What are basic human rights?

[theDoctorisIn]

Are you saying you do not have a right to think for yourself?

Yes. I don't have a "right" to think for myself.

I have the ability to think for myself.

You also have the ability to breathe on your own, do you need the government's permission to do that? If the government grants rights where does your ability to live come from?

"Rights" are figments.

I don't need a right to free speech to speak my mind, just the ability to do so.

I have the ability to live, and I will continue to do so until nature, accident, or another person takes that ability away from me. Whatever the government defines as a "right" at the time won't change that.

 

[dilloduck]

That is because most people have the ridiculous idea that rights come from government.

REALITY is that if you can not enforce the supposed right or have it enforced via Government, you do not have said supposed right.

I am sure all those people robbed murdered and violated by Gangs in our inner cities would be interested in how they have rights that preclude that from happening.

The most important "right" one should work towards is the right to self defense and the "right" to own firearms and other weapons.

That is not the reality. You are confusing my ability to defend my rights with the fact that they exist. the fact that governments routinely take people's rights, and that they have to fight for those rights, does not mean that they do not have them.

Government is merely one tool we can use to defend rights if we ever define them. We can defend our own rights or even the rights of family and friends. Others can take away which is probably our most basic right and that is to life. They still remain a human invention and without a definition we don't know if we have the ability to exercise them or if we are being deprived of them in some manner.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Yes. I don't have a "right" to think for myself.

I have the ability to think for myself.

You also have the ability to breathe on your own, do you need the government's permission to do that? If the government grants rights where does your ability to live come from?

"Rights" are figments.

I don't need a right to free speech to speak my mind, just the ability to do so.

I have the ability to live, and I will continue to do so until nature, accident, or another person takes that ability away from me. Whatever the government defines as a "right" at the time won't change that.

Let me get this straight, if the government decided tomorrow that slavery was legal, and the courts agree, and they made you a slave, you would not have any right to fight back.

If you say you agree with that I will call you a liar.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

REALITY is that if you can not enforce the supposed right or have it enforced via Government, you do not have said supposed right.

I am sure all those people robbed murdered and violated by Gangs in our inner cities would be interested in how they have rights that preclude that from happening.

The most important "right" one should work towards is the right to self defense and the "right" to own firearms and other weapons.

That is not the reality. You are confusing my ability to defend my rights with the fact that they exist. the fact that governments routinely take people's rights, and that they have to fight for those rights, does not mean that they do not have them.

Government is merely one tool we can use to defend rights if we ever define them. We can defend our own rights or even the rights of family and friends. Others can take away which is probably our most basic right and that is to life. They still remain a human invention and without a definition we don't know if we have the ability to exercise them or if we are being deprived of them in some manner.

The only way government can exist is if it takes away the rights of people. Until you understand that simple truth you really have no idea what government, or rights, really are.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

You also have the ability to breathe on your own, do you need the government's permission to do that? If the government grants rights where does your ability to live come from?

"Rights" are figments.

I don't need a right to free speech to speak my mind, just the ability to do so.

I have the ability to live, and I will continue to do so until nature, accident, or another person takes that ability away from me. Whatever the government defines as a "right" at the time won't change that.

Let me get this straight, if the government decided tomorrow that slavery was legal, and the courts agree, and they made you a slave, you would not have any right to fight back.

If you say you agree with that I will call you a liar.

If that happened, I would fight as hard and as long as I was able to. I wouldn't need a "right" to do so, I just would do it, until I was free, or I died.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Humans have no "rights" unless they fight for them, pass laws to guarantee them and abide by those laws.

No human is born with any right unless the humans that came before them fought for those rights.

That is the exact opposite of the premise of our constitution

 

[midcan5]

Life in a republic, aka American democracy, is not a zero sum game my right wing friends. No one is pressuring you to give anyone anything. You agree as a citizen to responsibilities within the framework of our nation. You have ever right to your Walmart wages, your trailer, your ten kids and Friday night bowling. Should you be lucky, you have a right to your split level, two kids, and Friday night cocktail parties by the pool with friends. But maybe 'right' doesn't fit into my less serious reply, maybe instead stop thinking that if another has a decent wage, a good job, that somehow includes you. Consider your broadly useless abstractions such as freedom, free markets, and other such nonsense, then consider FDR's bill of rights as an example of goals that are at least grounded in reality, and goals that worked till the seventies and eighties in America. But again I am busy today so I leave you whiners on the right with this food for thought. I like the quotes.

