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Can anyone give me an example of a right that is also an obligation. IE the right to bear arms vs the requirement to bear arms. The right of religion vs the obligation to observe a religion. The right of free speech vs a requirement to speak. The right of privacy vs the requirement to remain private. If health care is a "right" how can they "require" everyone to purchase it? Can a right and a requirement be congruent?
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Can anyone give me an example of a right that is also an obligation. IE the right to bear arms vs the requirement to bear arms. The right of religion vs the obligation to observe a religion. The right of free speech vs a requirement to speak. The right of privacy vs the requirement to remain private. If health care is a "right" how can they "require" everyone to purchase it? How can a right and a requirement be congruent?
i would argue that an obligation implies force to comply and is therefore a denial of choice. thus a denial of rights. whether or not the obligation is met with willful submission is irrelevant. a right cant be a requirement.
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posted
I see your angle. I never viewed jury duty as a right, rather a "duty". No individual citizen has the right to be on a jury rather a duty to be selected to serve on a jury. The charged has a right to a jury trial but does not have the obligation to have a jury. The charged can choose a judge or jury. If the charged only had a jury, they wouldn't call it a "right" to a jury.
I'm looking for a precedence of a right that is also an obligation. The current health care debate argues that it is a universal right yet the bills require everyone purchase it. Can a right be an obligation? As far as I know, there is no "right" that is also an "obligation". I'm looking for a historical example of a right that is also a requirement.
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In the case of jury duty, the point is that people have a right to a trial by jury, but this right is contingent on people also having an obligation to serve in jury duty. The two aren't exactly the same thing, but they are incredibly intertwined. To opt out of your obligation to jury duty is to essentially opt out of your right to a trial by jury, because if everyone did it there'd be no juries.
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posted
Beautifully said. Individual freedom requires individual responsibility. Unfortunately, some individuals expect others to pay their way.
"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities." Ayn Rand
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You're making a valid observation, Mal. I agree--health care SHOULD be a requirement for everyone, not "just a right".
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I actually have to agree with Lisa there. Our right to freedom of religion doesn't obligate us to believe (or not) in anything. Or right to not be forced to quarter soldiers does not obligate us to do anything. Plenty of rights have no particular obligation attached to them.
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Our right to freedom of religion implies an obligation on everyone who isn't you, not to interfere in your religion.
The right not to be forced to quarter soldiers is the government's obligation not to force you to quarter soldiers.
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Huh. I briefly tried to write a rebuttal to that but I think you're right. (The reason is not so much that everyone else has an obligation, but that YOU have an obligation not to interfere with others religion if you don't want your religion interfered with. The soldier one is a little less concrete. While yes, there is an obligation going on intrinsic to the right, the obligation doesn't fall on the same person who gets the right, which I think was mal's original intent.)
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By Norwegian law, all able-bodied men have the "right and duty" to serve a year in the military; women have only the right. Further, parents have the right and duty to send their children to school, and immigrants have the right and duty to learn Norwegian language and civics. In fact there seems to be a lot of this "rett og plikt" in Norwegian law.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Can anyone give me an example of a right that is also an obligation. IE the right to bear arms vs the requirement to bear arms. The right of religion vs the obligation to observe a religion. The right of free speech vs a requirement to speak. The right of privacy vs the requirement to remain private. If health care is a "right" how can they "require" everyone to purchase it? Can a right and a requirement be congruent?
It is a right because the constitution provides the government for caring for the general welfare of the people and because they and everyone has a right to it everyone thus has the obligation to be taxed so the government can supply its effective service otherwise people would be denied the right.
Also afaik people who opt arent arent forced into it, only simply charged a feem I see no problem with this as if your well off enough to afford private health care then your well off enough to pay a fee so others who are needy can afford theirs.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Every right necessitates an obligation. A right without an obligation is meaningless.
That makes no sense.
Its a pretty standard part of any discussion of rights. Any claim that a right exists, automatically and intrinsically implies an ethical obligation on someone's part.
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Lisa, I've heard a lot of good Torah lectures on the subject. They talk about how enlightenment thinkers put things in terms of rights, and how the Torah puts things in terms of obligations. The Torah never talks about how you have the right to anything, only about the many obligations you have toward your fellow man and toward God.
The idea being that there is essentially no difference between rights and obligations - what matters is what you are stressing. There is a great chance of success for everyone if we all focus on our obligations as opposed to focusing on our expectations and what others can do for you.
quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Every right necessitates an obligation. A right without an obligation is meaningless.
