in misery, despair, and death.
      • Datagenerator 5y ago
        The ten commandments as benchmark and foundation applies to many common situations.
        • WalterBright 5y ago
          The Ten Commandments are not a list of rights. It doesn't even say you have the right to not be a slave.
        • ben_w 5y ago
          There are at least 8 ways to divide up the “ten commandments” passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy into a total of 14 commandments, the Quran has a different set (not being a religious scholar I can’t meaningfully assert how different, given linguistic drift and translation challenges). Bushido (or the form of it on Wikipedia) has a fairly different and also interesting set. Anton LaVey (Church of Satan) has an interesting, albeit stereotypically American, eleven. The philosophers in this list seem to focus on commandments of rationality more than morality, but that’s not something I find hugely surprising: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_the_Ten_Commandments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_the_Ten_Comman...
        • 5y ago
  • irrational 5y ago
    Thanks for asking this. I’ve wondered the same things. The answers so far don’t seem to really answer the question well, which makes me wonder if this is just one of those phrases that people banter about without considering if it actually means anything.
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      Yeah, I can’t for the life of me think of any right that is fundamental when you consider the whole of human history and societies that have existed. Even breathing — the most basic need — can be argued as not a right but something that the universe requires as a need to live. If breathing and life were “fundamental rights”, then there would be a provision in the laws of nature for them.
  • hulitu 5y ago
    Fundamental is whatever the politicians and the rich decide it's fundamental. For example the right to live is fundamental except if you live in a conflict zone (US with its shootings included).
  • Vinnl 5y ago
    There's a Wikipedia page which basically says they're a set of rights that are broadly agreed to be particularly important: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_rights For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but other countries might have determined their own (additional) set. I would assume the name "fundamental" was chosen because all other rights derive from them, i.e. if they're taken away from you, you won't be able to preserve the non-fundamental rights.
    • justshowpost 5y ago
      > the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but other countries might have determined their own (additional) set It works in opposite way. Universal Declaration universally declares nice stuff, but member countries are free to restrict and persecute the freedom of """hate speech""", the freedom of """extremist expression""" et cetera et cetera et cetera UDoHR is just a words, intellectuals are seduced by words and dismiss the fact UDoHR doesn't works anywhere except (maybe) America
  • bobthechef 5y ago
    Rights presuppose justice. When I say that I have a right to something, it means that something is owed or due to me from others for some reason. Justice, like all of morality (see "natural law theory"), presupposes human nature. Human beings are rational animals with the freedom to choose according to (or against) what is rational. If we lacked, by nature, either rationality or free choice, it would not make any sense to speak of the exercise of justice and therefore of rights because if I can't understand, then I cannot be expected to choose according to the objectively good, and if I cannot choose freely then I cannot opt for the good. What is good for human beings is objectively true as determined by human nature. It is objectively harmful, for example, to starve. It is objectively harmful to cut off one's right arm. It is also objectively harmful to take drugs that frustrate the exercise of reason because this is opposed to being the kind of thing you are, a human being. The same can be said for the misuse of the body and its faculties in various ways. They work against their healthy function and your well-being. Now, by nature, as I already said, human beings are rational animals, that is, it is our nature to be rational. We are also social animals. Thus, our own flourishing as individual human beings is also social. A society in which justice isn't practiced is no good for the human beings that are a part of it. Justice means that we can make claims, at least under certain conditions. It is of course unjust to make claims upon others that are not warranted, so we must determine what exactly constitutes a just and legitimate claim. This presupposes rationality (you cannot have a claim to what is absurd or evil) and relational (some relations are voluntary, others are not, but the nature of the relationship will inform us of our obligations and claims) and conditioned by other factors (a criminal forfeits certain rights by virtue of having committed an injustice). I will agree with you, though, that "fundamental rights" is unclear. If they mean something like what I've described, as something that is determined by human nature, then sure, they're fundamental in the sense that they have an objective ground in human nature. But if they are understood as somehow absolute in the sense that a criminal could go around murdering people and still maintain a claim to his own life, then no.
• croes 5y ago
  > legislation to reduce exploitation is legitimate The problem is they don't reduce it. It doesn't prevent the abuse and rape nor does it prevent the trade. They install mass surveillance that catches some idiots.