What "rights" does nature give us?

[dblack]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

You're equivocating between existential freedom and government protected rights. The concepts are related, but not at all the same thing.

Whether government protects a given natural right has no bearing on whether the right exists. The question is whether someone can expect government to protect it or not. It's not a simple concept, but neither is it terribly subtle. Natural rights are existential freedoms that we have as a result of having volition.

The question is, which of these rights should government protect? It was the, literally revolutionary, notion of the framers that government should strive to protect freedom as a general principle. Which is what I believe TJ was trying to get across in the preamble to the declaration. The natural rights angle was his way of turning the tables on the prevailing view (which, sadly, many people here seem to share) that any freedoms we might enjoy are favors granted to us by authority (then the king, today the federal government).

 

[sobi]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

How you can reference Locke and state this is a mystery to me.

 

[Sallow]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

How you can reference Locke and state this is a mystery to me.

I don't agree with Locke?

Sheesh..

 

[Sallow]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

You're equivocating between existential freedom and government protected rights. The concepts are related, but not at all the same thing.

Whether government protects a given natural right has no bearing on whether the right exists. The question is whether someone can expect government to protect it or not. It's not a simple concept, but neither is it terribly subtle. Natural rights are existential freedoms that we have as a result of having volition.

The question is, which of these rights should government protect? It was the, literally revolutionary, notion of the framers that government should strive to protect freedom as a general principle. Which is what I believe TJ was trying to get across in the preamble to the declaration. The natural rights angle was his way of turning the tables on the prevailing view (which, sadly, many people here seem to share) that any freedoms we might enjoy are favors granted to us by authority (then the king, today the federal government).

This sort of assumes that government is a separate entity. It is and it isn't. That's dependent on the form of government that's in place. But the whole "liberty, freedom, property" thing is a relatively new concept if you consider the scope of human history. It's evolutionary from the concept that the "right" to rule is god-given to that "right" to rule is part of a social compact. And history isn't all that clean either. You have the greco/roman republics, which basically establish Democracies, then you have that swept away during the middle ages.

When I say "simple" I mean the concept isn't all that hard to understand. As opposed to simplistic. It's still pretty complex.

 

[dblack]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

You're equivocating between existential freedom and government protected rights. The concepts are related, but not at all the same thing.

Whether government protects a given natural right has no bearing on whether the right exists. The question is whether someone can expect government to protect it or not. It's not a simple concept, but neither is it terribly subtle. Natural rights are existential freedoms that we have as a result of having volition.

The question is, which of these rights should government protect? It was the, literally revolutionary, notion of the framers that government should strive to protect freedom as a general principle. Which is what I believe TJ was trying to get across in the preamble to the declaration. The natural rights angle was his way of turning the tables on the prevailing view (which, sadly, many people here seem to share) that any freedoms we might enjoy are favors granted to us by authority (then the king, today the federal government).

This sort of assumes that government is a separate entity.

Nope. I'm making no such assumption.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Galileo.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/scien...94-how-to-define-scientist-2.html#post4115014

I'm sorry but that isn't how science works.

It's based on Observation and repeat-ability. One who does anything else is no longer being a scientist.

Is it?

What repeatability do we have to support the Big Bang Theory? Evolution? Astrophysics?

I love it when people who barely understand grade school science try to educate me about how science works.

There is plenty of "repeatability" in evolution. You should know that.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

There is your problem, you think rights are abstract.

So you say rights are not abstract things? If so what are they?

No more abstract than life is.

The thing is you will wear people down with some imbecilic lesson you most likely learned in school. You will take almost any thread with a mention of science and turn it into a QW show where you point out where people do not understand the scientific method or some such idiocy.

It gets boring. You do it all the time. People mention 'shit' and you bring it to your bullshit game. Mention nature and rights as in natural rights and off you go bending a discussion to the same old QW mind fuck where you imagine you're some kind of a Galileo battling the dogmatic heathens.

Do you ever make yourself sick?

an alternative universe where Galileo

You should read about how Galileo

 

[Quantum Windbag]

and when Koios mentioned the evolution of the universe it was not in the sense of it being a biological entity explained by the theory of evolution. a complex sentence or thought seems to throw you into bizzaro land
\
you have a history of a difficult time with reading and comprehension skills

When Koi mentioned evolution it was in response to your idiotic claim that the Theory of Evolution is fact. He then tried to tie the Theory of Evolution in with the Big Bang by saying that progress is evolution, which is absurd.

Progression. Not progress. My apologies for not clarifying, which I should since you're so far above me, intellectually.

Progress/ progression is change in a direction that is considered forward.

Evolution is change,

Forward,
Backward,
Sideways,
Doesn't matter, all that matters is the change.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Rights come from government.

It's a pretty simple concept.

Again, very easy to prove. All you have to do is document a single instance of any government in history taking the right of a living person to life and bringing back a dead person.

Until you can do that some rights, quite clearly, do not come from the government.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So you say rights are not abstract things? If so what are they?

No more abstract than life is.

The thing is you will wear people down with some imbecilic lesson you most likely learned in school. You will take almost any thread with a mention of science and turn it into a QW show where you point out where people do not understand the scientific method or some such idiocy.

It gets boring. You do it all the time. People mention 'shit' and you bring it to your bullshit game. Mention nature and rights as in natural rights and off you go bending a discussion to the same old QW mind fuck where you imagine you're some kind of a Galileo battling the dogmatic heathens.

Do you ever make yourself sick?

an alternative universe where Galileo

You should read about how Galileo

Unlike you, who never make a thread about anything other than the actual subject.