Edit of old thread.

Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second a totalitarian nation. The woman believe that they live in nation which grants them certain rights. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. These rights include individual freedom separated from any coercion. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without sufficient funds. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.

One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissioner and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their right, two couldn't, yet all held the same value. Each woman had individual rights, yet in each case those rights were dependent on other factors. If our rights are dependent on so many extraneous items, how is it we claim any rights at all?

My reply below. You answer first.

What value does a concept of individual rights have if any action at all is dependent on exterior factors? There is no such thing as a right, for in order to have a right certain conditions must be meet. Rights come within a context, without context a right is meaningless fantasy useless except as rhetorical flourish or apologetic rational.

Who decides when rights collide?
Did slave owners have the right to own slaves?
Did slaves have rights?
Do women have the right to control their family decisions?
Do gay people have the right to marry?
If an unborn child has a right to life does it then have a right to support?
Does a child have a right to proper nutrition? Education?
Do you have the right to impose your religious beliefs on others?
What gives you that right?
Does your labor grant you any rights?
Does the fact your labor and perks only exist because you live in America grant you special rights?


"Between equal rights, force decides." Marx

"No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any." Friedrich Nietzsche

"A man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children." President Lyndon Johnson 'the moral necessity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act'

"Rights are just (tastes) emotions without rational thought' Bentham paraphrase

_

 

[TakeAStepBack]

I am far right in most of my political beliefs.

ok

You are ignoring reality when you claim you have a right to anything. Reality is that unless you or some other THING or person, can protect your supposed rights, they simply do not exist.

Well, that's at the heart of the equivocation going on here. You seem to be defining right as a 'protected freedom' - and a 'protected freedom' doesn't exist if someone isn't protecting it. The alternative view is just looking at a 'right' as a freedom. Whether it is protected, or not, is another question. It's really two sides of the same coin. You're just confining the concept of rights to those freedoms we have chosen to protect. The other view is looking at rights as raw freedoms, freedoms that we then choose to protect or not.

Both views end up at the same place, and face the same question: which freedoms should we protect, and why?

And that whole argument goes up in smoke when you acknowledge that individuals protect their own rights whether a third party is involved or not.

 

[dilloduck]

I am far right in most of my political beliefs.

ok

You are ignoring reality when you claim you have a right to anything. Reality is that unless you or some other THING or person, can protect your supposed rights, they simply do not exist.

Well, that's at the heart of the equivocation going on here. You seem to be defining right as a 'protected freedom' - and a 'protected freedom' doesn't exist if someone isn't protecting it. The alternative view is just looking at a 'right' as a freedom. Whether it is protected, or not, is another question. It's really two sides of the same coin. You're just confining the concept of rights to those freedoms we have chosen to protect. The other view is looking at rights as raw freedoms, freedoms that we then choose to protect or not.

Both views end up at the same place, and face the same question: which freedoms should we protect, and why?

And that whole argument goes up in smoke when you acknowledge that individuals protect their own rights whether a third party is involved or not.

We as individuals can enter into contracts or agreements that define what we are referring here to as basic rights and work together to exercise these rights and remove anything that stands in the way of us exercising these rights. We really don't need to explain where the rights were derived from because we ourselves just invented them and treat them as priorities.
Let say one of the rights that we invent is the right to be free from hunger. In order to benefit from this right we need food. Who is responsible for our food if not ourselves ? If it is not ourselves we are then making someone else responsible for providing us with nourishment. Besides having the right to be free from hunger to we also have the right to force others to provide us with food ?
Again I suggest that any right that depends on others to defend and provide is nothing more than a self declared entitlement. Our right to be free of hunger is a condition that is our individual responsibility to create.

