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isthatmycow wrote:

Albatross wrote:So which is it to be - Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream...' speech, or the Declaration of Independence?

They are two completely different things. Things which relate to America. America is not the world.

Not everyone has those rights. So no, not everyone is equal.

But people should be equal in the sense of human dignity and liberty. why should someone from asia have less rights than some one from afrcie? why should some from Europe have more rights and freedom than someone from africa? the question here, is not whether or not, we are equal in life, (wealth, health, wisdom, properity, etc.) cuase the ansewr is painfully obvious, no in those categories we are not. But in race, religion, freedom of speech, assembly, press, human dignity we all should be given the same amount of treatment, same amount of rights and freedoms, do people always have, of course not. but the point is, they should.

No. . . the right to those things you mentioned(same treatment, same rights) are generally gotten(is this a word?) by fighting for them(American Revolution, English Civil War,-to a lesser extent the magna carta, French Revolution) or have had their systems of rights set up by countries with those rights established(several african nations that were under colonial control), people who are not willing to fight for those rights do not deserve them. An example is the civil rights movement in the US, the african americans didn't get rights until they "fought" to get them and yes it took time but they fought and they got their rights.
A more personal and closer example is people who addicted to harmful drugs(immediately harmful, not something like cigarettes) should lose some rights as a human since they have lowered themselves as a human.
In a situation where people don't fight for their rights as people they deserved to be conquered and ruled

isthatmycow wrote:But people should be equal in the sense of human dignity and liberty.

Yes, but the question was not should all humans be equal, was it?

isthatmycow wrote:But in race, religion, freedom of speech, assembly, press, human dignity we all should be given the same amount of treatment, same amount of rights and freedoms, do people always have, of course not. but the point is, they should.

Says who? Children don't have exactly the same rights as adults - rightly so. And that's just for starters. Absolute freedom of the Press? Never gonna happen, sorry. Absolute freedom of the press in its end state would allow for hard-core child porn to be shown on the morning news.

Absolute freedom of anything is a myth. Absolutely equal rights is another one. I'm guessing you're a teenager.


No offence.

Huffy wrote:No. . . the right to those things you mentioned(same treatment, same rights) are generally gotten(is this a word?) by fighting for them(American Revolution, English Civil War,-to a lesser extent the magna carta, French Revolution) or have had their systems of rights set up by countries with those rights established(several african nations that were under colonial control), people who are not willing to fight for those rights do not deserve them. An example is the civil rights movement in the US, the african americans didn't get rights until they "fought" to get them and yes it took time but they fought and they got their rights.

So African-Americans deserved to be legally treated as 3/5 of a human being until they fought for equality? By your reasoning, they also deserved bondage. Classy!

Huffy wrote:A more personal and closer example is people who addicted to harmful drugs(immediately harmful, not something like cigarettes) should lose some rights as a human since they have lowered themselves as a human.

In your opinion. You could substitute 'addiction to harmful drugs' for 'homosexuality' or 'abortion', and quite easily look shockingly bigoted here.

Huffy wrote:In a situation where people don't fight for their rights as people they deserved to be conquered and ruled

Again...

Huffy wrote:
No. . . the right to those things you mentioned(same treatment, same rights) are generally gotten(is this a word?) by fighting for them(American Revolution, English Civil War,-to a lesser extent the magna carta, French Revolution) or have had their systems of rights set up by countries with those rights established(several african nations that were under colonial control), people who are not willing to fight for those rights do not deserve them. An example is the civil rights movement in the US, the african americans didn't get rights until they "fought" to get them and yes it took time but they fought and they got their rights.

You're conflating ability with righteousness. Rights are not real things, and so cannot be said to be objective. They are purely subjective concepts which effectively serve to anchor the beliefs of a group of people. The examples you cited are, at the most basic level, instances in which one group of people believed that they were entitled to certain rights, while another group of people took the opposite stance. This divergence of belief lead to conflict, which then forced one side to acquiesce. The cessation of hostility did not determine which side was right or deserving, it merely determined which side had the power to enforce its point of view.

Huffy wrote:
A more personal and closer example is people who addicted to harmful drugs(immediately harmful, not something like cigarettes) should lose some rights as a human since they have lowered themselves as a human.

