ch 2 & 3

An interesting distinction I found was on pg 38 "genuine moral rights, if they exist, are different from the conventional rights created by the moral code of a society". I found this particularly interesting because of the idea of a society having a moral code, which is separate from alleged moral rights, seems to make understanding our alleged moral rights all that much more difficult. For example just consider two different societies, each with a very different moral code. Each society would most likely claim to have its moral code based off our alleged, objective moral rights. Yet, if we have universal moral rights one side must be wrong, or a least more wrong than the other side. The point I'm trying to make is that when we are trying to understand our alleged moral rights as humans, we need to consider not only our society's moral code, but the moral code of every society. We cannot afford to be ethnocentric in our search for understanding our moral rights...if we have any.

Another passage I found interesting was on pg 69 "the law cannot remove the injustices arising from racial discrimination in our society because it cannot change the hearts and minds of those who discriminate." The passage goes on to suggest that education is the means for eradicating moral evil. I do not believe anyone would argue with this statement. Just look at the civil rights movement in the last 50 years. Laws have been created, yet racial discrimination still occurred. Fast forward to today, where we have been raised differently then previous generations, and one could argue that real change has been made...perhaps just a small one (arguably) via education. This leads me to believe that the proliferation of legal rights may not be all that important in the grand scheme of things, not to say they are not needed, just that we may be over saturated with them. If we really want to see change, is creating laws the best means? Or, perhaps education is the key to seeing real change? Thoughts???