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?

Prove your god exsits first, then we can consider that portion of your arguement.

It is the common consensus of the people that provide what constitutes "rights".

I'm not going to waste my time proving God that's not my point.

"It is the common consensus of the people that provide what constitutes "rights"."

O.K. let's go with that. So no one has any "rights" until a consensus of the people, through some sort of government (guessing on the government part) grants it to them?

And then doesn't it follow that any "right" granted by this method could be taken away the same way?

And doesn't it follow that any right that can be taken away legally isn't really a right it's a privilege?

Now don't get all wadded up. Because sometimes it seems the world really works this way. Doesn't it mean we have nothing and are nothing until somebody else tells us we can have something and be something?

According to the Constitution we are endowed with rights by our creator, whoever you perceive that to be. According to Ayn Rand we have rights because we are human and it is our humanity that endows us with rights. I don't see a fundalmental difference between those two statements. Governments no more give us rights then they give us life, they either protect those rights with which we have been endowed or they take them away.

The real question is not who gives us rights, no human secular force gives us rights, we have them because we are alive. The real question is what rights do we really have.

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Its better to have fussed and crabbed then never to have fussed at all - Lucy

Well said. I certainly don't think I'm qualified to decide what rights to give to someone else, any more than they are fit to give me rights. I really like it put this way, "we have them because we are alive."

"The real question is what rights we really have."

I think of the "Big Three" Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. I do think that some people get the right of Pursuit of Happiness confused with a "Right of Happiness."

Are there more rights I left out?

I have many expectations of how I am to be treated. They're based on a collection of information I received interpersonally, that is to say I have expectations of my society because I've learned a language which helps me describe and predict their actions and responses. So this expectation comes from our language. For example, we describe one type of behavior as making someone a bully, therefor being able to predict that bully's actions we're able to avoid conflict with said bully.
There is no right and wrong. People who think in those terms are unequivocally less capable of actually being a helpful person. Instead of living life with simple tenants, help those in need, the righteous tend to create a belief structure (like what you've done) that put them and their kind into a frame of moral superiority. There are no morals, so these people are standing on a fake pedestal. It happens to people like myself all the time:
I'll make an opinion not based on lofty ideals but on rational executable pragmatic ideals. As a result someone, usually a woman or a pussy, will accuse me of being immoral. For example, once while on a trip with some friends, one friend began to become burdensome to the rest. Very quickly in our trip, I told him how people were feeling and told him what, specifically, he had to do to change that opinion. This girl on the trip said I was being a dick, that I shouldn't have made things "awkward". I told her that her moral high ground on this issue wasnt going to save her, she was feeling as nauseated by this person as the rest of us and just as complacent in influencing me to call this person out. Yet once the calling out commenced, she was denying her involvement calling me immoral, telling me I was wrong and mean and other useless shit.
So you want to know how rights are maintained? With willpower. Not God, not fairy dust, not "social contract theory" or anything else. Rights are ONLY for those who insist upon them.

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

All rights are given by your local Zionist overlord .

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"The greatest freedom, is the freedom to oppress others"


"Israel is a Paradise" : Canuck.

an equally ridiculous assertion. humans don't come with something called rights when they are born, this is a concept created by idiots who thought the idea might save their sorry asses from something down the line. But it won't. Thats why we have the 2nd amendment, so that we may insist upon the other amendments.

Care to show where your creator deity is even mentioned in the Constitution, please?

Our rights come from "We the People".