You're assuming a hierarchy, which cannot exist objectively.

dogma wrote:I think the central issue is that it would be nearly impossible to come up with a single quantitative measure of individual quality such that we can determine the actual significance of potential outliers.

Yeah, this. There are people who are absolute geniuses in their technical fields that shouldn't be allowed to cross the road unsupervised.

We are not equal, but human qualities are so diverse and so subjective that it'd be impossible to ever determine who's better than who.


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Huffy wrote:No. . . the right to those things you mentioned(same treatment, same rights) are generally gotten(is this a word?) by fighting for them(American Revolution, English Civil War,-to a lesser extent the magna carta, French Revolution) or have had their systems of rights set up by countries with those rights established(several african nations that were under colonial control), people who are not willing to fight for those rights do not deserve them.

Your theory has serious problems when referenced to reality. The magna carta is not an example of the people demanding rights, it was demanded by barons and is almost entirely based around what rights they are guaranteed - habeas corpus is more or less and afterthought in the document. It did play an important role in the evolution of Britain into a constitutional monarchy, over generations of steady reform.

The French revolution didn't do a lot for the freedoms of its people. It's writing were hugely influential in US freedom, but in France they basically led to The Terror, which made the latter days of the monarchy look delightful in comparison. After that lengthy period of brutality they ended up with Napoleon as dictator - who used the new powers of the state to conscript a vast portion of the population to go off conquering Europe, bankrupting France and getting a lot of its citizens killed. Not a lot of freedom won there. Following Napoleon's defeat there was monarchy under the control of the wealthiest bourgeoisie, then another shortlived Republic, then another Napoleon dictatorship (his brother's kid). The Republic was finally established, but only when the dictatorship collapsed after defeat to Prussia in 1870, nothing particularly triumphant there. That generally disfunctional government survived until defeat by the Nazis, and the modern French state only developed after liberation by the Allies.

Actual instances of violent revolution producing functioning governments are extremely rare. The US revolution shouldn't be seen as the standard for the progression of rights, but as the remarkable piece of good fortune it really was. Guys like Washington are rare, really rare, guys like Robespierre are common, really common.

The rest of your post follows on from the misunderstanding I've demonstrated above. What determines rights isn't how much we've fought for them, but how much circumstance - particularly the power granted by economic position and education - allows us to demand rights. There's also a lot of dumb luck involved. Look at Russian history, there is an immensely long history of fighting and sacrifice for rights, and even now they're still getting screwed.

Define "equal". If you mean possessing the same abilities, physically and/or mentally, then of course not. Some are smarter, some are strnger, some are (by our cultural norms) considered more attractive.
If you mean having the same inalienable rights, then yes, yes they are.

don_mondo wrote:Define "equal". If you mean possessing the same abilities, physically and/or mentally, then of course not. Some are smarter, some are strnger, some are (by our cultural norms) considered more attractive.
If you mean having the same inalienable rights, then yes, yes they are.

Did you read the thread? Because the ideas you mention have been given a dozen or more times, and then expanded again and again. In summary, yes people have varying abilities but it's all but impossible to objectively measure abilities. And yes, people like to talk about equal rights but it's a big world and most people simply don't have the rights we take for granted.

I get the impression that four pages into this that no clear definition of equal has yet been agreed upon. If no one agrees on its meaning, how can the question even be asked, let alone answered? Might as well ask if all humans are dringbelled schizzlestax and let everyone read into it what they want and propose an answer.

Actually, I suppose since the OP wanted an answer he should have given us his working definition and let us determine using that criteria how to answer the question. So, bad OP, bad!

Ahtman wrote:Might as well ask if all humans are dringbelled schizzlestax

Of course they are. Fascist.

I agree that we need a clear definition of equal to properly answer the question, though I'll point out that properly answering the question on an internet forum is an ambitious plan.

sebster wrote:

Ahtman wrote:Might as well ask if all humans are dringbelled schizzlestax

Of course they are. Fascist.

I agree that we need a clear definition of equal to properly answer the question, though I'll point out that properly answering the question on an internet forum is an ambitious plan.

That is assuming that we are democratic in determining the definition. If OP were to state what he means (this is for his project after all) then we could formulate a thesis based on the definition. This doesn't mean it is something would would all agree to, but whether it works within the confines of this project.

