New Principles (Dee Speaking)
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						Malik

But I also want to say that your whole train of thought disturbs me because I don't think you have the proper understanding of what it is to have a basic moral right (or a "fundamental" legal right) to do something.

• Basic moral rights are side constraints on what other people may do to an individual in order to achieve their ends.
• Basic rights are not just one value among many that can be balanced against the others. Balancing is a dangerous metaphor when we are comparing rights with other good things. Rights constitute a kind of boundary that we must not transgress when we are balancing the values of other good things. They represent a moral minimum that must be observed. (And that's why, incidentally, we should not go around manufacturing basic rights for everything we want.)
• The fact that the ends are good does not by itself justify redefining or overriding those rights.
• The fact that exercising a right in some way harms others does not by itself justify redefining or overriding that right.

As long as your new social philosophy includes the proper concept of an individual right, I think the debate may be useful and I want to be part of it.

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