Saturday, June 07, 2008

An update to the pledge of allegiance

Tom W. Bell proposes the following update to the pledge of allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statutory, with liberty and justice for all.
That's a pledge I could make, despite my skepticism about the use of the term "natural rights." I do think there are moral rights entailed by the combination of certain common human values and empirical facts. (This conversation between Will Wilkinson and Shaun Nichols about Nichols' book, Sentimental Rules, suggests one way of getting to moral rules I find far more plausible than the natural rights/natural law tradition.)

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