The OT seems awfully friendly today.

We could also work backwards, and address well known definitions. I am pretty sure most of that has been covered at this point, but it wouldn't hurt to summarize the thread so far. I'll see what I can gather, 3 pages is a substantial amount of input.

sebster wrote:

Ahtman wrote:Might as well ask if all humans are dringbelled schizzlestax

Of course they are. Fascist.

Hey now! Fascism is a perfectly fine choice, as long as you have a leader that knows what they're doing and will not let the power go to their head.

If all humans are equal, isn't a government based on one human as likely to be good as one based on all people?

Although my post began in farce, I am interested to see what logic can be applied to this question.

Well since someone brought up Fascist its time for a further comment from Frazzled to put the whole issue in perspective.

Ahtman wrote:That is assuming that we are democratic in determining the definition. If OP were to state what he means (this is for his project after all) then we could formulate a thesis based on the definition. This doesn't mean it is something would would all agree to, but whether it works within the confines of this project.

I wasn't saying anything about who'd pick the definition, I was just saying that definition or no we probably won't get a focussed answer whether we have one or not because this is the internet.


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Gitzbitah wrote:Hey now! Fascism is a perfectly fine choice, as long as you have a leader that knows what they're doing and will not let the power go to their head.

If all humans are equal, isn't a government based on one human as likely to be good as one based on all people?

Although my post began in farce, I am interested to see what logic can be applied to this question.

You seem to be using fascism when you mean dictatorship. Facism is a lot of things and is generally fairly hard to define, but generally has ultra-nationalism and individual sacrifice for the state among its message.

In terms of letting elites run government, I'd point out government is led by just a few in representative democracy. They're just elected by the people, to make sure the people in power have our general interest in mind. While the track record of elections in picking the most capable leaders isn't perfect, the other things we've tried suck harder and tend to get more people killed.


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Frazzled wrote:Well since someone brought up Fascist its time for a further comment from Frazzled to put the whole issue in perspective.

Ah, so you're saying fascism wasn't a response to communism, but a response to Godzillism? Interesting.

Awesome pic by the way.

There is a method to my madness; I did not give a definition because I felt that it was better to leave the debate open to interpretation. The definition of 'equals' is very much a matter of opinion, and I was interested to see them argued as equals in some ways (in the eyes of the law), and most certainly not in others (physically, thought patterns).

The idea is to encourage people to focus people on the values of modern society, comparing humans as equals through their ability to fulfill these values (Bravery, honesty, dedication, faith, wonder, enough corny garbage.

So now I pose the question; How can we be created equals if we each posess a different set of moral values?

Also, from the way I post, how old do you think I am? (A bit unrelated, perhaps just write a number below your arguments for the focus question. Think of it as a social experiment.)

I think you need to define the term 'created', in this context.
It is potentially problematic.


As you said you were given this as a debate question, one would naturally assume you are in some form of full-time education - it seems a fairly elementary topic, a topic which does not require much in the way of specialist knowledge, so I would guess that you're in high-school. That isn't a value judgement on your posts - they are coherent and thoughtful, if possesed of a little 'naivete'. Which is understandable.

Warboss Gutrip wrote:How can we be created equals if we each posess a different set of moral values?

We still don't know what 'equal' means (outside of a mathematical sense) and now we have to define 'morals' and 'values', either in general or specific?

Are all humans created equal?

Let me share the wisdom from a t-shirt I got at the DMZ gift shop: All men are not created equal. Only the finest become Marines.

Carry on.

Existence predates essence. Even if everyone is created equal, then the guy born in an isolated mountain village with no knowledge of the next valley will still end up with very different morals, knowledge and overall achievement than the person born in the middle of a vibrant cultural center to active, wealthy parents.

Moral values are not created, they are taught by our experiences, our friends and our family.

Warboss Gutrip wrote:The definition of 'equals' is very much a matter of opinion, and I was interested to see them argued as equals in some ways (in the eyes of the law), and most certainly not in others (physically, thought patterns).

Saying someone is equal in the eyes of the law, or not equal in those senses which you referenced, simply recontextualizes the uncertain term. That can help us arrive at a colloquial definition by mass demarcation, but it doesn't directly explain what equal means. In philosophy there are subtle, but important differences between words like 'equal' and 'identical', or even 'equal' and 'equivalent'.

