Both sentences say the same thing. Society enacts laws which provide protections to the individual. As a result of these protections the individual has rights.
Unfortunately, both sentences, as originally written, DO NOT say the same thing. They are recursive in the extreme.
They are mutually recursive but the types of the relations are different. Laws create rights - argument in "is" => Should create good laws to protect valid rights. - argument in "ought" Of course the two sentences don't say exactly the same thing, otherwise I would have written one. If law did not have the potential to create rights there would not be the same duty of care for law creators.
Maybe Phill should just say he misspoke himself rather then go through his elaborate back-and-fill charade.
I'll tell you what, ill admit that my original statement was not of the clarity that I would ideally wish to achieve. But I don't think that we need apply the criteria of a journal article here. :-) I don't think we have a problem with the statements conflicting, there is an interaction. What a Hegelian would call dilectic. I prefer to use a different term for much the same reasons as Sorros, the misuse of the term has created garbage that one does not want to associate with (eg Historical materialism). Phill