From: ald@clipper.ingr.com (Al Date)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ba.politics
Subject: Re: Absolute Rights (was no on 9)
Date: 14 Oct 92 01:21:33 GMT
Organization: Intergraph Advanced Processor Division - Palo Alto, CA

In article <1992Oct8.164620.434@netcom.com> phil@netcom.com (Phil Ronzone) writes:
>In article <1992Oct7.190021.1501@clipper.ingr.com> ald@clipper.ingr.com (Al Date) writes:
>    >It is impossible to be a 100% free man while living in a
>    >society. Even if the sole purpose of govt is just the
>    >protection of individual rights, that costs money, and
>    >whether people will voluntarily support the justice system is
>    >not assured by any means. If the system is not voluntarily
>    >supported, society has the power (and a power is a legal
>    >right) to levee taxes.
>    >
>    >So property rights are not absolute. The way to protect
>    >property rights is not to claim their absoluteness (which
>    >cannot be proven) but to show their utility to society at
>    >large.
>
>A woman has the right to NOT be raped. (This is a corrally of FOA
>and of course, something I hold as an absolute).

I agree that a woman in our society has a right not to be raped, but that does
not make it an absolute.  In many societies other than our own,
women do not have that right.  There are 100 million women alive
today who have had their clitorises hacked off, something which
we consider incredibly barbaric, but which is considered as 
"normal" as male circumcision is in this culture, to us. 

Rights are a product of a culture.  The only way that the right of
non-rape will be extended to all women globally is if our culture (or some
other culture which values women as individuals) somehow
invades or influences or dominates the cultures where rape (or genital 
mutilation) are accepted.  Might makes right, essentially.

Our culture, which is uniquely respectful of individual rights 
(which have gradually been 
extended from white males to all other people), now holds that rape is 
very bad, because of the recognizable damage to the individual woman.  
But it was not always so.  

At one time, rape was considered bad only because the woman
was the property of a man.  As far as I know, it is still thus in Japan 
and Arab cultures.  Unmarried women do not have the same right of non-rape
that married women do.    

I am sure that we both agree that the Western values of
individual freedom and private property have
been instrumental in allowing women to secure the rights that they now possess
in our culture, including the right to control their own bodies.  In
many other cultures, women are considered either public or private property:
chattel.


>Yet, every day, women are raped.
>
>Because the right of a women to NOT be raped is violated, do you
>then claim a woman has no right to not be raped?

See above.

>
>In the same way, my property rights are absolute (my body, my mind and
>ideas, my tangible property).

The problem is that you yourself are to a large extent a product of 
our culture, and most especially your tangible property.  Our bodies,
minds and ideas are greatly influenced by our culture.  Human beings
are social animals.  You yourself are always making exceptions for
children, so I know that you are aware of the difficulty in assigning
absolute rights to all human animals.

What is it about children that makes
them different than adults with respect to their rights?

The difference is in the ability to take responsibility for one's actions.
But there are plenty of adults who fall into this category as well,
and that is why so many of them end up in prison ("rights-deprived").

In other words, rights are not absolute, but are dependent on the ability
of a person to exercise respect for the rights of others.  Those who 
are mentally incompetent will not have the same set of rights as 
someone who is mentally capable.  Anyone who has had a relative
with Alzheimer's will understand this.

Rights connote responsibilities.  If you cant hack the responsibilities,
you will find society circumscribing your rights.


>Yet, every day, they are violated (taxes and such).

Because not all humans are capable of taking responsibility for 
themselves, and this burden falls on society in general, society
has to raise money for things like national defense and a justice
system.  It is because you are a member of this society, and benefit
from national defense and serial-killer incarceration that you
are expected to share some of the burden.  

This gets into the concept of public goods theory.  Needless to say,
it is a far cry from the subject of rape.

>Yet the right is no less strong.

Sorry, but the best you can get is maximizing your freedom, not total
freedom, unless you start your own society.

>
>    >The same is true of the Freedom of Association, or any other
>    >right. Society has the power to circumscribe this right, as
>    >it is currently doing. The way to defend it is to show how
>    >necessary this right is in everyday life, and how it works
>    >best if it is NOT circumscribed.
>
>So therfore, by your logic, women do NOT have the right to NOT be raped.
>After all, many societies accept the UTILTIY of slavery, and the
>slave women thus, as property, could be raped by the owners. And it
>was all just and O.K. by that society.

Unfortunately, that is true.  The only way to stop the damage to the
Jews was to destroy the Nazi culture with force.  Within the Nazi
culture, destruction of the Jews was tolerated and encouraged as
"right."  If history shows us anything, it is that ethics are
quite relative.


>Sorry, I don't have to show anything or to prove to anybody that my
>life is my own -- not to Caeasar, the Pope, the Kind, Stalin, Lenin,
>Mao, Pol Pot, or Willie Brown.
>
>    >Btw, in a previous article, you claimed that the Freedom of
>    >Association is the most basic right of humans. Now you claim
>    >that it is property. Which is it?
>
>You have the right to your property, body (life), mind (ideas),
>and tangibles (physical property to you). To have that right, you
>must have the condition know as FOA. Any coercion to any of your
>property (body, mind, tangibles) results in immediate loss of FOA.

Substitute the word "violence" for the word "coercion" and you 
might have a case.  But actually, the freedom of association
can never be totally lost, and it can never be 100% either.

>Perhaps I should say: FOA is the first and basic derivative of the
>moral premise that man has a right to his body, mind, and tangibles.

But this right is not absolute.  


--Al Date
Xref: sparky talk.politics.misc:52061 alt.politics.elections:17038