Well, I don't think any muslim women who are the recipients of said genitalia sewing think it's right at all.  But I do know that there are some muslim women that do think it's right that they be forced to wear burkhas, or to be subservient to men.  I would guess that the majority of people living under these restrictions would choose freedom, if allowed to answer without fear of retribution.  You see lots of people escaping these countries where things like this go on, but you sure dont see many people clamoring to get in there and adopt that way of life.

Well, if the women are sewing their own vaginas shut, then more power to them.  However, I do not think that is the case.  I have never heard anyone speak of sewing some important hole shut and opt for it.  Now, I will admit that I have not had many "vagina sewn shut" conversations, which I will tomorrow; however, I cannot believe anyone will be for it.  Personally, I don't want to sew anything I have shut.

So, until people freely are sewing themselves shut, we should probably help anyone who is having it done by somebody else.  Another horror is female "circumcision."  If you have ever seen a video of it, you will see that the young girls are not freely allowing it to happen.  Ergo, we act.

I think your verbiage biases the answer.  By saying something is "imposed," it immediately separates it from a concept like freedom.  Regimes, religions, and cultural norms are imposed.  Choices, rational discussions, and freedom are offered.  It seems a small matter, but the semantics here blare the truth of the matter.

If we said those women could not sew their vaginas shut or that they could not wear veils, then we would be imposing Western values on them.  However, if we say that they may choose whether to do so, it is a different situation altogether. 

Now, one may want to claim that we are imposing on the men of these nations.  That is a fallacy.  We are due freedom until it impinges upon the freedom of another.  I am free but not so free as to be allowed to kill someone else.  I am free but not so free as to be allowed to put an innocent in prison.  Those men have extended their freedom to the point that the freedom imposes on the women.  This is unacceptable.  They claim absolute freedom where they have no right to. 

We are offering freedom to the women and offering a reminder of the limitations of absolute freedom to the men.

Post Scriptum:  I am not arguing that our war of aggression in Iraq is acceptable.

OK.  Then, the answer is no.  For the reasons given in my previous post, freedom is necessarily offered not imposed; therefore, offering freedom is diametrically opposed to imposing some other view.  So, it avoids hypocrisy.

No worries.  I am glad that it was an error.  I thought you might be a little thick there for a minute.  We all know that anyone who is thick is ripe to being converted to organized religion.

People can not be forced to be free and people can not be given genuine freedom. The people must desire and fight for their freedom. Any other way is doomed to failure.

Mmmmmm. That is a delicious platitude if I have ever read one.  Most Americans have never fought for any sort of freedom; yet, we seem to be doing alright in that area.  Did you read that in an American Civics text?

I have to point out that female circumcision is not necessarily a muslim practice.  It is practiced mostly in African countries. 

It is a very painful practice and is almost always physically and emotionally damaging.  I don't think any person has the right to inflict pain and torture on another.  Of course, my opinion is a western opinion. However, though we have a different 'wordlview' the facts remain the same and most women suffer because of that particular practice. Regardless of whether they accept it or not, they still suffer.  

That being said, the idea of imposing freedom on a person just simply doesn't make sense.  You can't 'force' a person into 'freedom'.  

If only the majority agree with it is is not universal.

Rights are simply concepts. They do not exist in nature, only in our minds and agreed societal standards.

Rights are like morals, Without an absolute moral authority there are no absoute morals - Wihout an absolute right giver there are not absolute rights.

In the end, you have the right to do anything you can do, everyone else has the right to stop you or to do things to you. Everything else is simply a social agreement. Americans have the right to free speech not because of some absolute right but because they have agreed as a society that everyone should have it. That right does not extend to people outside of america because they do not have the same social contract.

I value freedom of speech and believe in defending it when it is threatened, even when it is not my own freedom being threatened or not my country it is being threatened in. What I will not do is pretend that my personal opinions are any sort of moral absolute. That is the way a theist thinks

It's still only your personal opinion that those are universal rights. Universal meaning applying to everyone. Sure many people agree with you but it's still just opinions, there's nothing absolute.

If you use universal to mean everyone agrees on the rights then I'd say it's pretty clear thats not true. Fundamentalist muslims don't believe that free speech is a right. To them you have no right to make fun of Mohamed.

Sure the UN has agrees on certain rights to grant every human being but those only go as far as the authority of the UN. Just as the American constitution only holds true in America, the UN's agreed human rights only hold true for the countries that accept the UN's authority - which it is clear some don't. 

If you are claiming there are inate rights then I ask for evidence of this. Liking freedom does not give me the right to freedom, I like sex but having sex is not a right, someone would have to agree to have sex with me. We have freedoms because we have agreed, within our society, to allow eachother those freedoms.

Yes, the children indoctrination vexs me the most.  A person cannot vote until adulthood and that only decides how a country is run.  Yet from birth, they have been forced into a vote on their religion, with no alternates, to understand themselves and the whole of existance.

I don't think I worded it correctly, but you know what I mean.

I would LOVE a regulation that allowed it to be illegal to enforce your religious beliefs on your child.

 Trying to put ethics into objective terms is tricky (and usually unsuccessful). 

Humans do not have the right to be happy, free, safe, or any other pleasant idea that many of us would die to protect. Humans are not due these ideas based on some mystical value that most people want to assign to our species. As someone stated before, human society agrees upon what they think are acceptable ethics and they enforce them in agreed upon methods. 

That's it.  

This is the very heart of the discussion I think we are having.

The OP was talking about imposing freedom upon people. This suggests that we would be forcibly removing one set of ideals and replacing it with our own. Our current social contract frowns upon doing this (even though our country has done so since its inception). 

So from what i can tell the general response here has been that it's not in our right to "enforce" freedom on people, but we do have the right to free people from their tunnel vision -- to show them other options.  So let's say i travel to an african nation with a muslim majority.  Would you all agree that it's ok for me to show these people that they don't need to sew  labia shut (of course this wouldn't work, i'd be kicked out or even killed by the men before this ever occured), but it's not right for me to make an attempt at setting up a system whereby i try to stop the men from making the females sew their labia shut?

marcusfish wrote:

 "

'Right', for the most part, is purely subjective. The fact that you think something is right or wrong is SOLELY dependant upon what social ideology you were raised under. So, is it 'right' for you to free people from torture even if you have to use violence to do so? Absolutely! But this is based on the fact that you come from a people who's social contract guarantees a persons safety from harm.

The people who have power will always use it to supress those who do not ... in an effort to secure their power over them. Is this natural? I think so. Is it right? Depends on what you think 'right' is.

Now, there is a school of thought that suggests certain ethical boundaries can be universal / objective. I can't remember his name right now, but a philisophical scholar went to great lengths to prove that some ethical claims could be identified as 'right'. It was a long process involving how well the claim withstood argument from any person in any civilization. One of the ethical principles he thought could withstand and logical scrutiny from anyone in the world was freedom from being harmed by others."

I think you just summed up what everyone else was trying to get at but couldn't. I believe that it is an inalienable right for all people to say what they want and do what they want as long as it does no harm to others. On the other hand, words can be as harmful as violence in some instances, in fact, they are the precursor to violence a lot of the time. There is no easy answer to freedom.

People in America think they are free, but we are one of, if not THE,  most legislated and regulated populations the world has ever witnessed. Try hitchhiking in Washington state, try converting your garage into a 4th bedroom in suburban Texas without a permit, try hunting in just about any state to feed your family without a license. We, as Americans, can join the Army at 17 and go over to Iraq and kill people in the name of democracy (or a quart of oil), but can't buy beer OTC until we turn 21.