Can we find an objective basis for rights?
Posted by deleted 8 years, 11 months ago to Classifieds
A mind expedition that re-defines the relationship between citizens and governments.
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While we're very happy to have you in the Gulch and appreciate your wanting to fully engage, some things in the Gulch (e.g. voting, links in comments) are a privilege, not a right. To get you up to speed as quickly as possible, we've provided two options for earning these privileges.
This of course does not apply to the vast majority.
The Enlightenment and the founders of this country in particular did not have an objective basis for rights and did not have an ethics of egoism to support it. This has nothing to do with "full plates" and rambling about gun laws and "rigged elections". Have you read Ayn Rand on rights and ethics?
In those days with a lot on their plate they did not feel the need to mention every possibility for two hundred years down the line. After all they were all literate and educated. The didn't think about the future where some thouoght they could redefine everything but left the protection up to checks and balances, the courts, and the idea that citizens would choose people of honor and principles. Expressing it fully enouogh has taken a five thousand word set of documents roughly and turned it into 12000 unenforced gun laws in that one area alone.
Ergo Sum? Citizens today are not responsible enough to governn themselves they need a ruling class.
Easy to say when the education system and the media is as rigged as the electon system and the government.
Because it's true.
Neither are a substitute for philosophy, and the weakness of Enlightenment philosophy in ethics undermined the subsequent evolution of the country. The presumed right to life, property, liberty and the pursuit of one's own happiness represents an implicit philosophy of egoism, but it was not expressed fully enough to counter the historical dominance of sacrifice to others as the assumed basis of ethics.
See especially "The Objectivist Ethics", "Man's Rights", "Collectivize 'Rights', and "The Nature of Government" in her anthology The Virtue of Selfishness.
will you check the link to make sure it's right?
Give it a shot...it really does go beyond just existing for it's sake.
That may not be perfect but I think it's real close.