{"id":9107,"date":"2009-11-10T01:59:08","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T08:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9107"},"modified":"2009-11-10T01:59:08","modified_gmt":"2009-11-10T08:59:08","slug":"i-dont-believe-in-natural-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9107","title":{"rendered":"I don't believe in "natural rights""},"content":{"rendered":"

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I don’t believe in “natural” rights. Rights are a human institution; those rights that aren’t institutionalized by humans don’t exist. The only rights I, or any of us, have, are the rights that are recognized by the society in which we live.<\/p>\n

So I don’t think — for example — that same-sex couples have a right to equal treatment under the law when it comes to marriage, in most US states. They don’t. They should<\/em>, and I think they will in my lifetime. But we’re not there yet.<\/p>\n

When people speak of having rights that aren’t recognized by society, I can’t agree. Where would rights like that come from? From God, I suppose, but I don’t believe in God. From nature, one could say, if one has never ever watched a nature show in one’s life. If you have a right to live, and the government shoots you anyway, and there are no consequences for those who shot you, then in what meaningful sense did the right to live ever exist?<\/p>\n

Of course, it can be powerful to speak as if there are rights that exist outside of human institutions. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy; if you say “I have a right to blah, and that right is being denied to me,” then that use of the rights rhetoric makes it more likely that someday you will have the right to blah. I acknowledge that speaking of rights that way can be useful. But I don’t think it’s accurate.<\/p>\n

Illustration via TRG’s Flickr page<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t believe in “natural” rights. Rights are a human institution; those rights that aren’t institutionalized by humans don’t exist. The only rights I, or any of us, have, are the rights that are recognized by the society in which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}