Where do your Rights come from?

Suburbanite · #**101** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 12:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dom1

My 'perspective' as you call it is from understanding what the word inalienable means, what our Founding Fathers said, and what document we get our rights from. Not my fault if you know none of this.

No shit, of course I know all of this common knowledge, it isn't a fact though, its just an assertion from some old people called our Founding Fathers. They weren't that fucking smart, and if you're repeating them hundreds of years later, you must be even fucking stupider. Just because the DOI claims your rights are inalienable clearly doesn't make that so... I don't GET your point you seem defeated overwhelmingly.

Suburbanite · #**102** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inelpaso

We have at least one inalienable right, the right of choice (laws are only incentives and rules), to choose to love or hate, to obey or disobey, to believe or disbelieve, to live or die, on and on and on. No man, no man made law can take away your right of choice.

an abortion will do the trick, or torture, classical conditioning, brainwashing... of course the real point is why consider anything a right? whats the benefit of this weird way of thinking?

W.J. Wilczek · #**103** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 12:18 PM

I cannot help but laugh whenever someone resurrects the “founding fathers” for some improbable thesis in a vain effort to rewrite our history. Our so-called founding fathers, when viewed candidly, were colorful enough characters without our adding varnish to them. Franklin, who is considered to be the “First American” came close to forsaking hearth and home for England. Even Jefferson, with all his slaves (he owned over 600 during his lifetime), was hardly the liberal reformer we would have him be; and despite the efforts of modern-day Christians to convert him, the truth is that he was a deist, who had no qualms about revising the Bible to suit himself. See The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (1820). The “times that try men’s souls” bring out firebrands like Paine; who, if he was not a founding father, was certainly the midwife of American independence, and abetter to the overthrow of the French monarchy as well. Like Jesus, we would not be able to stand him. (Indeed, Paine was such a pain in the arse that he managed to make himself persona non grata in England, America and France!) Our perception of these characters is clouded by the dark glass of history, and distorted by attributions that represent so much wishful (rather than critical) thinking. It is like crediting Rembrandt’s paintings with depth of hue when their darkness is due to his using cheap paint.

Suburbanite · #**104** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 12:38 PM

The darkness is because he used a method called chiaroscuro, in the fashion of many renaissance predecessors, including Raphael and DaVinci. I'd like to know where you got your information from...

Inelpaso · #**105** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 12:58 PM

Rights: We have individual rights, i.e. right to life, liberty, and to pursue happiness; we have social rights: right to freely express our beliefs, to gather in groups; we have legal rights: to trial, to legal representation; we have civil rights, equal rights...
Origin: My research suggest individual rights originated in Isalmic and social/legal rights from the Code of Hammurabi. Many claim that God gave man the right to chose between good and evil. The English Bill of Rights predates our Bill of Rights and is very similar.

Inelpaso · #**106** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suburbanite

Our constitution grants us a shit load of rights in a legal sense, though if you think those rights are inalienable you're full of it

Individual rights are inalienable, Social rights (those in the constirution) are alienable rights. You can and do have both.

Suburbanite · #**107** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inelpaso

Individual rights are inalienable, Social rights (those in the constirution) are alienable rights. You can and do have both.

nothing is inalienable about your rights

Inelpaso · #**108** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suburbanite

nothing is inalienable about your rights

Don't get suicidal now.

smart makes a comeback · #**109** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virgil Kaine

Basically I'm asking, do people have any expectation of how they should be treated here on earth? Where does this expectation come from? Is there a right and a wrong. Who decides which is which?

Two seperate issues.
"Right and wrong" are relitive and situational, as are expectations
It is the function of any civilized culture to collectivly decide what rights are granted, as well as any mitigation and exception

Are Your Rights GIVEN to you by your government? OR Are Rights inalienable? GIVEN to you by God?

In a discussion of "Rights", GOD is a non issue

Is it not so that with one you owe the very air you breathe to whim and the good grace of the government? That the government is the ultimate authority?

It is,, at least in theory, a collective entitry, in which individuals play the role of electing and appointing, be in directly or indirectly, their "voice" by proxy. If there is a debt, it is a debt owed to one self and the collective

Is it also not so that with God given rights your government has to at least try not to violate your rights?

The "God given rights" is the syntax of fairy tales.and were at best, hyperbole by the founders.
As many times as they mad reference to it, they as a counterbalance, either ommited it or reputiated it.
Fact is "GOD" makes "inalienable" mute and self contradictory

The thing that MUST be mentionedin a discussion like this, is that one must seperate "Rights" and "Freedom" as seperate issues. many either lump the two together,or confuse one with the other.

ricechickie · #**110** (**permalink**) 05-26-2008, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virgil Kaine

Basically I'm asking, do people have any expectation of how they should be treated here on earth? Where does this expectation come from? Is there a right and a wrong. Who decides which is which?

Are Your Rights GIVEN to you by your government? OR Are Rights inalienable? GIVEN to you by God?

Is it not so that with one you owe the very air you breathe to whim and the good grace of the government? That the government is the ultimate authority?

Is it also not so that with God given rights your government has to at least try not to violate your rights?

I don't believe "God" gives us any rights. If he did, there wouldn't need to be any such entity as a government to protect them.

I don't think the government gives rights, per se, but they certainly decide which ones are worth protecting.

We Americans don't think of the government as "granting" us rights, because the government is supposed to work for us, but through that decision-making process (of which rights are protected) they in fact, are granting rights.

Of course, I claim that any right that the government doesn't touch upon (say, the right to wear stripes) is still my decision.