Sometimes I want to scour my eyes

[novapsyche]

Laws tell us what we cannot do. Yes, most of the time they are attempting to protect us from others.

For example, the "right" of a slavemaster to own a slave was taken away by law to preserve the "right" of blacks to not be slaves.

DailyKos comment

Comments

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I can't believe we pay Senators for this!

[brendand.livejournal.com]

I honestly think we need a law that says that people must be forced to have an abortion if their IQ is below 80.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Personally, I believe in bodily integrity so much that I don't believe anyone has (or should have) the right to force a person to undergo any surgical procedure he or she does not or cannot consent to.

[brendand.livejournal.com]

First of all, I was exaggerating. Second of all, I'm still kidding. Thirdly, they're SO DUMB THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT AN ABORTION IS! :)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I still need to figure out your nuance. :)

[brendand.livejournal.com]

Given that it changes so frequently, I'm not surprised you're having difficulty.

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

This was actually a serious problem for a few decades, though. The conflict wasn't about the right of people to own other people in the first place, but the right of people to keep the property they already had. Since John Locke, property was seen as the basis of government legitimacy, so that was a big deal. At least according to my history teacher a couple semesters ago, it wasn't really resolved until the ideals of The Enlightenment were weakened, and people became comfortable with calling a thing wrong because it felt wrong.

The ideals of The Enlightenment are roughly my ideals, so I far prefer Frederick Douglass's approach of arguing the relative importance of conflicting rights to Thoreau and Emerson's "some things are just wrong" approach.