From: Frank Caherty <caherty@wizard.nrl.navy.mil>
Subject: Re: Why rights? an answer to Jordan and Andy (fairly long)
Reply-To: caherty@wizard.nrl.navy.mil
Organization: The Internet
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 19:53:24 GMT

Okay folks, this'll be my last post on the subject, I guess we've 
inflicted enough of this on the r.m.gd / D-F audience.  This is to 
my mind, the most important subject that has come up on the net in a 
long time.  So in the interest of supplying "intellectual ammunition"
to those of us on the net who find ourselves in these discussions, I
will attempt to answer the "From where" and "For why" questions.
 
Jordan:
|I guess my general trouble with "rights" and the "right to free speech" is
|that the idea of a "right" is just so squishy. Where do these "rights"
|come from? The Constitution of the United States is the simplest answer,
|but I don't believe the most correct. I doubt I would be contradicted if
|I said that people had rights before the Constitution and have rights in
|foreign countries, even where their governments do not provide for such
|rights...some healthcare stuff deleted...So where do these "rights" come 
|from?  My opinion (which is open to change) is that these rights come from 
|a common understanding. We, as a society, have to make these choices. And
|since there are no "absolutes" we have to have guidelines and make marginal
|calls. 

Me:  I will strongly disagree with the statement "there are no "absolutes""
but that is beyond the scope of this screed.

Andy:
|First there are rights guaranteed by the constitution and its amendments. 
|This is what some people are talking about.  Second, there are government
|restrictions, in the forms of laws and court precedents, often conflicting 
|in some ways with the first amendment, but with long-standing acceptance.
|Third, there are "natural rights." This is what some of the rest of you have
|been talking about. It's also important to remember that the people who wrote
|the constitution were really big on the idea of natural rights.
|Personally, I think focusing on natural rights just obscures the issues. 
|...regulation of commerce stuff deleted...
|...dosing Richs wife/ Catfish kicking ass stuff deleted...
|In other words, if you don't believe in god (which I don't), or even if you
|do believe in god but don't think he spends a lot of time keeping track of us
|and deciding whether we go to heaven or hell (also a possibility), then the
|concept of natural rights loses most of its meaning.  Going back to rights >granted by the government (which theoretically passes laws only with our 
|mandate):

Me: I want to show that "natural rights" depend on the nature of man as
a species, not on anyones concept of god, dog, krisna, whatever.  The nature
of man can be understood, and the proper conditionds for the existence of
man may be understood also.

Jordan again:
|As far as Frank's extensive attacks on my logical structure go, the
|fact that not every statement agrees with the next is very intentional.
|It is intended to draw attention to the difficult contradictions of the
|issues. Please give me a bit of credit...

Me:  The only thing I have to go on is what you write.  I cannot see your 
face, your body language, whatever.  When a subject becomes more difficult
it requires more incisive use of logic and reason to unravel it, not less,
and certainly not use of faulty logic.  When you start from a premise and
apply logical reasoning, and reach a paradox or contradiction you have erred
in one of two ways : either faulty logic, or a false premise.  Always check
your premises!

My argument starts here:

WHY is it necessary for a man to have rights?  Without understanding the
necessity of rights, you cannot then define what they should be.  In fact 
any arbitrary set of rights would be as good as any other.

The only fundamental alternative in the universe is existence or
nonexistence.  This alternative pertains only to one class of en-
tities in the universe: living creatures.  The existence of in-
animate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not. 
Matter is indestructible, its form can be changed from solid to
liquid to gas to energy, but it cannot cease to exist.  It is only
the class of living organisms that faces the constant alternative
of existence vs. nonexistence, life vs. death.  Life is a process
of self-generated, self-sustaining action.  If an organism fails
in that action, it dies.  The body, or the constituents of the 
body remains, but the life goes out of existence.  

On the simplest level, the function of all living organisms is to 
go on living.  The goal is the maintenance of existence.  Only 
living organisms can have goals, and without an ultimate goal or
end there can be no intermediate goals (Eat food? Why? Get out
of the rain? Why?...)  There are of course, many possibilities
of existence, including the possibility of existing in diseased,
or disabled states, but these will not last, the organism will
either recover or die.  

Simple organisms, amoebas or plants, survive by means of automatic
functions.  Plants absorb food from the soil, amoebas envelop small
particles and absorb them.  Higher organisms require consciousness
to survive, because the range of their needs is greater.  A man 
needs nourishment, but cannot obtain it fron the soil.  He can grow
it, or hunt for it; both actions require consciousness.  Man has no
automatic programming for survival.  His sensory inputs will not tell
him automatically what is good or bad, what will benefit life or end
it.  Mans senses do give the information that, when integrated with
other information, and understood will enable him to take the actions
that will allow him to survive.   Mans own consciousness will not 
automatically decide for him goals he should pursue, what actions to 
avoid, yet he must make these decisions.  How?  By choice.  Man must
choose his goals; must choose what course of action to take, under
what conditions.  He must in fact choose to be conscious.  That is,
man is volitionally conscious.  He must choose to integrate the 
perceptual information he receives with the stored information and
concepts that he has formed in the past in order to *choose* the correct 
action to take in order to survive.  

Man consciousness is not automatic (instinctual), it is not involuntary,
it is certainly not infallible.  Man has to initiate, sustain, and eval-
uate the actions of his mind.  He must be able to discover how to tell
truth from falsehood, how to correct his errors, how to validate con-
cepts and knowledge.  He has to discover how to think.  The extent to 
which a man is able to think, to conceptualize and to utilize the matter
in the world around him, is the extent to which he will be able to live
and prosper.  To be able to think, and take action to further his own 
life requires freedom.  He must be free to act according to the direction
of his mind.

But man is not alone in the world.  There are other men all around, and
all these men have the same requirements placed on them by the fact of
their existence.  How then do you enable all these men to exercise the
free use of their minds and bodies, and guarantee that one will not step
on or diminish the freedom of another?  The question of what is right
for _a_ man to do is the fundamental question of ethics, and the question
of how is man to act in the company of other men (society) is the fun-
damental question of politics.  Rights are a moral concept that provides
the transition from the principles of ethics to the principles of 
politics, from the code of morals of a man to the legal code of society.
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.
This subordination of society to moral law is what sets the United
States apart from any country or society that has existed before or since.

I've run out of time here, so from here go to my previous posting
and it should be better understood, now.  Remember that the existence
of rights is a requirement for the existence of man, neccessitated by 
his nature.  Individual rights is the moral concept embodied in the
Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.  These rights
have not been *granted* to us by the founders, they have been *recognized*
as required for our existence; and other men, individually,
and collectively have been enjoined from trampling on them.

Regards,
Frank.