Rights

Earlier today I responded to a Facebook post about rights:

ELV "is wondering where our 'rights' begin and end . . ."

To me this is a fairly fundamental question. Too many people talk of rights as if they are free and without obligation.

So how do I see rights? At the moment I can see 3 kinds.

1. Rights seized from one's superiors, for example Magna Carta where King John was forced to concede various rights.

2. Rights granted by a state or group of states, for example the European Convention on Human Rights.

3. Libertarian rights. The right as an individual to go about one's business without let or interference by anyone provided one doesn't interfere with the same right for others.

Is there a difference between these types of rights? In practice probably not. However I see groups 1 and 2 as rights granted by some authority while group 3 seem more fundamental.

The problem with groups 1 and 2 is the fact that someone else has the power to grant or enforce them. Since I only reluctantly concede to being coerced by others as a modus operandi with the real world I accept these rights as a partial counter balance with the coercive nature of the state. However philosophically I dislike having to accept rights from the same coercive state.

Group 3 rights seem to distil down to special cases of the basic libertarian non-aggression principle. I am content with group 3 rights as they are consistent with my favourite piece of graffiti scrawled across my college walls many years ago, ni dieu ni maitre.

Gay rights, women’s rights, religious rights are all in fact just aspects of the basic libertarian right. Your sexuality, gender, religion, ethnicity, etc are irrelevant provided they do not interfere with other people’s equivalent rights. And in the end these rights only involve the state as the laws of the land have constrained and limited our right to live as we see fit. For a free society the state only has to say these things are nothing to do with government.

The problem with all this is of course that our right to defend our rights has been taken from us by the coercive state over the last 100 years or so partly, or mainly, as means of social control.