Rights and Obligations

Rights and obligations are accurately described as sujbjective choices and not just external ones.

Reconceive two basic terms of moral and political phi;losophy so as to more accurately describe their subject matters and also that they complement one another rather than are in opposition to one another. These two terms are “right” and “obligation”.

A right is usually regarded as a permission to do something, such as engage  in free speech or petition grievances against the government, these rights considered by Jefferson as unalienable, which means inherent in being a human being. A right can be redefined as the opposite: the capacity not to do something even if a person is enabled to do  so. A person does not have to engage in protest or go on demonstrations even if the person has the freedom to do so. Requiring demonstrations reduces free speech to pagents organized in North Korea. A person need not vote if one does not care to, even if in Australia people are required to show up to show they are there to vote but can sign that they do not care to vote even for an independent or a write-in party. The goal is attendance to the event rather than casting a vote. Medical forms allow for people to indicate religion or ethnicity so as, I suppose, to get the proper clergyman assigned or to allow the collection of demographic data, but those checkoffs are regarded as voluntary lest the assignment of one or another is considered a status that places a person with some discriminatory purpose. In general, the idea of right includes the idea of being indifferent to an exercise of the right, a person allowed to be unpolitical even with regard to political matters.

Read More