Human Rights
The most famous statement on human rights is the 'right' to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". I guess one starts with what exactly does the word 'right' mean? For example, who exactly establishes a 'right'? I suppose one could answer God but this is a meaningless copout. That answer can, and often is, used as a convenient answer to justify just about anything: "God wills it". I guess that settles it----but it rarely ever does, and the killing fields abound.
For me, reasoning and logic are the tools God's evolutionary process have given humans as the basis for implementing 'rights' to people. Believing as I do that ethics is an innate quality of human reasoning, it is then ethics which deciphers out our 'rights'. I have long since given up on any inherited dogmatic human dogmas written out by those who lived decades after some prophet died, and all of these prophets clustered centuries ago in the same part of the globe. If any of these scriptures were truly the Word of God, literally, there would not be so much antiquated nonsense throughout these scriptures.
When all the dust has settled it is always the Golden Rule which is the common and universal ethical guideline: Do unto to others as you would have them do unto you---fair is fair. This simple guideline is not based on religious affiliation, race, sex, nationality, genetic proximity, personality, financial status, social status, looks, or any other such diversity. I call this reasoned ethics. It fits any age, any culture, and any circumstance where human life exists. You don't need any college degree to understand it, no priests of any sort to pile on rituals or additions, or build elaborate cathedrals to impress either God or worshipers---it is simply a universal and logical statement of 'human rights'.
This simple and inherent ethics enables us to easily figure out human rights in most every instance. You have a 'right' not to be robbed since no one else wants to be robbed either. I guess that is exactly why stealing is wrong, not right. Everyone has the 'right' to vote because this would not fit the Golden Rule were it otherwise. Can individuals do things for which they lose their rights? This gets a bit tricky. How can you logically lose a 'right'? If you murder some one, others need protection from you, and you lose the 'right' to be free in order to protect this right of others. Thus, if you go around depriving others of any 'right' then reason dictates others need be protected from you. A 'right' doesn't exist if it is not protected. Punishment for those who interfere with the logical 'rights' of others is required for 'rights' to exist and flourish.
Not all 'rights' are bestowed at birth. Children do not have a right to drive a car. At what age a young person should be allowed this 'right' is a gray area. But these are minor glitches whether it be 16, 18, whatever. Same with marriage---there is a right here, but at what age it becomes effective is a bit gray. Of course by the Golden Rule any adult should be allowed to marry another adult of their choosing---period. Are there ever any exceptions? I suppose if there are established and accepted genetic reasons why two should not be married, this could be a legitimate restriction on a 'right' which would otherwise be universal.
Does a child have a 'right' to have as much money spent by society on his/her education as other children? Of course: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That our society is willing to spend 2 or 3 times as much to educate some children compared to other children is simply an obvious breach of the Golden Rule. It is not fair and never will be fair by any logical and moral application of human reasoning. Medical care: is there a right to proper medical care? Of course there is. The poorest workers, at the lowest levels of employment, are entitled to good health care. The argument that those who earn enough to pay for good health care are entitled to better health care is superfluous and self centered. It doesn't fit the Golden Rule at all. We are talking ethics here not capitalism vs socialism. It is not surprising when recently a study was done to find out which countries have the most contented people, that these countries were those in which common 'rights' were protected and where necessary, financially supported by their government. My own health care is practically endless. There is nothing I have done with my life which entitles me to receive better health care than others who, for whatever reason, cannot afford good health care. Exactly for what are we punishing those who can't afford health insurance? I understand you lock up a person who kills because if you don't, they could kill others.
Unfortunately, rights are not inherent, but bestowed by society. Slaves were not free by fact of being born human, but were free only when society deemed them free. Women did not have the right to vote at birth, but got this right only when society bestowed this right to them. Some 'rights' are a bit complicated. According to some everyone has a right to own and carry firearms. Of course no one is born with any such right and like every other right, such a right has to be bestowed on them by the society in which they live. So how does ethics, arrived at by reason, come down here? I may want to own and carry a gun for protection of my life and property. That certainly may be something I want to do---hard to question that. But others, just as adamant, do not want to carry a gun and feel less safe if others have guns. Thus, do unto others as you would have them do unto you is stymied here. Some want the right to carry a gun and others don't want any such right, and, in fact, feel unsafe if others have such a right. There is more here than safety. Some people like guns and others hate them. There is a young security guard I know who makes like $10/hr and has an array of assault weapons. He thinks it is cool and some others think he is missing a few marbles. Owning and carrying guns is certainly not any universal right in the sense that other rights mentioned above are universal rights. There is no 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' which is applicable. We do know that in those countries with the most guns, with the exception of Canada, there are by far more homicides. Those countries with few guns do not go around killing others with baseball bats etc. and end up with the same number of homicides per 1000 population. Thus, by any reasonable analysis, guns usually, if not always, end up with more people dead. Since everybody wishes not to be killed, we then have a universal 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' and there is therefore no 'right' to own and carry guns around.
