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While you may disagree with the parent comment's assessment, I don't see a logic where you can agree with Americans on their 1776-era negative rights and argue
by lowkey_ 5y ago
While you may disagree with the parent comment's assessment, I don't see a logic where you can agree with Americans on their 1776-era negative rights and argue that human rights should include a lot of positive rights.
If you're not willing to subordinate negative rights, then how can you claim positive rights as human rights? As someone validly mentioned, they are directly at odds with one another.
- brnt 5y agoIf you're not willing to subordinate negative rights, then you should understand 1. why exactly you hold that believe, 2. conduct research into what sort of groups benefit the most from the particular set of negative rights chosen, 3. assess how the particular negative rights of your choosing conflict or contradict, and address how you will solve such cases, 4. get acquainted with the motivation for violating particular negative rights anyway. As an example, in case you're up for some literature study, property rights supremacy is well documented to be intricately tied to racism, and thus a good (great) case can be made for balancing that negative right with some other (positive) rights.
- lowkey_ 5y ago> It seems likely that you don't believe in the rights, the negative individual rights, that these Americans believe in; rather, you are willing to subordinate them to a cause which you believe is a good cause. (It might even be a good cause in fact. > If this is the case, then it is "tiresome" because, old as these ideas are, they are working exactly as intended: they are presenting a stumbling block to your utopian designs. Modern history is full of movements promising utopias by systematically violating human rights. That comment directly applies to this situation and proves it. You're against property rights (a negative individual right) for a 'good cause' (anti-racism), and in favor of letting it be subordinate to positive rights. A history of property rights being 'tied' to racism doesn't mean that we should repeal or lessen property rights; we should ensure property rights apply to everyone. The only issue with America's human rights was that they were not equally applied to everyone. My ancestors were essentially enslaved for several hundred years and now my grandmother, father, and mother all own a bit of property. We won't be letting anyone take that, or any part of property rights, away from us. I appreciate that you're in favor of this for a noble reason but nobody needs a savior to take away others' rights.
- brnt 5y agoYou decontextualize my statement into a categorical disregard of negative rights. That proves nothing, just that you did not consider the context and limitation of the incursion. Or that you didn't consider one of the other points, the inevitable balancing of rights that needs to take place in any system of rights. You can't simplify this sort of issue, you fundamentally can't. Not every nuance is a slippery slope.