Talk:Human rights

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Human? Rights?

You mean Human has rights? Susan^{talk to me} 00:57, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Who's responsible for this most hideous, despicable, heinous act? Locke ^{Always Watching......} 01:02, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Propose move category to "Ames Rights."-αmεσ (mission accomplished!) 01:24, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Proto-lawyers have no rights! Susan^{talk to me} 01:43, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Anyhow, all good lawyers are in bed by now - Alone unless their pussycat is with them. Susan^{talk to me} 01:49, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Your statement is purposely vague, but to answer all possibilities :-), girlfriend's asleep and cat is asleep (but wakes up whenever I open a bag) (UPDATE: cat licking herself... ooops, now asleep again). My LexisNexis account is currently my lover and friend.-αmεσ (mission accomplished!) 02:12, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

Ignorant as I am I've had to google that. Wonder if your gf knows you're unfaithful? I've saved this as a diff for future blackmail purposes. Susan^{talk to me} 02:22, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

OH, do I get more rights when I pass the bar :-) ? -αmεσ (mission accomplished!) 02:16, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

No. You have fewer. Susan^{talk to me} 02:22, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

S T U B

This seems to be a remarkably short article for what should surely be one of our preoccupations. (Not offering to do anything myself: just giving insight! - I learned from the master) fröhlich ^{"gay" and "happy"} 15:51, 14 January 2009 (EST)

Tom's new additions

Tom's political analysis is, from my perspective,a trifle slanted. We lefties tend to fight for equal pay for equal work or a fair day's pay for a fair day's work whereas those leaning to the right fight for the right to pay as little as they can get away with or the right to dismiss a worker and destroy his or her livelihood on a whim.

I don't want to get into a left/right edit war but I can't let this stay as it stands.

Any other opinions? Jack Hughes (talk) 15:15, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm non-partisan. But I kind of think everybody is slanted one way or the other, including me (towards the middle?). I have no problems if you'd like to doctor this up towards a left-leaning perspective. My general sense is, however, that your writing will be more powerful and effective if you appear to be neutral, and give both sides; since this is a left-leaning wiki, you're clearly in your right, so to speak, to make the left look right. Bigger issue is pictures; I have articles without pictures but it's hard to find good ones that bear on the subject. :) --Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 15:38, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Further, I encourage you to join me in beginning to think along the lines of a non-partisan. Think of the benefits: you can criticize BOTH left and right. It's can be fun. But intellectually I see it as more mature and sophisticated being non-partisan than being merely left (like I was after college) and right (like I was during my thirties when I got into Friedman and Ayn Rand). Now, I love thinkers such as Thomas Sowell (who although he's a right-leaning type, wrote a terrific non-partisan book called A Conflict of Visions in which he explains why left & right keep battling.) My thinking is: left-right battling will always be; there's no end to it; and if you'd like to take one side and slug away, then by all means, enjoy yourself, but it's a kind of fruitless pursuit. If either the left view was correct, or the right one was correct, then wouldn't one of the views have won out by now? --Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 15:44, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Tom, we all think we're slanted towards the middle. However your analysis of right wing politics as efficient and left wing politics as inefficient betrays your thinking. My union has never fought for equal pay per se, however it does fight for the right for all participants in the profit generation process to have a fair share of that profit. How about:-

Right wing thinkers tend to fight for the right to run business in an unregulated way. Left wing thinkers feel that society, which effectively means government, has a right to have a say in how things are run.

Generally agree with this wording, btw.--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 17:04, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

And leave it at that. No value judgement, no this is better than that. OK? Jack Hughes (talk) 15:54, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with your assessment of me as somehow right wing. Perhaps it is because your position is to the left that you see anybody from either the middle or the right as somehow being right wing? I don't think right wing politics is efficient, rather businesses run with a right-leaning orientation will be more efficient since rules and rewards tend to favor efficiency and maximization of scarce resources -- but have unfair outcomes according to liberals, and tend to be unequal (which is not such a good thing in my view overall). Societies in which the communist or socialist principle prevail tend to have much greater equality (seen by many as a positive good) but tend to be stagnant economically, since there are few incentives for people to create or invent. Capitalist systems tend to be future-oriented (but unhappy in the present); socialist ones are better in the present (but squander the future). There are pluses and minuses to each system. I favor neither.--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

When younger, I argued both the left position extensively; later, the right one; my sense is now that both views have merits and that what's important is not trying to make either position win (an impossibility long term, in my view, since an extreme tilting towards one orientation logically leads to its undoing) but rather to pick positives from both sides to help solve today's problems. For example, my solution to terrorism has some extremely left and extremely right positions in it, and benefits from being able to pick the best of both worlds. If you're thinking you're right because you're left (sorry, couldn't resist) then by all means, advocate your position, and perhaps you'll find lots of people here who will agree with your views. And if you'd like to doctor this article up to fit your worldview, I'm not one to nitpick, so be my guest. I'm saying your positions will be more powerful and convincing if you (appear to) take a neutral stance. Further, I think you know enough, at this point, to move up to the next level intellectually, to move from ideologue to thinker. Check out the first chapter or two of Sowell's A Conflict of Visions.--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like enough middle (which is the only right place to be) for that guy you're debating with. Sorry for interrupting your conversation. Ignore me. --Earthland (talk) 17:10, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Will do. ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:18, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I reckon most of the new content is a bit off topic. This should be about the human rights movement - e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights & its impact. Whether or not businesses are heavily regulated is rather removed from this - that's usually approached as an economic & social issue, not directly a human rights one. Human rights is much more focused on basic freedoms such as free speech, right to fair trial, right to life, & freedom from slavery. ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:18, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Maybe we should delete all the political stuff. Jack Hughes (talk) 17:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

It does rather seem to wandering off into an essay about the (possibly contentious) differences between left and right political views. Perhaps Thomas would like to write such an essay so that we can debate it?--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 18:27, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe some of the new stuff belongs better in essay space? I think the concept of rights extends practically everywhere, in many directions -- property rights, voting rights, claim rights, you name it -- politics invariably gets entangled in it, so it's hard to talk about it without touching on the political. If people here tend to lean to the left, then stuff I write (from a centrist point of view perhaps?) may appear biased. If interested, I urge people to check out my knols here -- it's all public domain so if you'd like to move any of it to essay space, be my guest:--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

• History of citizenship in the United States--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
• Common Sense II -- a terrorism prevention strategy which uses both ideas from left and right--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
• Mentally healthy mind This last one is the coolest & is attracting perhaps 100 readers a week; it's advice for humans in the spirit of positive psychology, with doses of rationalist philosophers like Spinoza.--Thomas Wright Sulcer (talk) 18:52, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Those things have to do with the general concept of "rights" at some level, but aren't about the specific concept of "human rights": those rights we are believed to be entitled to purely by virtue of being human. ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:16, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Wot Weaseloid said.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 19:22, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I used Universal Declaration of Human Rights Proxima Centauri (talk) 14:46, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

And? Evil fascist^{oh noez} 15:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)