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Sorry for the delayed reply, exams are creeping up on me at the moment [img]smile.gif[/img]
I can see where you're coming from Aragorn but again I don't feel the need to link rights and duties. I realise it goes against most right theories but this is a dictatorship after all.
I don't think citizens would have rights, so much as they would have priveleges that the state could take away. Living on borrowed time as it were [img]smile.gif[/img] Thus the state has no duty to refrain from punishing the citizen, even if we assume his hypothetical rights have been taken away from him for the first crime (for the parking offence).
Nice post Cerek, I think I agree with all of it. As for your questions, I don't think it is fair. If we judge one culture then we must expect to get judged in return. Consider that many Europeans would consider the electric chair a tremendously barbaric way to kill someone (why not general anaesthetic, then lethal injection?) yet few would deny that America is a civilized country.
Likewise, many in Iran would no doubt view the widespread use of women as sex objects in the Western media as evidence of our lack of what they call civilization.
Morality is a wonderfully relative thing [img]smile.gif[/img]
I guess if you're religious it becomes more clear-cut as you believe that your morals and therefore civilizations founded upon them are the right ones, but I think I'm wandering more down the cultural relativism path at the moment. Help!
[ 04-07-2005, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]
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