Talk:Natural rights and legal rights

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The lede cites the fringe economist Murray Rothbard for the ridiculous statement that natural law emerged as an alternative to the "divine right of kings" during the Enlightenment. Actually the reverse is true: During the 17th century, the "divine right of kings" emerged to challenge traditional natural-law limitations on royal power. King James I of England was sensible enough to limit himself to argumentation on the subject, whereas his son Charles I lost his head, so to speak.--Other Choices (talk) 01:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think this is what Rothbard had in mind, but if you distinguish medieval natural law from modern natural rights, then natural rights theory emerged to combat the divine right of kings, which in term emerged as an attack on medieval natural law. Still, I don't know that you can build the article around the distinction between natural law and natural rights, since there isn't a scholarly consensus as to whether that distinction is or is not a real one. I don't know how to handle this. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 02:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Both the divine rights of kings and the scientific method of natural law were blessed by the pope. Our Founding Fathers utilized the latter process to divorce us out from a tyrant. In other words, by traditional legal precedence, one step our Founders could have taken was to grab the strongest, smartest American gentleman and then crowned him as a king. Then, also by tradition, a war would have been fought to determine history. But our Founders overturned that old world order of doing business by replacing it with a whole new world - establishing a new order with a scientific conclusion called a natural law.

According to my professor which is written in my notes, a natural right literally reduced on the physical level to the extent of the soul. There existed no solid foundation for the cognitive sciences during the time of the American Enlightenment, but mostly the physical sciences. Immanuel Kant, the father of epistemology was a peer figure of the French Revolution while living at the same time as our Founders.

Through John Locke's two treatises, our natural rights rose to challenge a king who was proclaiming to possess absolute power.

A proclamation is different from a declaration. Example: Proclamation of 1763 versus Declaration of 1776. A proclamation is made by someone who possesses God's authority; meanwhile, our founders declared a new order of a Natural Law while submissive to the authority of God.

So that is the significance of an unalienable natural right. Such a right supersedes even a king proclaming himself to possess absolute power. This trick by the king to gain greater power for himself is all based on Roman's chapter 8. Sort of like wishing for three more wishes every third wish. Unfortunately, this act by the kind of proclaiming himself to possess absolute power looked very similar to when the Roman Emperors were proclaiming themselves to be living gods.

Our Bill of Rights should be considered our Proclaimed Rights and a whole separate document from the rest of the outlining laws instituting the new government within the U.S. Constitution, the latter dealing more specifically with a necessary tyranny or, as it was best put romantically, a "more perfect Union."Uncle Emanuel Watkins (talk) 17:45, 7 July 2014 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins[reply]

All I can say is that your professor's view is not accepted enough by other scholars to satisfy Wikipedia's neutrality guideline. RJC ^Talk_Contribs 11:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. This is why today's modern school system needs scrapping. Our best schools today are Old World as they existed prior to the creation of a new nation. In other words, our Founders didn't take the strongest and smartest among them to crown his head in order to benefit themselves. That was the prior way of ordaining a new nation. Instead, they stepped down from that high podium to sit of, by, and for the people. Right? Rights have no power pertaining to rights in and of themselves. Rights are not the glorious end, but a means created in questioning the proper flow of authority. The ultimate power went to Christ primarily and this was never in dispute. Beneath Him, power either went through Sir Robert Filmer's divine right of kings or through John Locke's natural rights of the people.

75.255.97.72 (talk) 20:17, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins[reply]

If someone could assist with this, thank you. On the Samuel Adams article it says Adams, through his writings, was among the first to claim that citizens had 'natural rights'. Yet no mention of Adams exists, at least on a quick read-through, in this article. Does someone have a good reference on Adams' involvement in the evolution of the term and concept 'natural rights'? Thanks. Randy Kryn 22:27 23 January, 2015 (UTC)

Just because Samuel Adams said that citizens have natural rights doesn't mean that he understood what a natural right is. There exists no such 'right' as a legal one. Indeed, as we can see by how our own government works today, there isn't a more perfect lie than the law. The *two party system divides itself against the people. A two party Congress then legislates this lie. Next, the new law can then be administered by the president in a total opposite direction it was intended, and / or the lie can be further adjudicated by the supreme court in judgement in the total opposite direction it was intended. In the end, there is nothing any more deceitful than the law.

