this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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all I hear is you think humans have a right to own slaves
That's a weird assumption when I said it was good that it was abolished. Humans shouldn't have the right to own slaves is my belief. (But they did have that right at the time legally speaking). Or another way to put it, is that I don't think humans have the moral right to own slaves, even if they did have the legal right. This was a response to someone else telling me that banning slavery was an authoritarian decision. I just wanted to get clarification and try to understand it better.
when you say banning slavery took away people's rights, that means you Believe owning humans is a right.
They legally had that right at the time. I don't think they should have had that right, or that they morally have that right. I think we're talking about 2 different meanings of the term "right". In one sense (legally), they had the right, as in it was codified into law. That's not a belief as much as a fact. The part which concerns my belief is whether I think they should have had the right or if they have the moral right, which I don't. I hope that makes sense.
if you don't believe they had the right to own slaves, then they had no rights taken away, if your saying they did have rights taken away then you are saying they had a right to own slaves.
Do you agree that someone can theoretically have a legal right to do something bad (as in, be legally allowed to do it) without that being a good or moral right for them to have?
I think you're only believing "right" to mean one thing and one thing only, when I'm using it in a sense where legality and morality don't necessarily coincide (even if they do in other contexts, conditionally).
So when I say they had the legal right to own slaves, and that right was taken away from them, that isn't a matter of opinion/belief because that's factually what happened, but that doesn't mean that I think they had the right morally speaking, which is a different concept.
I hope this makes sense.
any authority has no incentive to make laws that are moral, only to make laws that maintain the system. rights are not given to you by an authority they are something you have as a person and cannot be taken away only violated.