CompuServe Messages

>rights don't exist, except where the power exists to create and enforce them.< If we choose to be merely brownian particles blown by the winds of the world, then we are. The result would be a world where life was meaningless and cheap. Why not kill the one who irritates you? Since he has no inherent rights, he is no more of a person than a rock on the ground. If we choose to believe that "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…", the result is world where human interactions are mediated by at least a trace of empathy for others. The first view offers no hope of improvement. What is purely within ourselves we are free to disregard. The second view places the existence of rights beyond ourselves. Whether you choose religion or natural law theory or something else, IF you accept the seperate existence of rights, you sow the seeds of an ethical society. Rights exist. They may be suppressed by force, or go unexercised, but they cannot be destroyed or removed. But that's just an article of faith. Kent