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part of my woke agenda is actually to obsolesce the language of "rights", as I believe it is a flawed notion. instead, I advocate for equality and freedom.
equality and freedom
..aka rights
but rights are a fiction. we can actually observe equality and freedom.
Show me an atom of equality, or a molecule of freedom. They don't exist in the universe. Just like rights, they are a lie made true by our common belief in them.
The idea of Rights is embedded in society. That embedding has a lot of value. It stops people riding roughshod over them.
you can observe equality. you can see whether people are treated equally.
rights are routinely ignored or revoked.
so you can observe the freedom in same sex marriages, but you can't observe the right to be in a same sex marriage? I don't follow, it's the same thing.
you can see whether someone is free, but i can't see a right.
If it's a right encoded in law, you can see it written down in the text of the relevant law. Freedom is no less abstract than rights.
freedom can be observed. laws don't protect rights anyway.
You can observe someone exercising their freedom exactly as much as you can observe someone exercising their rights. What you can't see is a freedom written down, unless it's in the form of legal rights. Laws don't protect freedoms any more than they protect rights. You like the word freedom, you don't like the word right. They're both abstract concepts.
I agree with the idea that rights are weird. The history of rights is rooted in law. A right is enforced by a state or similar entity. Freedom can exist outside of institutional power but rights historically require it.
That said, most people who advocate for rights are not much concerned about who will enforce those rights. It's often used more as a synonym for freedom. As with all social constructs, there is no material reality behind it