Do Natural Rights Exist Without Government ?

[Quantum Windbag]

then taken in full context the Founding Fathers stated the rights come from God--not from mother nature

Not true, they believed rights came from nature as they understood it. The mere fact that we now understand nature better than they did does not invalidate the theory of natural rights.

and they understood GOD to be the creator of everything including nature.

I think I just said that. The part you seem to have trouble grasping is that they believed that Providence worked by laying out the natural laws, not by intervening on a daily basis.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

You would hope that everyone else in the world agree with you? Why would they do that?

The UN certainly wants that.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Those guys are obviously dummies. They couldn't possibly count.

I suspect you were trying to mock me with that comment. Unfortunately, for you, you didn't actually read the link and see that they say that rights are inalienable, and actually inherent in everyone. That, in case you have trouble following English, means they agree with me, not you.

 

[Asclepias]

If someone has you chained to a basement wall, feeding you dog food and giving you a coffee can to shit in, does that mean you no longer have the right to be free?

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Not true, they believed rights came from nature as they understood it. The mere fact that we now understand nature better than they did does not invalidate the theory of natural rights.

and they understood GOD to be the creator of everything including nature.

Thats pretty inconvenient for his argument.

Only if you are a small minded bigot who believes that belief in God means that everything else a person believes is wrong.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Asking if 'natural rights' exist without government is like asking if the Sun and Moon exist without government.

How so Penny? We can see the moon and the sun. We can observe its effects upon earth. We know if if all humans died out the sun and the moon would still exist. I've never seen a right without man/government saying it exists.

So because you cannot 'see' a man's inalienable rights, they do not exist?

That is pretty much all he has.

 

[Pennywise]

If someone has you chained to a basement wall, feeding you dog food and giving you a coffee can to shit in, does that mean you no longer have the right to be free?

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

 

[dilloduck]

and they understood GOD to be the creator of everything including nature.

Thats pretty inconvenient for his argument.

Only if you are a small minded bigot who believes that belief in God means that everything else a person believes is wrong.

ahh so there is a God----he just didn't create Natural rights ?

 

[Asclepias]

So because you cannot 'see' a man's inalienable rights, they do not exist?

Not just that but also where do they exist? I dont mind if they are invisible but the effects of those inalienable rights should be observable without man labeling them as such.

It takes an enlightened sensibility to perceive that. Do you believe that people have the right to control you? Do you believe that you only exist due to the good graces of government?

Some people indeed have the right to control me in certain situations. The police are a good example.

No i exist because my parents created me. I would exist with or without a government.

 

[dilloduck]

If someone has you chained to a basement wall, feeding you dog food and giving you a coffee can to shit in, does that mean you no longer have the right to be free?

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

Law of the jungle-----they are free to do it and the brethren are free to fight back. Humans are desperately looking to get out of the jungle by saying we are special and have special rights.

 

[Asclepias]

If someone has you chained to a basement wall, feeding you dog food and giving you a coffee can to shit in, does that mean you no longer have the right to be free?

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

No they dont have the right unless they created rights and specified they had them. Are you asking if they have the ability or are you saying is it okay?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

How so Penny? We can see the moon and the sun. We can observe its effects upon earth. We know if if all humans died out the sun and the moon would still exist. I've never seen a right without man/government saying it exists.

So because you cannot 'see' a man's inalienable rights, they do not exist?

Not just that but also where do they exist? I dont mind if they are invisible but the effects of those inalienable rights should be observable without man labeling them as such.

They are observable, all you have to do is look in the right place.

 

[Pennywise]

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

Law of the jungle-----they are free to do it and the brethren are free to fight back. Humans are desperately looking to get out of the jungle by saying we are special and have special rights.

So as long as someone is bigger or stronger or smarter, they have the right to take what is yours? They have the right to control your life? Once they beat you down, and you can no longer fight, your rights cease to exist?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Are those other scientist humans? Quantums problem is he cannot mount an argument so his tactic is to nibble at the legs of other arguments hoping to wear you out with things that are not relevant.

I have mounted arguments so successful that they have driven everyone but the trolls out of this thread.

By the way, there is only one of me.

I couldnt help but to respond to this one. You wore them out does not mean you mounted a successful argument. Your whole thing is drive people out instead of learning and teaching. You are a sad person.

