I honestly feel like B isn’t really logical. In reality, practically, governments simply do grant rights. You can say you’ve always had a right to a thing, but if you don’t in practice, that seems like a hollow claim.
We didn’t have any natural right to anything as we were hunter gatherers fighting for survival; we collectively decided some things should be rights and enshrined those in law. Our right to self governance was hard won and the result of our choice… we have the power to establish and maintain rights, they aren’t handed down to us by some mysterious force.
This, to me, is more powerful and liberating than the idea we are simply “discovering” some innate right; the latter I think, similar to religiousness, almost definitionally just cedes logical argument in favor of a claim that something just divinely or naturally exists. You can’t make an argument a right should exist if you’re arguing it already does, but it’s totally unrecognized by anyone.
This ultimately is just claiming a thing to be true and hoping you have enough legitimacy for it to be viewed as such; after all, the divine right of kings to rule was exactly the same, a claimed right that simply exists as the natural order of things.
I’m uneasy accepting paradigms that relinquish logical argument and discussion in favor of pleas to a natural order… the latter can be turned against you just as easily as for you, in fact I’d argue they do exactly that more often. The former needs a logical consistency and leaves room for convincing others we should, prescriptively, do a thing rather than claiming it simply exists, descriptively. It directly puts power in our hands to expand rights.
With natural/divine rights, if two groups disagree on a right, there’s really no point that can be argued, they simply both believe they have a natural or divine claim to being correct. With granted rights, you have to argue your case on why it should be granted, and there’s a point of peaceful resolution to the disagreement.
I honestly feel like B isn’t really logical. In reality, practically, governments simply do grant rights. You can say you’ve always had a right to a thing, but if you don’t in practice, that seems like a hollow claim.
We didn’t have any natural right to anything as we were hunter gatherers fighting for survival; we collectively decided some things should be rights and enshrined those in law. Our right to self governance was hard won and the result of our choice… we have the power to establish and maintain rights, they aren’t handed down to us by some mysterious force.
This, to me, is more powerful and liberating than the idea we are simply “discovering” some innate right; the latter I think, similar to religiousness, almost definitionally just cedes logical argument in favor of a claim that something just divinely or naturally exists. You can’t make an argument a right should exist if you’re arguing it already does, but it’s totally unrecognized by anyone.
This ultimately is just claiming a thing to be true and hoping you have enough legitimacy for it to be viewed as such; after all, the divine right of kings to rule was exactly the same, a claimed right that simply exists as the natural order of things.
I’m uneasy accepting paradigms that relinquish logical argument and discussion in favor of pleas to a natural order… the latter can be turned against you just as easily as for you, in fact I’d argue they do exactly that more often. The former needs a logical consistency and leaves room for convincing others we should, prescriptively, do a thing rather than claiming it simply exists, descriptively. It directly puts power in our hands to expand rights.
With natural/divine rights, if two groups disagree on a right, there’s really no point that can be argued, they simply both believe they have a natural or divine claim to being correct. With granted rights, you have to argue your case on why it should be granted, and there’s a point of peaceful resolution to the disagreement.