It's a difference in wording that reflects a fundamentally different conceptual model of what rights are and how they work, which in turn has wide-ranging implications for how law, politics, and social interactions are conducted.
> Individual rights exist only as far as they are protected by others.
That makes little sense, given that the concept of 'rights' is a normative framework we use to evaluate the legitimacy of people's behavior. The whole point of asserting rights is to make moral/legal arguments against behavior that does transgress against other people.
Construing situations where those transgressions take place as 'rights nonexistent' instead of 'rights violated' defeats the entire purpose of establishing a model of rights in the first place.
For the same reason, it also makes little sense to employ a model of rights that attributes the source of rights to human organizations that have the capacity -- and often the intent -- to violate them.
It's a difference in wording that reflects a fundamentally different conceptual model of what rights are and how they work, which in turn has wide-ranging implications for how law, politics, and social interactions are conducted.
> Individual rights exist only as far as they are protected by others.
That makes little sense, given that the concept of 'rights' is a normative framework we use to evaluate the legitimacy of people's behavior. The whole point of asserting rights is to make moral/legal arguments against behavior that does transgress against other people.
Construing situations where those transgressions take place as 'rights nonexistent' instead of 'rights violated' defeats the entire purpose of establishing a model of rights in the first place.
For the same reason, it also makes little sense to employ a model of rights that attributes the source of rights to human organizations that have the capacity -- and often the intent -- to violate them.