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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    And the most important grantor of respect and thereby dignity is one's own self. Another individuals moral principles are not part of my equation unless they have acted in a manner I admire. I still have to make the root cause of that action my own. Flip flopping to suit the moment is a rather curious way to show respect to anyone especially one's own self much less act with dignity. But then we live in a society that has murdered the emotion of esteem and respect to the point I have no esteem nor any respect for their undignified manner. .
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  • Posted by cksawyer 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Dignity seems more akin to respect and as such is to be earned (beyond basic respect for non-criminal human beings as such). I can appropriately offer or withhold it based on my judgment of you character and behavior.

    And I agree this is distinct concept from rights, which are inherent. Even though you can criminally fail to recognize them, no one can take them from me - only I can abdicate myself of my rights by acting criminally - or failing to take a stand in their defense.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Individual rights are mine and mine alone by virtue of my individual ability to think and reason. Even claiming natural rights is a defintiion I have made and are mine to use. Stopping by force the exercise of my natural, free, independent rights unless I have given that privilege over to the government. I don't allow anyone t semanticize my claim nor swallow the foolish idea they can give to me what I did not give to them. So it's all a question of how the definitions are changed to support an indefensible position and they also mean nothing to me I do not honor contrived definitions anymore than if they were stamped PC and came from the latest fictionary.

    I have individual and natural rights even if I am publicly barred from exercising them I am not barred from thinking them.

    Which brings us morals, values and finally ethics. You may vote for Hillary over Sanders I having ethics will vote for the Constitution over both Hillary, Sanders, Trump, your entire array and in voting against evil have upheld both my own rights but my own dignity.

    Using a luke warm version of I was only following orders Mein Herr is giving up your rights and the notion of ever having had any dignity.

    Just another way to get you to flush yourself down the most convenient toilet
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  • Posted by Kittyhawk 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    That is an excellent point! When John Galt is tortured by the looters in AS, his individual rights are not respected, but he sure retains his dignity.
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  • Posted by lrshultis 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Rights by their nature are individual and rights, being a moral principle, are a matter of individual choice, and are different from dignity which, in the case being discussed, are an individual's poise and self respect. The latter can be had without the former, and the former without the latter. All depends on the individual and not any collective considerations.
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  • Posted by Maritimus 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    Doesn't that plainly show, as other have pointed out, that the question is not an either or question?
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  • Posted by Solver 10 years ago in reply to this comment.
    The political collective will claim to protect dignity, yet it is done commonly at the expense of individual rights.
    Examples: It claims to protect civil dignity using such methods as quota systems, which violate individual rights of the people who want to voluntarily do the choosing and who didn't get chosen. It will order that access to businesses be convenient to everyone, at the extra expense of individual rights of the business owner. It will beg, borrow and steal to create numerous social programs to seemingly raise the dignity of many classes, at the expense of individual rights of those that produce the most value that people are actually willing to pay for.

    The point of the question was to show that dignity and individual rights are not the same. Yet, they should both be protected, but not at the expense of the other.
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  • Posted by Lysander 10 years ago
    Dignity without rights is PC self-esteem; rights without dignity is a contradiction! Thus no choices here.
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  • Posted by teri-amborn 10 years ago
    Understanding and obtaining principles to guide your life leads to the acquisition of both individual rights AND dignity.
    It really isn't either/or ... it's more like: Where one is missing then both are missing.

    I think that sometimes you must choose between fighting for what you know to be correct or leading a peaceful life with a "wait-and-see" attitude but that doesn't mean that you have lost either rights or dignity. It's more of an indication of emotional maturity.
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  • Posted by mia767ca 10 years ago
    kind of hard to separate the two...rights are getting trampled on right now, but I still feel I have my dignity...
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years ago
    There is no dignity without individual rights.
    A subservient person may think he has achieved dignity for serving the state or some lord and master, but he is just a sieg heil slave.
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  • Posted by bsmith51 10 years ago
    My initial thought was that this was a false choice, but consider the situation of Victor Frankl who survived Auschwitz to tell the story in "Man's Search For Meaning." Denied virtually all individual rights, he knew that the dignity of his thoughts and thus of his being was one thing the Nazis could never take. Sometimes, stripped naked, all we can do is hold our head up instead of looking at our feet. That, my friends, is dignity.
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  • Posted by cksawyer 10 years ago
    Solver, please give a little more context to your question. I don't want to make unwarranted assumptions prior to answering. What are you really trying to get at?
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    Posted by Zenphamy 10 years ago
    Contradictions don't exist in reality. The offered premise that the two are separable, I find faulty. Only a self-owned, free individual succeeding in life from his own efforts, while directing those efforts in ways that he perceives make him happy and successful can stand with and demonstrate true dignity.
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  • Posted by $ AJAshinoff 10 years ago
    You can have little dignity without the true exercise if your individual rights. Dignity is worthless if it comes at the expense of your individual rights or by your deliberately infringing on someone else's individual rights. My 2 bits.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 10 years ago
    How do you define dignity? (I should probably look it up...)
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