That makes no sense.
Its a pretty standard part of any discussion of rights. Any claim that a right exists, automatically and intrinsically implies an ethical obligation on someone's part.
an ethical obligation, perhaps. but if that obligation becomes a mandate, imposed by force, one no longer has a choice either way. what if one doesnt feel an ethical or moral obligation? and is a right without a choice a right at all?
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Rights and obligations obviously need to be analyzed in terms of relationships.
Without a relationship, what are rights and obligations?
If i live on an island and declare that i have a right to property...what does that even mean? To anyone? What does the concept of property mean without other people? All of these terms connote the parameters of our relationships.
So if we, as a community, declare that you have an obligation, that you never wanted, so that we can protect our rights, we are saying something about our relationship.
When we, as a society, say that everyone has a right to health care - we are saying that we, as a community, want our relationship to be of the quality that we care about your health. We don't want to be a society that suffers the untended ailments of our individuals. So we impose on ourselves an obligation to tend to one another.
(that'd be the theory for health care).
I hope that answered your question Capax.
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posted
The Jury Duty / Trial By Jury is a fair assumption, as is the Freedom Of Religion / Don't Burn Their Church Down.
You have a right. In order for others to accept their right, you have an obligation.
Your obligation of getting covered by insurance is not to cover your health, but to allow me to practice my right to health. If you didn't have to get insurance, then all the healthy young healthy people would refuse to get covered, making insurance too expensive for the unhealthy, resulting in us not being able to get the health care we need.
So the right is My Health Care, or My Jury Trial, or My Freedom of Religion. The obligations is Your being insured, you serving on a Jury, and your not interfering with my religion.
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quote:but if that obligation becomes a mandate, imposed by force, one no longer has a choice either way.
One can take competing rights, judge one to be superior, and compromise the other. The collective right to military protection outweighs an individual's right to keep their income, hence a military funded by a compulsory tax. It's also a recognition that, without said military, it's quite likely that the individual couldn't acquire that income in the first place.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Every right necessitates an obligation. A right without an obligation is meaningless.
That makes no sense.
YOU make no sense.
Two things. One is that saying a concept makes no sense and saying a person makes no sense are two very different things. You might want to think about that.
The second thing is that I obviously misread what you wrote. I thought you were saying (as is often said) that if Reuven has a right, Reuven must have a responsibility to go along with it. If what you meant was that Reuven having a right creates an obligation on the part of Shimon, then you're right.
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Lisa, I've heard a lot of good Torah lectures on the subject. They talk about how enlightenment thinkers put things in terms of rights, and how the Torah puts things in terms of obligations. The Torah never talks about how you have the right to anything, only about the many obligations you have toward your fellow man and toward God.
Context, Armoth. Those shiurim may be good for the topic they're addressing, but it's patently untrue to say that the Torah doesn't recognize rights. You have the right to decide to whom to give tzedaka. It's called zechut baalim. You have property rights. Yes, God's property right to the universe overrides that, and relative to God, our kinyan means nothing (l'Hashem haaretz u'mlo'o), but b'dinei adam, it absolutely has meaning.
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quote:There's no such thing as a collective right.
Meh. I just mean a collective means of protecting individual rights. The individual right to property can only be protected, practically speaking, through collective effort.* Read it as "everyone's right" where it makes more sense to treat "everyone" as a single entity for purposes of practicality.
* With an exception for extraordinarily wealthy individuals.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Primary and secondary education is a pretty clear example.
Of what? No one has a right to those things. The government may decree an entitlement, but that doesn't make it a "right".
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quote:Originally posted by Armoth: Lisa, I've heard a lot of good Torah lectures on the subject. They talk about how enlightenment thinkers put things in terms of rights, and how the Torah puts things in terms of obligations. The Torah never talks about how you have the right to anything, only about the many obligations you have toward your fellow man and toward God.
Context, Armoth. Those shiurim may be good for the topic they're addressing, but it's patently untrue to say that the Torah doesn't recognize rights. You have the right to decide to whom to give tzedaka. It's called zechut baalim. You have property rights. Yes, God's property right to the universe overrides that, and relative to God, our kinyan means nothing (l'Hashem haaretz u'mlo'o), but b'dinei adam, it absolutely has meaning.