 

[dblack]

Let say one of the rights that we invent is the right to be free from hunger. In order to benefit from this right we need food. Who is responsible for our food if not ourselves ? If it is not ourselves we are then making someone else responsible for providing us with nourishment. Besides having the right to be free from hunger to we also have the right to force others to provide us with food ?
Again I suggest that any right that depends on others to defend and provide is nothing more than a self declared entitlement. Our right to be free of hunger is a condition that is our individual responsibility to create.

Exactly. You're drawing the crucial distinction between inalienable rights and 'self declared entitlements'. The whole point of calling out the protection of inalienable rights (freedoms that exist whether someone 'provides' them for you or not) as the goal of government is meant to distinguish them from entitlements.

The argument usually turns around efforts to extend the concept of "basic human rights" to include entitlements. But the two concepts are in direct opposition. To the extent that government ensures entitlements, it is violating inalienable rights.

 

[editec]

Human might make human right.

Everything else is pure delusion.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Human might make human right.

Everything else is pure delusion.

Nonsense.

 

[Sallow]

There are no "rights", inherently.

Your rights are defined by whatever government you live under..

Our Government is based on unalienable rights inseparable from each person, so they do exist by your reasoning.

The question of "rights" comes into play after a government establishes itself. And that basically means getting things up and running.

While that is happening those "unalienable" rights generally are meaningless.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

There are no "rights", inherently.

Your rights are defined by whatever government you live under..

Our Government is based on unalienable rights inseparable from each person, so they do exist by your reasoning.

The question of "rights" comes into play after a government establishes itself. And that basically means getting things up and running.

While that is happening those "unalienable" rights generally are meaningless.

SO you have no right to life except for when a government, comprised of other humans, tells you so?

So if that group of humans decides that only people blue eyed and blonde haired, above 5 ft. in.7 can live, everyone else has no right to life and can be exterminated?

 

[Skull Pilot]

There are no "rights", inherently.

Your rights are defined by whatever government you live under..

Our Government is based on unalienable rights inseparable from each person, so they do exist by your reasoning.

The question of "rights" comes into play after a government establishes itself. And that basically means getting things up and running.

While that is happening those "unalienable" rights generally are meaningless.

Actually the concept of unalienable rights predates our constitution and therefore our government.

As you know the term was used in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution was written around this concept not the reverse.

 

[dblack]

There are no "rights", inherently.

Your rights are defined by whatever government you live under..

Our Government is based on unalienable rights inseparable from each person, so they do exist by your reasoning.

The question of "rights" comes into play after a government establishes itself. And that basically means getting things up and running.

While that is happening those "unalienable" rights generally are meaningless.

Once again, the point of "unalienable" rights isn't existential. It doesn't matter where such rights 'come from'. It's just a classification to distinguish them from entitlements. Unalienable rights are those freedoms which require no active participation from others. You have the right to free speech, for example, even if no one is listening. A supposed 'right to health care', on the other hand, is different. Without someone to provide you with health care, it's meaningless.

Liberals are preoccupied with how rights will be protected, but that question only matters after we decide what rights to protect in the first place. The 'unalienable' distinction is meant to clarify the kinds of rights government should protect.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

"Rights" are figments.

I don't need a right to free speech to speak my mind, just the ability to do so.

I have the ability to live, and I will continue to do so until nature, accident, or another person takes that ability away from me. Whatever the government defines as a "right" at the time won't change that.

Let me get this straight, if the government decided tomorrow that slavery was legal, and the courts agree, and they made you a slave, you would not have any right to fight back.

If you say you agree with that I will call you a liar.

If that happened, I would fight as hard and as long as I was able to. I wouldn't need a "right" to do so, I just would do it, until I was free, or I died.

You are correct that you wouldn't need the right because you already have it. You were born with it, which is why you are willing to fight, and die, in order to have it.

Thanks for making my point.

 

[theDoctorisIn]

Let me get this straight, if the government decided tomorrow that slavery was legal, and the courts agree, and they made you a slave, you would not have any right to fight back.

If you say you agree with that I will call you a liar.

