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RE: Rights- reciprocal or absolute?
That's exactly right. Once you violate someone's property - once you commit that act of trespass - you can't turn around and say "wait, you can't try to stop me! That would be trespassing against me and my property!" It's nonsensical. Rights aren't absolute like that. If they were, then self-defense would be an act of aggression, which is just silly.
Rights are absolute. It doesn't violate someone's rights when you stop them from violating someone else's rights, because no one has the right to violate anyone's rights.
That no one has the right to violate anyone else's rights is superfluous, so that doesn't really add to the conversation. But let's take what you've just posited. You've established that everyone has a right to non-aggression, and that this right is absolute. How then can you violate the right of someone to non-aggression in defense of another? Put another way, if A initiates aggression against B, not you, why is it not initiating aggression against A to come to B's defense? A hasn't initiated aggression against you, just against B.
Defense is never aggression, and if someone has the right to defend themselves from aggression, you have the right to do the same on their behalf. You aren't violating anyone's rights by defending someone from their aggression (although they'd probably want to convince others that you are).
Yes, but why? Why do you have that right?
Because you have the absolute human right to do anything whatsoever that doesn't violate anyone else's equal and identical rights. Anything.
Does it violate someone's rights if you wear red and green striped pants?
No. You have a right to wear red and green striped pants.
Does it violate anyone's rights if you smoke Cannabis?
No. You have a right to smoke Cannabis.
Does it violate anyone's rights to defend them from an attacker or thief?
No. You have the right to defend people from an attacker or thief.
Does it violate anyone rights to attack them if they didn't violate you first?
Yes. You have no right to initiate force.
Does it violate anyone's rights if you use force to stop them from initiating force, against you or against a third party?
No. No one has the right to initiate force, so stopping them doesn't violate them.
You can try to complicate anything if that's your goal, and you'll probably trip up a lot of people. Why spend your effort making things worse, though?
I'm not overcomplicating things. I'm attempting to be more precise. The lack of precision in asserting that a right to non-aggression is a priori true, without any additional examination, is why you've arrived at the conclusion that this right is absolute.
Either of these can be true, but not both, and this is the issue I've been trying to drive home. It does not follow that because you can defend yourself from a person attack you, that an uninvolved third party can do the same absent some pre-existing obligation to do so. The third party was not violated by the attacker. By your own rule, the third party cannot use force against the attacker without violating the rule you've established. This illustrates the problem with using imprecise language. It invites all sorts of equivocation.
However, if you move beyond non-aggression, into the fundamental private property right from which it arises, it is plainly evident why you can come to the defense of a third party, and why it would not be initiation of force from you as a third party to the conflict.
"...this right is absolute"".
ALL rights are absolute. That's the definition of "rights", like it or not.
Every right stems from the fundamental private property right. Again, precision of language makes it simpler to understand the issue and arrive at the solution. You have a right to ownership in your body, and this is a priori true. From this arises every other valid right that exists. However, this right is contingent upon you extending those rights to others. Once you violate those rights in others, you estop yourself from claiming it in your defense. Put another way, the act of violation of the right to ownership in another's person or property is an explicit rejection of that ownership. That explicit rejection means you cannot claim it in your own defense. This is why self-defense is justified.
When I say this right is reciprocal, it means that, when there is a conflict, the party who rejects this right is the one who cannot use it in his or her defense. The victim, who has not rejected it, is ethically blameless from using violence to prevent further abrogation of his or her property, either in their person or their external property.
If you demonstrate that your reject a right, you forfeit your ability to appeal to it. This is estoppel, and this is why you can justify self-defense of others.
We have different definitions of "rights". What you call "rights" I call "privileges", and you don't seem to have a concept for what I call "rights".
To me a right is anything that doesn't violate anyone else's identical and equal rights. If it doesn't initiate force or violate someone's property, you have the right to do it. Period. That is obviously not the concept you have in mind when you hear/use the word "rights". Therefore, we are not communicating.
You're constructing rights as positive, not negative. This is another issue with imprecise language and not examining deep enough into the why question. There are no positive rights. Rights are legal descriptions of where property ownership applies. The ownership is a priori true, but one does not have a right to positive action. One only has a right to negative action (i.e. not having one's property violated). To argue that there are positive rights implies that there are positive duties, which is not a tenable position.