The Three Ethical Principles: Individual Rights, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice

Ethics is an enormous field of philosophic study, but basically it all boils down to three general principles that can then branch off into various sub-groupings and variations on the basic theme. Ethical conduct in society, therefore, essentially comes down to three distinct values that take into consideration the rights of the individual, the rights of the masses, and the concept of distributive justice.

Individual Rights.
This principle of ethics relies upon the foundation that everybody in a society is entitled to certain guaranteed rights. The intrusion into this mode of ethics is based upon contradiction and conflict: my right to express my fact-based contention that George W. Bush is a criminal and should be forcefully removed by the people from his elevated position atop the hierarchy conflict with his right (often imagined) to be protected from any scrutiny. Or, to put it another way, everyone has the right to freedom of speech, but try crying fire right at the point that the Batman is riding toward the Joker on his cycle and let's see who gets kicked out of the building. Individual rights are often at conflict between the world of legality and the world of morality. For instance, it should be assumed that everyone has the right to have their health taken care of by a government that taxes them to pay for unnecessary military weapons that don't even work when the order is put through, but if someone can't pay for medicine buys them illegally from another country they can be jailed.