Two good ideas to keep in your mind when considering philosophy are:
1: If you think its obvious, then it most definitely is not.
2: Synonymous does not mean "the same."

Okay, okay, okay, okay, What about this. Here we go, the Cow's Charter of Human rights:

1. All people are born equal to the law, no one person shall be treated better or worse becaues of age, sex, Race, Ethnicity, Religion, or Creed of any sort.

2. All people have the right to freedom of expression so long his freedom does no physical/mental harm to another, and is kept within resaonable decency to basic public access (so yeah, you gotta be 18 to watch porn, smoke, etc.).

3. The above clause also includes freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, adn redress grievences (petition).

4. The law is meant to seve Justice to it's offenders, not to oppress the people.

Alright, can we agree that all people should and I repeat should have these rights?

does no mental harm? Anyone who agrees with me causes me mental harm, the meanies!

We're not even equal in the eyes of the law though. I kill someone, I'm off to jail, because i'm mentally 'all there'. Say if... Frazzled killed someone, he'd be off to the looney bin! That's discrimination! I'd want to go to the looney bin too!

Same crime, different punishment, therefore we're not equal in the eyes of the law.

isthatmycow wrote:Okay, okay, okay, okay, What about this. Here we go, the Cow's Charter of Human rights:

1. All people are born equal to the law, no one person shall be treated better or worse becaues of age, sex, Race, Ethnicity, Religion, or Creed of any sort.


2. All people have the right to freedom of expression so long his freedom does no physical/mental harm to another, and is kept within resaonable decency to basic public access (so yeah, you gotta be 18 to watch porn, smoke, etc.).

You're probably thinking I'm nit-picking you just for fun at this point, but your second law pretty much negates the first. Plus, your idea of 'reasonable decency' seems to be based around American standards - European Standards are very different (16 for sex, smoking - 18 for Alcohol etc.). There's a certain amount of prejudice implicit in your charter, in that you consider American standards as being the best, or most appropriate. America is far from being an ideal society, even if it is closer than many.

bsohi wrote:We're not even equal in the eyes of the law though. I kill someone, I'm off to jail, because i'm mentally 'all there'. Say if... Frazzled killed someone, he'd be off to the looney bin! That's discrimination! I'd want to go to the looney bin too!

Same crime, different punishment, therefore we're not equal in the eyes of the law.

You murdered a dude with a full understanding of what you were doing. Fraz, being a loon, committed a murder with little understanding of what he was doing. So you committed a crime, whereas Fraz is just a poor, troubled soul badly in need of therapy.

The point is that the crime is different when a person is as crazy as Fraz, so the punishment should be very different.

I work on construction vessels in various parts of the worlkd, building offshore oilfields. Got asked this question by an engineer who also happened to be a midget. Told him, "You look at a thalydymide baby and tell me we were all created equal."

Yeah, I didnt read the thread. Just stuck my cents in to answeer OP's question.

sebster wrote:

bsohi wrote:We're not even equal in the eyes of the law though. I kill someone, I'm off to jail, because i'm mentally 'all there'. Say if... Frazzled killed someone, he'd be off to the looney bin! That's discrimination! I'd want to go to the looney bin too!

Same crime, different punishment, therefore we're not equal in the eyes of the law.

You murdered a dude with a full understanding of what you were doing. Fraz, being a loon, committed a murder with little understanding of what he was doing. So you committed a crime, whereas Fraz is just a poor, troubled soul badly in need of therapy.

The point is that the crime is different when a person is as crazy as Fraz, so the punishment should be very different.

You missed the part about Frazzled knowing how to bury...preishable...items in the swamp/bayou whereas the other guy doesn't. Just sayin'

Frazzled wrote:You missed the part about Frazzled knowing how to bury...preishable...items in the swamp/bayou whereas the other guy doesn't. Just sayin'

We will never be truly equal in the eyes of the law until we all have our own bayou for burying dead hookers.

I was thinking more along the lines of people who mistakenly wandered onto my lawn, but whatever floats your boat.

Frazzled, the more I read of you, the more it seems you have clip art for every occasion.

The honor, is to serve.