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Or if you have children.
Well, again...I think that's another issue. It seems to be more of a discussion of responsibilities of parents...not responsibility inherent within rights themselves.
I'm well familiar with the idea of the social contract. While it is interesting, I don't think it necessarily describes reality. For starters, there are several rights which we agree we have that may be entirely unaddressed by the government. For example, the right to privacy....its a hazy line not well defined by the law, yet if you asked people, a majority would agree it is a right. Other rights, like the right to remain silent, are expressedly the responsibility of the individual who claims to hold it.
Still another example would be the right to own property. The government has vast books of solely property law. If you wish to protect your right to own property from a thief, you have several options. You can stop them yourself. You can go to the police. You can ignore the crime if you do not value what was taken (this happens more often than you might expect). In each case, it is up to the individual who claims to hold the right to act in a way that defends it. Can you imagine a world where it were the government's responsibility? They would have to send officers door-to-door asking, "hello, do you have any crimes you want us to look in to?"
My claim here, though, is that children have certain rights because parents have certain responsibilities.
Do children have a right to education? Only if parents have the responsibility to educate them.
Do children have a right to safety? Only if parents have a responsibility to protect them.
Do children have a right to emotional care? Only if parents have a responsibility to love them.
I think privacy can fall under both liberty and property rights. At the same time, we do allow our the government to decide if our privacy rights can be revoked such as in the case of wire taps or a search warrant.
If there were no laws against theft then you could not go to the police. It would be anarchy where each person takes from others at will. Can you imagine a world where governments did not make laws against theft, or did not enforce laws that forbid theft?
My whole problem with the social contract interpretation of rights is that it implies the government has the final word in deciding rights....it doesn't.
The justice system exists more as a result of the realization that most people don't have the individual resources to defend their rights all the time. It's still up to the individual to protect their own rights as they deem necessary.
That's not my understanding of the idea (but please correct me if I am wrong). The people have the final say. If they find that the government is not protecting their rights then they can dissolve the government and start a new one.
There is also the idea that no government is perfect, so it is always a work in progress. We will find flaws in any government. The power of the social contract is that these flaws are addressed because the populace wills it.
I understand where you are coming from, but it just doesn't quite jive with how I see things. You seem to be leaning more towards a "might makes right" type of system, or perhaps I am just getting this all wrong. The purpose of government is to protect rights because individuals are not able to do that on their own. An individual is not able to defend itself against the invasion of another nation-state. Individuals were not able to overcome segregation and slavery. It required government action, and government enforcement.
Can an individual defend itself from the invasion of another state? No, but like-minded individuals can...the American revolution among others comes to mind.
Individuals were not able to overcome segregation and slavery? Are you sure? Let's think of this for a moment...was it the government that pushed for an end to slavery? Did the government push for women's right to vote? How about an end to child labor? The government not only upheld these institutions...in some cases they created them. None of these changes would've happened if individuals had not been willing to fight and possibly die for the rights they felt they had.
I understand government likes to take credit for these changes after enough individuals decide they should happen, but that in no way makes them the ones responsible. Exactly who protects rights when its the government who is violating them? Always, always, always the individual.
Right, so it is a collective pursuit, not an individual one.
But fighting was not enough. It required laws to overcome these problems. It required government action. When the first kids walked across the segregation lines they had the National Guard to protect them, as one example.
Little Rock Nine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The government IS the people, so why shouldn't the people take credit.
So then does a parentless child have no rights?
Of course they do. That's why we think that abandoning children is so abhorrant.
Well then, by that logic, if a parentless child still has rights...then we cannot assert that a child has rights because they have parents with responsibilities...as you stated earlier.
Yes we can. The child has rights because the parent has responsibilities. The child is unjustly abandoned because of these same responsibilities. Just because the parents abandon their responsibilities doesn't mean that the responsibilities aren't there anymore. The dead-beat parents don't cease to be responsible.
Let's take it a step further to say that the parents are dead. Does this child still have rights? Only if someone or something else takes responsibility for them. Do they still have a right to be educated? Only if another party like the state or other family is seen as being responsible. Otherwise the right, in itself, is meaningless. If a child has a right to an education, someone must be responsible for educating them.
You're talking about responsibility in your description: "we've agreed to meet these rights." Isn't that another way of saying, "we've agreed to take responsibility"?
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