I had the impression that a discussion of specific rights wasn't really what people were interested in. It's been a long day, though. If you could direct me to the appropriate page, I'll re-re-read.
In an nutshell:
The first question in the thread was “do animals have rights?” and was based on a book excerpt written by Murray Rothbard entitled, “The “Rights” of Animals”.
The first paragraph was:
IT HAS LATELY BECOME a growing fashion to extend the concept of rights from human beings to animals, and to assert that since animals have the full rights of humans, it is therefore impermissible—i.e., that no man has the right—to kill or eat them.
He was referring to the full natural rights of Man, and His conclusion was, no, they don’t.
I then said that I also thought they did not have any Rights and went on to explain what I meant by Rights as held by Man and applied to Lions (I could have used bunnies, but they are not as dramatic and just look stupid when fighting each other:-)).
I then stated that aside from spiritual, metaphysical, and religious reason, is there any solid basis for claiming that animals do have rights so such 'rights' would not be left to the whim of the powerful.
I then proposed that, “"The natural Rights of Man is the center of a political philosophy concerning the relationship between the Individual and the state, and extends to how individuals relate to each other. It is based on negative Rights. Since there seems no logical way of recognizing such negative Rights in animals, perhaps what we need to do is develop a political philosophy concerning the relationship between Man and animal. Such a relationship would probably have to be based on what is referred to as positive rights -- something more one way and directed toward a lesser living being. Determining what those positive rights may be will probably be heavily dependent on ethical considerations, no?"
It seems to be virgin territory. Care to take a shot at it?
Yours,
Issodhos
