Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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You have it exactly and completely backwards.
Imagine:
Dave and Tom live on a desert island - just the two of them
Dave believes that all human beings have a right to life.
Tom does not - he believes that there can be no such thing.
Do either of them actually have, in a practical sense, a right to life?
The answer is yes - Tom has a right to life, because Dave has ceded it to him
It doesn't matter how strongly Dave believes in a right to life - he himself will never in fact have one because the only person who's in a position to respect it or violate it - Tom - doesn't even recognize it.
However, it also doesn't matter that Tom does not believe in a right to life - he does in fact have one, solely because Dave is the only person in a position to respect it or violate it, and Dave believes it exists.
Rights don't exist when they're claimed - they exist when they're recognized and respected.
So Miranda has it exactly right and you have it exactly wrong - it's not only not an accused criminal's responsibility to lay claim to their rights - it's functionally impossible for them to do so. The rights of an accused criminal "must* be stipulated by those who are in a position to violate them, because it's only by their recognition of them and respect for them that they can be meaningfully said to exist at all.
And that's also why an officer or an organization that will, if given the chance, ignore the rights of defendants must be stopped. By doing so, they are explicitly violating the trust that has been placed in them and demonstrating categorically that they cannot be allowed to wield that authority.