BASIC RIGHTS

In the United States, certain rights are considered basic to all people. These rights have been enumerated in many documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The latter makes those rights legal rights as well as moral ones. Not all nations share our legal rights. Still, most people consider certain rights, legal or not, to be basic to humanity, and thus are moral rights. A description of the most basic of these follows:

1. THE RIGHT TO LIFE

At face value this is a negative right that doesn’t amount to much. If we assume that this simply means all people have the right not to be killed this would not prevent people from mistreatment. A slavemaster could abuse his slaves as much as he liked as long as he did not kill them. A government could torture its citizens, parents could abuse their children, and so on. Obviously, we hold this right to be a bit more inclusive.

Perhaps it would be better worded as the right not to be killed or injured. Still, this is a negative and passive right, relying more upon others than on the individual. Doesn’t this right, in addition to including the right not to be mistreated, also imply the right to do certain things, to live your life a certain way?

This right could then be stated as follows: the right to live your life according to your own choices, except the choice to interfere with the choices of others.

Problems inherent with this definition include the fact that some people have more means than others to live life the way they wish. Is the right of a person with less means being infringed upon? For example, Ms. A can afford to vacation in the south of France while Ms. B cannot afford to do so. Isn’t B’s right to live as she wishes, which includes vacationing in the south of France, being infringed upon? But if vacationing in the south of France is seen as a basic right, what would not be? If a father is too poor to provide his daughter with as much as a neighbor provides for his daughter, that is too bad, but there isn’t a violation of anyone’s rights in this situation, is there? The first daughter has fewer choices but is still free to choose among those she does have, including working for a society which would allow more people more options.

2. THE RIGHT TO PROPERTY

A claim to the right to life is often accompanied by a claim to own material possessions called property. The right to property is a special case of the right to life in its maximal sense: you have the right to live by your voluntary choices, including decisions to earn and buy things. The importance of the right to own things can hardly be overestimated. Still, several problems arise over this seemingly basic and simple right.

First, what gives someone the right to ownership? Obviously, if you buy something it is yours, while if you steal it, it is not yours but the person’s from which you stole it. But what if you buy something without knowing that it was actually stolen? To whom does it belong? What about land? From whom was it purchased? Who gave the original owners right to the land? In fact, can humans actually have the right to own land? Amerindians could not even comprehend such a concept. What about communal ownership? Why should property be owned by individuals? Is an individual’s right to property violated in a communal situation? What about ideas? Can books, songs, inventions and the like be considered as property? The band on the David Letterman Show can no longer call themselves “the World’s most Dangerous Band” as that name is the property of NBC, while Letterman and band are now on CBS. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, but the succession of words that explain the ideas can be. Currently there is a debate about who owns the air waves. Do cable television companies have to pay local broadcasters for the right to transmit programs which the broadcasters put out free over the airwaves?

Obviously, our basic rights are often not so clear.

3. THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

Again, if we interpret the right to life in its maximal fashion, this right is already a part of it. The right to freedom of speech and the press is important because of the great value we attach to knowledge and its communication. Of course, as we all know, this right does not allow you to infringe upon the rights of others. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater could deprive someone of their right to life if your shout causes a panic. Shouting obscenities in a church would violate, among other things, someone’s right to property. Libel and slander are also not allowed as they can harm others.

Still, this right is not as clear as it may seem. Pornography, suggestive lyrics, threats to national security, are all examples of contested items under this basic right.

4. WELFARE RIGHTS

The previously discussed rights are negative and passive. However, if welfare rights exist, then others must not only refrain from interfering with your rights but they also must do something. All welfare rights involve a positive obligation to assist in providing for others’ welfare. The question then is, what constitutes welfare rights? Is it a right at all? There are two contrasting views on this subject.

1. All people have a right to a minimum standard of living, a floor below which no one should be allowed to fall. People cannot pursue their distinctively human activities if they are in fear of starvation or death from exposure. All people have a moral claim to this, and it is the duty of those better off to provide for the less fortunate. The Clinton Healthcare Plan would fall under this category. Their claim is that all people have a right to healthcare and those who cannot afford should be provided for by those who can through taxes, employer provisions, etc. Even when in cases of extremely poor nations, basic welfare rights cannot be met by that government, the rest of the world has a duty to help provide it. This helps explain the United Nations’ involvement in Somalia. It is a humanitarian obligation, a moral duty, to provide for one’s fellow man.

2. It would be highly desirable if the world were free from poverty and want. But people do not have a right to a minimum standard of living. If help is freely given, it may be freely and gratefully received. As a human, I may have an obligation to help those less fortunate (prima facie duty of beneficence), but a duty of one person does not imply a right of another. If some people are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are being deprived of their rights to property. No man’s security is greater than his own self-reliance.

While in several nations (the US, Russia, Britain, etc.) people have a legal right to a minimum standard of living, it is not clear that there is any corresponding moral right.

5. THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

A difficult dilemma arises in regards to the rights of children as two rules seem to conflict. First, the rule that since children are not always able to make decisions for themselves, parents should make them on the children’s behalf. This conflicts with the rule that since children are human beings, they have the right to make their own decisions. A child is not property of the parents, but rather is under their guardianship. Obviously, infants rely totally upon others to provide for them and are entitled to this provision under their right to life. A young child can make some decisions for itself and a teenager many more. One major question in this is when is one fully able to make all of one’s own decisions? (No doubt you are interested in this argument!)

If children are not the property of their parents neither are they the property of the state. Yet the state is often needed to safeguard children’s rights from parents who would abuse them. Yet parents also have rights in regards to the raising of their children. Basically, children are entitled to such rights as the right to life and freedom from injury while parents have the obligation to prepare their children to be able to assume their other rights in a gradual fashion.

6. THE RIGHTS OF ANIMALS

Do animals have rights, and if so, what are they? Obviously, if animals had the moral right to life we would all be vegetarians. Yet few people would feel that the indiscriminate killing of animals is a morally right action.

It is difficult to see how animals could have active rights - those which they could claim and exercise. They have no conception of rights and claims, and they can’t act in recognition of these rights, any more than a chair or a tree can.

It is more plausible to contend that animals have passive rights - the rights not to be mistreated, abused, or made to suffer unnecessarily. People disagree on what is meant by “unnecessarily”. Some say that medical experimentation is necessary in order to cure human diseases, other maintain that it is cruel and morally wrong.

Is it the animal that has rights, or the human who has obligations? Again, obligation on the part of one does not imply right on the part of another.