Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
Arbitrary, as in, the things you think are important aren't the same as the things other people think are important. The things you think are rights are just the things you think are rights, they aren't actually rights in the sense that they aren't behaviors allowed by people with more power than you.
|
In the sense that the right to life is only a right when others let you live. In the sense that all moral judgments are equally arbitrary. Sure. I'm okay with residing within that miles-wide definition of 'arbitrary'.
Quote:
|
If you want to distill it down, my position is that "rights" are determined by the folks with the power to give and take them, and that all this high minded talk of a person's "right" to decide specific things about his/her property doesn't amount to a whole lot more than pissing in the wind.
|
Why are you even slightly passionate about your own position, then? Sounds like the wind's blowing both ways in your world.
Quote:
|
All I have pointed out is that in the past, certain landlords have shown an inability to perform their jobs as landlords to the satisfaction of their fellow citizens, and that, in fact, they failed so miserably that the ensuing public outcry resulted in a significant reduction in the things they could do in their capacity as landlords. I neither endorsed nor denounced what happened.
|
The hell you didn't. Terms like 'failed' and 'inability' are pretty obviously loaded. If you wanted to pretend neutrality about the issue, "certain landlords didn't satisfy the general public with their actions" would've shrouded your obvious endorsement at least a little better. 'Failed' and 'inability' clearly carry the implication that a job was not done
as it should have been done.
Quote:
|
I don't think that they're rights in a moral sense, if that's what you're asking.
|
Did you really imagine that I
wasn't talking about rights in the moral sense? The legal sense is pretty clear-cut. There's not much to debate there.
Quote:
|
Let the complete lack of any mention by me that *mean people should have their stuff taken from them for being mean* anywhere in this thread by the counterexample then.
|
Well, you'd be about as likely to phrase it that way as a neutral observer using "failed miserably". But is there some other unifying principle besides 'they're being mean to prospective tenants'? What separates this case from punishing meanness in general?