First, i meant what I said (above), playfully. I thought that what I said made a lot of sense, and I thought it was kinda annoying that your only response to me was that I made no sense, without providing explanation. Not very fair. So I said that you make no sense...
As for the point in this quote - I don't know that I would say that those concepts are rights - they are prerogatives, and are meant to stress how you should focus your behavior in specific situations.
But if you wanna push me on it, you can say that there is a difference between the Torah, God's word, and then God's law as transmitted through humans in the Talmud. Though, I prefer to battle on a case by case basis and show how we really do stress our obligations, and not our rights.
Also the talmud is a legal analysis, not a declaration of the rights of man.
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Primary and secondary education is a pretty clear example.
Of what? No one has a right to those things. The government may decree an entitlement, but that doesn't make it a "right".
I beg to disagree on both points.
It's true that the government simply declaring people have an entitlement doesn't mean it's a right. What makes it a right is when society accepts those entitlements. The government has declared all people are entitled to police protection. Society has largely embraced the idea of having a police force. Therefore, people feel a right to police protection.
The same logic applies to primary and secondary education. The government says that all people(or citizens) are entitled to an education. Society largely accepts this notion (whether it be public or private education) and it becomes a right.
Entitlements, by definition, are "positive rights." Are they natural, inalienable rights? No. But that does not mean they are not rights.
Unless, of course, you take issue with calling anything not inherent with humanity a right. But then it's a matter of opinion and not fact, and we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I believe I've a right to education, police protection, social security, and health care. You might not agree. But to state objectively that entitlements aren't rights is wrong. At best you can say, "I don't think those things are rights."
Then we get into the fun game of societal values to see whose opinion wins out in the end, and the majority defines the position of society.
ETA: Of course, you could have implied that your analysis of entitlements was based in opinion and not fact implicitly. If that's the case, my objection has no basis and you can carry on. Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Primary and secondary education is a pretty clear example.
Of what? No one has a right to those things. The government may decree an entitlement, but that doesn't make it a "right".
Err...what? In our society, we regard access to primary and secondary education as a right and they are specifically listed as such in enumerations of rights such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Primary and secondary education is a pretty clear example.
Of what? No one has a right to those things. The government may decree an entitlement, but that doesn't make it a "right".
Err...what? In our society, we regard access to primary and secondary education as a right and they are specifically listed as such in enumerations of rights such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
And Rooseveldt's Economic Bill of Rights included "recreation" as a "right". Just because someone says it doesn't make it so. It only means that there's an agreement on the part of government to guarantee that you get the entitlement. Entitlement; not right.
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posted
Hey, if you want to use your own private definition for right, that's fine. Have fun on your hobby horse.
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Blayne Bradley
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Lisa hav you seen the UN Declaration of Human Rights that specificially claims that all Humans have the right to an education?
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Not an argument to make to an American libertarian, Blayne.
Anyway, yeah, Lisa is using the word 'right' in a sense which is a little bit orthogonal to what the rest of you are using. The discussion would likely be more productive if you agreed to let the semantic point go, and say "Ok Lisa, just do /s/right/entitlement/, and we'll do the opposite".
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quote:The discussion would likely be more productive if you agreed to let the semantic point go, and say "Ok Lisa, just do /s/right/entitlement/, and we'll do the opposite".
Or you could make the distinction that is commonly made by philosophers between "natural right" and "legal rights".
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quote:The discussion would likely be more productive if you agreed to let the semantic point go, and say "Ok Lisa, just do /s/right/entitlement/, and we'll do the opposite".
Or you could make the distinction that is commonly made by philosophers between "natural right" and "legal rights".
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No; in fact I find your insistence that there are Platonic 'rights' floating about without humans to define them even weirder than your silly theistic beliefs, which at least have the excuse that you're catastrophically mis-weighting the evidence. And even if that weren't so, to take a squiggle of pixels, assign it a meaning different from what everyone else in the discussion is doing, and then insist that your interpretation is the correct one is possibly the stupidest argument imaginable.
I was, in fact, explicitly trying to avoid taking a stance on whose defition is correct, in the interest of moving the discussion along. I suggest you do the same.
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I would like to note that I did think the pun was funny, but I also think KoM's point about "intrinsic rights" not really making sense is a perfectly valid. (I have no idea whether or not he was completely oblivious to the pun)
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posted
I did consider that it might be a pun, but concluded that it was so fantastically lame that not even Lisa, notorious for having no functioning sense of humour whatsoever, would find it funny. I sit corrected.
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