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Sister Helen asks Phelps his opinions on some questions that have been bothering her. "Aren't there, I argue, some rights fundamental to human beings-- such as the right not to be tortured or killed-- that everyone, including governments, must respect? Doesn't the moral foundation of a society erode if its government is allowed to treat these fundamental, nonnegotiable rights as some sort of privilege, which they take on themselves to dispense for good behavior or withdraw for bad behavior?" [p. 103]
Sister Helen describes the legal system as "a system of gates that shut like one-way turnstiles, and you can't go back once you've come out" [p. 45]. The long appeals process would seem to ensure a fair trial for all, but in actuality the prisoner's success within it depends upon how good a lawyer he can afford to hire.
Sister Helen asks Phelps his opinions on some questions that have been bothering her. "Aren't there, I argue, some rights fundamental to human beings-- such as the right not to be tortured or killed-- that everyone, including governments, must respect? Doesn't the moral foundation of a society erode if its government is allowed to treat these fundamental, nonnegotiable rights as some sort of privilege, which they take on themselves to dispense for good behavior or withdraw for bad behavior?" [p. 103]
Sister Helen often speaks of "government" as though it were entirely separate and dissociated from the people themselves.
Sister Helen quotes Albert Camus on the death penalty: "To assert...that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no one in his right mind will believe this today" [p. 22].
Sister Helen accuses Edwin Edwards of condoning the death penalty so as not to risk his political career. Do you believe that Edwards is doing his job as governor by carrying out the will of the people, or should he act upon his own convictions? Robert says, "This whole death penalty ain't nothing but politics" [p. 162].
Sister Helen believes that a nun, as a servant of God, should serve the poor, and she sees her political activism as a way of serving the poor.
Sister Helen Prejean looks back on the life and career of her father-- a good man who helped the black people in his segregated community-- and reflects that "systems inflict pain and hardship in people's lives and.
From the opening sentence of the essay, “We are free to be you, me, stupid, and dead”, Roger Rosenblatt hones in on a very potent and controversial topic. He notes the fundamental truth that although humans will regularly shield themselves with the omnipresent first amendment, seldom do we enjoy having the privilege we so readily abuse be used against us.
In her essay Can U.S. Citizens Be Held as Enemy Combatants, Jennifer Vanklausen explores the ethical question of our government’s policy to hold American citizens suspected of terrorist activity against the United States as enemy combatants, withholding their constitutional rights as provided in the fifth and sixth amendments, during an undeclared war.
One reason we must have the second amendment is to protect the freedom for which our country fought so hard to win. The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”[1] However, if these rights were ‘self-evident’, why did the founding fathers need to grant them to the states? We might as well ask why man is the way that he is, imperfect. We all wonder about this sad truth, but the fact remains that man is fallen. These rights are self-evident, obvious to human reason, but because humans are fallen, we are sometimes blinded to these apparent truths and we err in our rationality. King George was blind to these unalienable rights, as were Na...
In this film, Sister Helen believed that there are some human rights that are negotiable, but that there are these “basic” human rights that cannot be negotiated. Such as, two human rights that government should not control or act on; the right to not be killed or tortured. She believed that violating these human rights essentially made the government responsible for committing the same act. Her belief leads to the question of whether the people sho...
The primary purpose of this essay is stated in the title. It is to consider whether certain principles presented in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and commonly referred to as human rights are supported by the authority of God 's word. A secondary goal is to consider how society might be influenced to establish and maintain laws which agree with God 's moral authority. Yet a third goal is to consider how free exercise of human rights might be impacted by obedience and disobedience to God 's moral authority.
Agamben’s argument features a double-standard because the moral rights of the government and the citizenry. Specifically, the government is granted the right to decide which citizens are worthy of remaining alive and which are not. In extreme cases, the government has the right to declare a state of emergency where habeas corpus is suspended and citizens can be killed without due process of the law. Under normal circumstances, the government does not exercise carte blanche in determining whose lives are worthy of preservation, but it nonetheless has the right to kill citizens under circumstances when civilians cannot: the death penalty is the case in point. Agamben defines such a right as the state of exception and forewarns that when the state of exception is normalized, a camp will emerge where no citizen has an inalienable right to life.