Now let's examine the 'right' to drink alcohol and the 'right' to smoke and the 'right' to smoke pot. All recreational drugs are used to alter one's mental state. There is no other reason to use them. I suppose one can insist he/she loves the taste of beer or wine, etc but one just wonders---if it did not produce a mental effect, whether anyone would pay the cost for that taste. But let us not squabble over minor points. I think most everyone wants the 'right' to ingest anything they want as long as this is not harmful to others---"it is my body, I'll do what I want with it". BUT: what you put into your body can sometimes be harmful to others---drunk drivers, drunks who lose their job and can't support their family, abusers of alcohol and all smokers who run up large medical bills from associated medical conditions caused by their abuse of these recreational drugs. The medical costs of cigarette smoking have already been established, and these costs could be recovered by sufficient taxation on the purchase of cigarettes, so this would give them a 'right' which could then be universal: "I smoke and I also pay the cost of the medical consequences". Fair is fair. Alcohol use is far more complicated. Reasonable amounts do not carry with it a lot of medical consequences, larger amounts do. And there is no way to monitor when someone crosses that line. The best one can do here is to tax the sale and use the collected taxes to cover the medical costs of the medical abusers. Still, some will argue that the 'right' to drink alcohol ends up killing or physically hurting a good number of people through car accidents, homicides, drunken assaults, battered spouses, abuse of kids, etc. None of these are a pretty picture. We all know that. One might reason: "well then, let's not make drinking alcohol a 'right'. BUT: we tried that during prohibition and it didn't reduce drinking, facilitated huge underground criminal gangs, deprived the government of huge amounts of tax revenues, and increased the homicide rate. Then there is the 'right' to smoke marijuana. No medical consequences to speak of (no one knows anyone dying of pot smoking), no huge safety problem (animated conversations on a cell phone are more dangerous on the road than pot smokers), reduced assaults, and reduced homicides. Thus, the one recreational drug with the least social consequences is illegal. Not particularly logical, but a political reality. Just think how much better swimmer Phelps would have been if he didn't smoke pot. Yeah, sure.
HOWEVER, and this applies to all abuse of recreational drugs, no matter which one: everyone has the 'right' to get medical treatment for mental stresses of various sorts. Clearly if this is a universal right for physical ailments, this must then be a universal right for mental ailments. With precious few exceptions, all abusers of recreational drugs have mental feelings which they try to alleviate through the use of a recreational drug which will alter their mental state to produce a desired effect. They are not criminals, they are medically in need of help. And until the mental state is altered via treatment, the abuse will continue and continue and continue. The more severe the mental need, the more severe the abuse. THUS, drug abuse is really a medical problem and should never be treated as a criminal problem. Of course criminal acts committed under recreational drug abuse have to be treated as criminal problems.
Currently, at last, society is starting to come to grips with the 'right' to die. Everyone wishes to have control over their dying process. The process is riddled with religious dogmas and different people would control their dying process in their own personal way. Just as one person doesn't want anyone else or the government to say 'it is time and you must die', another person doesn't want anyone else or the government to tell them, 'no matter what you wish, you cannot die". If dying is not personal, what the hell is? Clearly the right to die meets the criteria: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. To attempt to control someone else's dying process is an ethical abomination. There are states and countries which currently allow people to control their own dying process and the charge that this results in the elderly being murdered has not proven a problem at all. Of course you don't say no one can drive because a few people drive in such a way as to kill someone. "Rights' don't come with no risks. They exist because it is unethical for certain 'rights' not to exist.
Do we have an inherent right to have as many children as we want? This one is not complicated. Again, via the Golden Rule, everyone would like to have enough to eat, a home, some land, good health care, and enough resources to live an affluent life. Right now there are no longer enough resources on this earth for everyone to live the affluent life many of us now do. For this to happen there must be a reduction in the world population. World reduction in population can only happen two ways: Either humans accept restrictions on the number of children permitted, or the laws of evolution will reduce human populations in the harshest and cruelest of fashions. Mother Nature always bats last. And for some people in certain parts of the world, Mother Nature is already at bat.
The discussion of rights, so it seems to me, comes down to ethics over selfishness. When the Golden Rule rules, people end up with 'rights'. The powerful forces of greed and power are often the forces which deprive others of 'rights'. Patriotism, religious intransigence, political fervor, racism, social status, economic status, scarce natural resources (including water, land, food, energy), and sexual nuances all contribute pressures to deprive others of 'rights', which otherwise people would have.
Human rights prosper when society is geared in the direction Davis (have forgotten the first name) urges us: "There is a way of life, a way of thinking, of behaving towards other men and your fellow creatures, towards all living things, towards the whole earth and the sky and the sun that is based on love, on compassion, on respect, on cherishing everything there is around you because it is wonderful, unique, it's natural and good and it evolved that way (via God's evolutionary process), it's got to be cherished and if we think like that and live that kind of life, we can all have our freedom, we can all have our happiness, (we can all have our rights), we can all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation."