Which explains why you never actually won any of those debates with me about things I don't care about. It is, however, completely irrelevant to the fact that not a single person in this thread has actually mounted a real argument that rights come from any where but nature. That, in case you kissed it, includes you. Like everyone else, you think the mere fact that you can say something makes it true, and then refuse to actually argue your position by erroneously claiming that you can't prove a negative, even though I am actually asking you to prove a positive.

You also, conveniently, have a computer that never shows you anything that actually might serve to change your closed mind.

 

[Foxfyre]

Some notable quotations by Thomas Jefferson:

"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823. ME 15:441

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774. ME 1:209, Papers 1:134

"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." --Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770. FE 1:376

"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.

"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824. ME 16:48​

James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights explaining that these were necessary to illustrate and protect the unalienable rights of the the people.

James Madison Speech at the Virginia Convention
Date: December 2, 1829
“It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.”


Albert Gallatin letter to Alexander Addison
Date: October 7, 1789
“The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.”

John Adams Thoughts on Government
Date: 1776
“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

William Paterson: Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance
Date: 1795
“It is evident that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man. Men have a sense of property: Property is necessary to their subsistence, and correspondent to their natural wants and desires; its security was one of the objects, that induced them to unite in society. No man would become a member of a community, in which he could not enjoy the fruits of his honest labour and industry.”

Alexander Hamilton The Farmer Refuted
Date: February 23, 1775
“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms and false reasonings is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole human race, and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.”

George Washington letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island
Date: August 17, 1790
“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

James Wilson Lectures on Law
Date: 1791
“Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.”

Jefferson's line "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as examples of unalienable rights was almost certainly adapated from the Blackstone Law Commentaries which every educated citizen was acquainted in revolutionary times and which continues to this day to be present in every comprehensive law library in the land.

 

[dilloduck]

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

Law of the jungle-----they are free to do it and the brethren are free to fight back. Humans are desperately looking to get out of the jungle by saying we are special and have special rights.

So as long as someone is bigger or stronger or smarter, they have the right to take what is yours? They have the right to control your life? Once they beat you down, and you can no longer fight, your rights cease to exist?

Until there is someone who can protect you---it can and does happen. It's reality.

 

[Asclepias]

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

Law of the jungle-----they are free to do it and the brethren are free to fight back. Humans are desperately looking to get out of the jungle by saying we are special and have special rights.

So as long as someone is bigger or stronger or smarter, they have the right to take what is yours? They have the right to control your life? Once they beat you down, and you can no longer fight, your rights cease to exist?

They dont have the right until they create the rights and assign them. They have the ability to do it but not the right.

Your rights never existed unless they were specified.

 

[Pennywise]

You have the right to be free. Its pretty useless at that point but yes you have it.

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

No they dont have the right unless they created rights and specified they had them. Are you asking if they have the ability or are you saying is it okay?

We all have the ability in one way or another to control other people. All of us have the capability to murder someone.

Is it okay, to enslave someone without having a government recognize inalienable right?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

No.

They had not right to be free? Then why free them?

Did you see anything that said they had the right to be free? Black people were not included in the all men are created equal thing our "Founders" put together. That should give some who hold the founders in great esteem a little hint as to how wrong they were capable of being.

Black people were humans. Thats why they should have been free and not enslaved.

So what if they were human? According to you, that is irrelevant, because humans do not have rights.

 

[Pennywise]

Law of the jungle-----they are free to do it and the brethren are free to fight back. Humans are desperately looking to get out of the jungle by saying we are special and have special rights.

So as long as someone is bigger or stronger or smarter, they have the right to take what is yours? They have the right to control your life? Once they beat you down, and you can no longer fight, your rights cease to exist?

They dont have the right until they create the rights and assign them. They have the ability to do it but not the right.

Your rights never existed unless they were specified.

So my right to live did not exist until government assigned me that right?

 

[Asclepias]

Why? Let's say this happens on an island of isolated peoples who have never heard of 'inalienable rights'? A tribe of backwoods inbred fiends. Do they have the right to control and enslave their brethren, just because they feel like it?

No they dont have the right unless they created rights and specified they had them. Are you asking if they have the ability or are you saying is it okay?

We all have the ability in one way or another to control other people. All of us have the capability to murder someone.

Is it okay, to enslave someone without having a government recognize inalienable right?

I dont think its ok but other people think it is. We have examples throughout history showing this.