The Amendment I of the Bill of Rights is often called “the freedom of speech.” It provides a multitude of freedoms: of religion, of speech, of the press, to peacefully assemble, to petition the government. Religious freedom is vitally important to this day because it eliminates the problem of religious conflicts. Historically, many people died for their beliefs because their government only allowed and permitted one religion. T...
The question then becomes at what price such sacrifices were made. Human rights should be exercised whenever injustice is witnessed, not only as protest when it is to one’s benefit. Acting to unite the people of the United States of America as one regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual preference despite belief over whether individual issues are important enough to defend.
Each individual is given fundamental rights for solely being a human being. Regardless of his or her nation, language, or religion everyone is given these
The essence of this essay reveals the definition of human rights and the politics of its victimhood incorporating those that made a difference. Human Rights can be seen as having natural rights, a fixed basis in reality confirming its importance with a variety of roles; the role illuminated will be racial discrimination against African Americans.
These rights vary from country to race to gender across the board, lining a person up for a role that they will execute for the promotion of their immediate and overall society. The giving of an identity is expressed here, and just as one has the ability to give identity, one may also take it away. An example of this is with the Nazis before World War II, with Adolf Hitler’s obsession of a political and racial purity. To begin with the eventual demise of the Jewish people, the Nazis were ordered to strip away their rights and limit their connection to the outside world. From here, they were merely a minority in the community, herded into ghettos and eventually sent away to various camps. They were stripped of not only their citizenship, though, but their humanity as they became stars pinned to shirts and another pair of shoes to walk past at the Holocaust Museum.
Have you ever wondered why people are so interested to learn about the suffrage of others? Over twenty-five years, the population of prisoners has nearly sextulped. Reaching about 1.7 million since 1996, which is almost equal to the population to Houston, Texas, the fourth largest city in the nation (Elliott Currie). All we focus on is how they did it? and why? In other words, many people interpret crime as entertainment, and don’t think about the negative effects taking place in the world or even more that individual. In some cases the innocent are being accused of unlikely punishment but how do they determine? Considerably, the death penalty has been the topic of discussion these past years. This so called “penalty” is becoming the prime consequence in most cases. I think that the use of the death penalty as punishment is wrong because of the psychological effects it has on prisoners, time spent on death row in cases of innocents, and the costly outcome.
Ethics and morality are the founding reasons for both supporting and opposing the death penalty, leading to the highly contentious nature of the debate. When heinous crimes are com...
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is how the saying goes. Coined by the infamous Hammurabi’s Code around 1700 BC, this ancient expression has become the basis of a great political debate over the past several decades – the death penalty. While the conflict can be whittled down to a matter of morals, a more pragmatic approach shows defendable points that are far more evidence backed. Supporters of the death penalty advocate that it deters crime, provides closure, and is a just punishment for those who choose to take a human life. Those against the death penalty argue that execution is a betrayal of basic human rights, an ineffective crime deterrent, an economically wasteful option, and an outdated method. The debate has experienced varying levels of attention over the years, but has always kept in the eye of the public. While many still advocate for the continued use of capital punishment, the process is not the most cost effective, efficient, consistent, or up-to-date means of punishment that America could be using today.
The right to Life, Liberty, and Security, is one of the most important citizen rights that you can have. With the right to life, it means that any individual has the right to live, and shouldn’t be killed by anyone. With the right to Liberty, it means that we have the right to be free, and do almost anything we want. Lastly, the right to security means that you are guaranteed to be protected the best way possible, while you are in that country. Even though it is just one of many rights, they all fall under the right to freedom. Which everyone just wants the right to do what they want, and to stand up for what they believe in. Everyone should have the right to freedom, as well as the right to life, liberty, and security.We felt that this right was the most important because it summed up the rights that we need as citizens. Like the right to not be enslaved, can count as the right to Life and Liberty. So in our opinion, the right to Life, Liberty, and Security, is the one that should be one of the first applied rights to our lives. The next few paragraphs will describe how we feel on these particular rights, as well as examples of how these rights are being violated all over the world.