[YeahR]

However, it has certain drawbacks, at least to the person who wishes to claim maximum autonomy. Inasmuch as it is specified, it tends to be subject to various conditions, either explicit in the legal right itself or implied by the larger web of the society’s laws. The right to liberty, for instance, does not apply to those who have committed a crime and may lawfully be incarcerated; the right to property does not mean you can do just anything that you might want to do with your property. And inasmuch as the right is guaranteed by a particular government, it seems to be limited in time and place: In 1791, you would not have had rights to “free speech” and “free exercise of religion” if you’d lived in most places outside America. The language of natural rights is an attempt to transcend these limits. It asserts rights that are unconditional and universal, binding always and everywhere. But it expects somehow at the same time that these boundless rights, granted by nobody to everyone, will nonetheless enjoy the stability and security that attach to legal rights. As Biggar shows with great patience and care, this is simply impossible. more

[jaymac407]

Third, and perhaps of particular interest in our age of resurgent nationalism, rights language encourages a dangerous erosion of sovereignty: the sovereignty of nations and indeed of all human communities. Why? Well, as just noted, to assert a universal right is to insist that someone somewhere (or perhaps everyone everywhere?) is responsible to deliver the right in question. If all human beings have a right to adequate food and shelter, and their own government lacks the means to secure these goods, then some other nation must be morally bound to step in. This might make sense in the abstract, but exactly how much is Britain, for instance, bound to divert resources from its own people to build houses for Ugandans? And what if the Ugandans would rather not find themselves dependent on Britain’s largesse? The natural logic of universal rights is toward universal government—super-states that are prepared to override the decisions of sovereign states by telling them exactly the lengths they must go to secure human rights around the globe. Biggar dedicates chapter 10 of What’s Wrong with Rights? to analyzing the appalling track record of the European Court of Human Rights in blithely presuming to tell the British Army exactly what it must do to protect the rights of its soldiers and its enemies in the heat of combat. [links]

[abitcoinuser]

Conservatives today aren’t sure what to do with rights. On the one hand, “rights” have been increasingly deployed in the culture wars as the tip of the spear to drive us from moral and legal terrain that was uncontroversial until yesterday. Such is the newly discovered “right” to alter one’s gender and compel society to obsequiously honor this choice. Under the tutelage of the left, rights have proliferated into an insatiable list of wishes for an ever-growing government to attempt to grant (such as a “right” to free childcare) and have been wielded as bludgeons with which to beat a benighted right into shameful submission (such as in the recent furor over voting rights).

[krs]

In this emphasis, Biggar puts his finger on a broader affliction of modern politics, including the modern conservative movement. Whether we are talking about free markets or free speech or religious freedom, we must renounce the temptation toward self-justifying sloganeering and re-dedicate ourselves to the hard work that once characterized Burkean conservatism: weighing the desirable against the possible, the universal against the particular, the individual against the community. In What’s Wrong with Rights?, Biggar provides today’s conservatives with a powerful diagnosis of the moral malaise that ails the modern West, and a clarion call to recover the intellectual disciplines and political practices of a common-good conservatism.

[racerx]

And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then pretending to help him up. This was not in accordance with any of the books. Jacob looked them all over to see.

[user]

This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his greatest delight. This was the whole secret of it. He believed in the good little boys they put in the Sunday-school books; he had every confidence in them. He longed to come across one of them alive, once; but he never did. They all died before his time, maybe. Whenever he read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his relatives and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half of stuff in them. He was always headed off in this way. He never could see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the last chapter.

[JustGamerS]

He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go to sea as a cabin-boy. He called on a ship captain and made his application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the words. "To Jacob Blivens, from his affectionate teacher." But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and he said, "Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he know how to wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him." This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to Jacob in all his life. A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship captains, and open the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift - it never had in any book that ever he had read. He could hardly believe his senses. [links]

[BlackEye]

But somehow nothing ever went right with this good little boy; nothing ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys in the books. They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere; and it all happened just the other way. When he found Jim Blake stealing apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy who fell out of a neighbor's apple-tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out of the tree too, but he fell on him, and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't hurt at all. Jacob couldn't understand that. There wasn't anything in the books like it.

[rainerfox]

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[turnpike]

Biden’s betrayal of all those who have fought, died or have been gravely wounded in Afghanistan has been compounded by him leaving America’s allies — primarily the British military — high and dry. (Afghans near the military airport in Kabul)

[Huffmankatie]

Over the past week, I’ve spoken to Americans from all walks of life and political affiliations, including a former marine who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, and an ex-New York fireman who took part in the Twin Towers rescue and lost two close friends on 9/11. more

[cbrendanjarvisi]

The Taliban is now dictating terms. American citizens stranded in Afghanistan can’t even get through to the airport.

[lanpeck5]

A retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, Jackson was appointed to the White House medical unit by George W. Bush and served as official physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

[wizzard0]

Published: 22:05 BST, 23 August 2021 | Updated: 09:01 BST, 24 August 2021

[cheggers]

Littlejohn considers and criticizes the value theory that underlies epistemic consequentialism. He first casts doubt on veritism, the view according to which accuracy and only accuracy is the final epistemic good. One might think that the consequentialist is unscathed by this: simply put in something else as the epistemic good. But Littlejohn argues that this fails, too. For whatever it is that the consequentialist says is the epistemic good, she cannot make sense of why such a good should be promoted.

[devnull791101]

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[foxstrike]

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