 

[hazlnut]

You have the natural right to fart. Even in an elevator.

 

[akelch]

We have a natural right to defend what is ours, nothing more.

Now all that's left is to define what's "yours", and the lengths which you have been authorized to defend it.

It's all subjective, folks. Everything except for breathing.

The only nature rights a person has is "free will". To do what one wants.

We choose our own actions.

 

[Jimmy_Jam]

About the only thing useful I've seen come out of this thread was the invitation by somebody to read John Locke. I hope a few people at least took the poster up on that.

Wouldn't do about half these people any good even if they did. They can't be bothered to understand what he's talking about.

You're probably right, but I'm more concerned about the benefit to the other half.

 

[hazlnut]

Can we now sum up this thread.

All 'rights' are a creation of organized Government.

They can be given, and they can be taken away.

We are a government of the people, by the people. If the PEOPLE decide they want less guns. Then that is how it will be.

God is only a means to align our moral compass. If we, as a society believe on a spiritual level that violence and murder are wrong, then we as a society must act to diminish murder and violence.

Less guns. Period.

To the extent a paranoid and fearful minority of NRA nuts get in our way, well, it might get ugly for a minute or two, but in the long run, we will be a more peaceful society with them gone or in prison.

 

[Oddball]

Can we now sum up this thread.

All 'rights' are a creation of organized Government.

They can be given, and they can be taken away.

Then they are not rights...They are privileges and we are all the chattel property of Big Daddy Big Gubmint.

Thank you, King George.

 

[hazlnut]

Can we now sum up this thread.

All 'rights' are a creation of organized Government.

They can be given, and they can be taken away.

Then they are not rights...They are privileges and we are all the chattel property of Big Daddy Big Gubmint.

Thank you, King George.

Semantics.

Ask someone in a more repressive country if they see our 'free speech' and 'free press' as merely a privilege.

The right to consume alcohol was taken and away and given back via the same government process. There was a massive moral movement against it, then a movement to make it legal again.

King George wasn't elected. Dope.

King George didn't have to deal with checks and balances like judicial review. Idiot.

Mod? Seriously?

 

[Oddball]

No, it's not semantics.

The concept of natural rights presumes that we all have our rights in precedence to lawful de jure government....And in fact it is the protection of those rights that is its primary (arguably only) role in our lives.

Your idiotic despotic definition of rights is that gubmint exists in precedence to and is greater than the people who formed it, and it is master of the people, not their servant.

That the feds stuck their noses into the business of the people and outlawed alcohol is representative of what happens when they get out of their box...They create black markets, chaos and chaos.

You're in way over your head here, sport.

 

[Dreamy]

Can we now sum up this thread.

All 'rights' are a creation of organized Government.

They can be given, and they can be taken away.

Then they are not rights...They are privileges and we are all the chattel property of Big Daddy Big Gubmint.

Thank you, King George.

Semantics.

Ask someone in a more repressive country if they see our 'free speech' and 'free press' as merely a privilege.

The right to consume alcohol was taken and away and given back via the same government process. There was a massive moral movement against it, then a movement to make it legal again.

King George wasn't elected. Dope.

King George didn't have to deal with checks and balances like judicial review. Idiot.

Mod? Seriously?

Which came first, government or man/woman?

They are birthrights bestowed by God for those who believe and by birth for those who do not. They are universal to all human beings and government law exists to protect those birthrights.

The federal government that we the people created was and should be subject to us always and never the other way around.

We have no kings in the US and ideally our government was formed to do the will of the people, NOT the will of the king as in other lands.

 

[Koios]

When Koi mentioned evolution it was in response to your idiotic claim that the Theory of Evolution is fact. He then tried to tie the Theory of Evolution in with the Big Bang by saying that progress is evolution, which is absurd.

Progression. Not progress. My apologies for not clarifying, which I should since you're so far above me, intellectually.

Progress/ progression is change in a direction that is considered forward.

Evolution is change,

Forward,
Backward,
Sideways,
Doesn't matter, all that matters is the change.

Is English your first language? Maybe I'm being too hard on you.

Progress generally means improvement, and forward movement. I think most would agree that that would be the common perception when hearing / reading "progress."

Progression is merely an ordered set of steps / circumstances toward an outcome. Some might think it's only in a positive direction, but it is not. Example: What was the progression in Meth use, in America? (Tip: began in Portland, OR, and is progressing Eastwardly. It that a positive thing? Of course not.)

Or simply google "downward progression." You'll likely get millions of hits.

 

[hazlnut]

Then they are not rights...They are privileges and we are all the chattel property of Big Daddy Big Gubmint.

Thank you, King George.

Semantics.

Ask someone in a more repressive country if they see our 'free speech' and 'free press' as merely a privilege.

The right to consume alcohol was taken and away and given back via the same government process. There was a massive moral movement against it, then a movement to make it legal again.

King George wasn't elected. Dope.

King George didn't have to deal with checks and balances like judicial review. Idiot.

Mod? Seriously?

Which came first, government or man/woman?

They are birthrights bestowed by God for those who believe and by birth for those who do not. They are universal to all human beings and government law exists to protect those birthrights.

"God" is a man-made concept. A finite mind trying to define the infinite.

Our laws, codes, traditions, and 'RIGHTS' may be inspired by a universal creative force. But they are written down by men.

The federal government that we the people created was and should be subject to us always and never the other way around.

Agreed.

And the rights we give ourselves should benefit the majority and protect the minority.

Mititary stype weapons do neither.

We have no kings in the US and ideally our government was formed to do the will of the people, NOT the will of the king as in other lands.

You writer like a 4th grader.