A natural right was provided to us by the wretches which Christ allowed into his ministry. In order to all them to become part of it, Christ had to intervene with the law in the disciples.

• Jesus did not flee from what people said, but from people who would divide themselves against Him.

75.255.97.72 (talk) 20:06, 26 September 2016 (UTC)Uncle Emanuel Watkins[reply]

I don't understand how people try to change the meaning of a word because they disport who they are and feel superior than someone whom is modest and keep their credentials from the public. I am also a graduate with honors as well, but I am not plastering it all over the internet due to a lack of an alter ego that some individuals portrait therefore, people should come to their senses refrain from displaying their alter ego and stop rewriting the meaning of a word to fit a specific agenda or selfish reasons. Remember alter ego and pride will not get anyone anywhere.

I reverted the last edit and I cited the source for everyone to see, but some individuals have blinders on and cannot see. I am not trying to insult anyone I just say it how I see it. I don't believe in sugar coating, beating around the bushes, or being political correct.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AttentiontoDetails (talk • contribs) 13:51, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what you're on about with regard to ego and credentials above as nobody's said anything about that here, but as regards your recent edits: I reverted them primarily because they were made clearly lacking attention to detail (pun intended), as you chopped off most of a sentence and then inserted a different stand-alone sentence after the stump of a beginning of the old one. On top of that, which you've now fixed in your newer version of that edit, it's not at all clear what you're trying to say or what your objection to the old wording is, and why your new wording is supposed to be better. It sounds like your main thrust is maybe to mention that there are different bases for natural law; if that's so, then that belongs on the natural law article, not here. Some modified version of that note could maybe belong here somewhere in a place that mentions the relationships between natural rights and natural law, but not in the lede, where we say what the topic of natural rights is even about. (It would also be inappropriate for the lede in the article on natural law, because what you wrote is not a definition of the topic of natural law, just an incidental fact about that topic). Furthermore, in your latest edit as it stood before I just reverted it, you say that natural rights are natural law, which is blatantly false. Natural rights might be grounded in natural law (which in turn might be grounded in one of those three ways your edits mention), but natural rights are not defined as those three bases for natural law, and even trying to say that is simply incoherent; it's like saying "French fries are Russet, Idaho, or red"; yeah, french fries are made from potatoes, and those are three kinds of potatoes, but french fries are not identical to those three varieties of potato, and the sentence trying to declare them such barely even makes sense to read. --Pfhorrest (talk) 17:38, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This claim rests on an obscure book: Rights by Peter Jone 1993. Reviewed by 2 people on Amazon. How does it support the statement that some people see human rights and natural rights as the same thing? Has anyone actually read it? 68.134.72.214 (talk) 19:20, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The section of the article concerning Locke contains lines like:

His ideas then were developed into the movements for freedom from the British creating our government. However, his implied thought of freedom for all is applied most heavily in our culture today.

Being non-American and reading about 'our culture' was very confusing until I realised the last author of this section was obviously assuming an exclusively US American readership. Not all of the planet's English speakers are concentrated in the USA, so this section needs to be revised to account for the fact that not all readers of this article share the same culture.

I wish to note that this is a stupid mistake and quite nicely illustrates the arguments made by scholars such as Charles W. Mills that universal human rights are inherently racist. It should go without saying that Wikipedia editors should not assume a universal culture amongst their readers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.30.122.78 (talk) 01:41, 8 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that there is a significant distinction between what is Natural Law and what are Natural Rights. It appears to me that there is some consensus that Natural Rights are normally defined as rights which are unalienable. That such rights include (i) the right to life (ii) liberty (iii) the pursuit of estate [property] They also include for Americans the Right to the pursuit of happiness.

Natural Law appears to me to be a much broader definition and not specific to unalienable rights. I therefore suggest an edit to the Natural Rights section [and possibly the Natural Law section] to make this distinction much clearer such that readers will not use the terms Natural Law and Natural Rights interchangeably. Mfgoren (talk) 17:44, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a global encyclopaedia. Your comment seems to be largely an American perspective. 95% of the world's people are not American. HiLo48 (talk) 23:17, 18 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A right can be natural and alienable (e.g., property rights acquired in a way consistent with natural law), or inalienable but not natural (e.g., the privileges of a hereditary title). —Tamfang (talk) 05:40, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]