If that happened, I would fight as hard and as long as I was able to. I wouldn't need a "right" to do so, I just would do it, until I was free, or I died.

You are correct that you wouldn't need the right because you already have it. You were born with it, which is why you are willing to fight, and die, in order to have it.

Thanks for making my point.

I think a more accurate statement would be that you missed my point.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Life in a republic, aka American democracy, is not a zero sum game my right wing friends. No one is pressuring you to give anyone anything. You agree as a citizen to responsibilities within the framework of our nation. You have ever right to your Walmart wages, your trailer, your ten kids and Friday night bowling. Should you be lucky, you have a right to your split level, two kids, and Friday night cocktail parties by the pool with friends. But maybe 'right' doesn't fit into my less serious reply, maybe instead stop thinking that if another has a decent wage, a good job, that somehow includes you. Consider your broadly useless abstractions such as freedom, free markets, and other such nonsense, then consider FDR's bill of rights as an example of goals that are at least grounded in reality, and goals that worked till the seventies and eighties in America. But again I am busy today so I leave you whiners on the right with this food for thought. I like the quotes.

You like quotes because you know that when you try to post without them, like you just did, you end up contradicting yourself and sounding like an idiot.

Living in a republic has nothing to do with whatever point you are trying to make. Unless you can show me something that I signed, or verbally agreed to, you cannot argue I agreed to something just because I was born in this country. You would be offended if I told you that you agreed to defend the US, right or wrong, simply because you were born here, stop trying to pretend that me being born here imposes obligations on me, especially when you try to pretend that those obligations don't cost me anything.

In the real world if you have a right to a house someone has to build it. That costs resources, and the end result is that there is zero net gain in utility. The fact that the cost of that house is spread across multiple people while it only benefits one person does not change the fact that it is a zero sum transaction. Unless you understand that you are not basing anything in reality.

Edit of old thread.

Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second a totalitarian nation. The woman believe that they live in nation which grants them certain rights. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. These rights include individual freedom separated from any coercion. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without sufficient funds. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.

One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissioner and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their right, two couldn't, yet all held the same value. Each woman had individual rights, yet in each case those rights were dependent on other factors. If our rights are dependent on so many extraneous items, how is it we claim any rights at all?

What?

Two women traveled to Bermuda by paying for the service provided in different coin of value to the system they were constrained to work within. The other two women expected other people to hand them things because they, like you, were deluded and believed that life in whatever system they lived in was not a zero sum game. Every single one of the women exercised her rights, even the two that ended up in jail.

Go back to a real school and pay attention.

My reply below. You answer first.

What value does a concept of individual rights have if any action at all is dependent on exterior factors? There is no such thing as a right, for in order to have a right certain conditions must be meet. Rights come within a context, without context a right is meaningless fantasy useless except as rhetorical flourish or apologetic rational.

Let me get this straight. The two women who ended up in jail because they expected other people to provide services to them did not have rights because they didn't get what they wanted? That is not what rights are about, rights exist outside of economic or political systems, not because of them. The fact that governments exist to deny people rights does not change the fact that people have them.

Who decides when rights collide?
Did slave owners have the right to own slaves?
Did slaves have rights?
Do women have the right to control their family decisions?
Do gay people have the right to marry?
If an unborn child has a right to life does it then have a right to support?
Does a child have a right to proper nutrition? Education?
Do you have the right to impose your religious beliefs on others?
What gives you that right?
Does your labor grant you any rights?
Does the fact your labor and perks only exist because you live in America grant you special rights?


"Between equal rights, force decides." Marx

"No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any." Friedrich Nietzsche

"A man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children." President Lyndon Johnson 'the moral necessity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act'

"Rights are just (tastes) emotions without rational thought' Bentham paraphrase

_

Like I said, you like quotes because it you think it makes you look smart, even though you use quotes that contradict your point.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Human might make human right.

Everything else is pure delusion.

That means that I could bring a few friends, move into your house, throw you in a hole in the ground, and let you eat roots and insects, and you would have no grounds to complain about it. since you clearly disagree with that, you really don't believe the drivel you are posting anymore than TheDoctor believes that he doesn't have a right to not be a slave.