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This in your profile made me curious:
"Pro-Democracy. Pro-Rights. Pro-Freedom. In that order."
So if it is democratically decided to abolish fundemental rights, you would support it since democracy is more important than rights?
Not trying to give you a hard time, just a fair question about your stance.
The entire point of civilization is to give up certain rights for the good of society. We decide to implement a policy like "this is the speed limit" - and you give up your right to violate that policy. Democracy is just how we are supposed to decide things - in our case, by electing representatives to govern.
If you don't like the decisions - you work within the system to change them, or potentially you leave for someplace with different policies.
Depends on how you use "rights" I suppose.. in its more general usage you are correct.. but more typically its used to mean natural human rights.. which is a specific set of rights that many hold to be sacred.
equal rights belong exclusively to individuals. all rights rest upon the ability to say "no" and have that respected without reprisal. otherwise consent is impossible. fundamentally, to respect the word no is the first mutual agreement which must precede all others.
since an individual cannot delegate a right they do not possess, a group can no more rightly supersede or abrogate the rights of the individual (save to protect another from such a violation), lest the foundation of society rest upon coercion rather than liberty.
following that there's the question of tension between private ownership vs perceived public need. now if you put our society in view of that lens, you'll start to see how things go off the rails. in the typical western democratic models we try to make the end justify the means by extorting our way to philanthropy, euphemizing it as taxation.
yet to correct course would start as simply as replacing taxation with voluntary crowd-funding. there would be some growing pains at first, but I'm sure we could adjust without major calamity. anyway I think that would make the powers that be a lot less prone to corruption and waste, if people simply had the ability to say "no" and choose a different provider. if people understood that saying "no" is the fundamental basis of their rights.
@toiletpaper @freemo @LouisIngenthron
By this reasoning - if I don't like the speed limit, I can just say "no" and ignore it?
When we live in civilization, we give up the ability to do whatever we want; it is the price you pay to participate. I can't just drive 90 mph on a residential street without breaking the law and expecting to be punished for it - and that's good. Anyone who thinks "rights" means "I can do whatever I want in all circumstances without cpersonal consequences" is using a very non-standard meaning and is being disingenuous. That's not rights - it's anarchy.
Sure you could just say no and ignore it... its just, there are consequences :)
