Thread: Do You Believe In Natural Rights?

Originally Posted by AlbqOwl

Again the fact that somebody may assume power to deny you the liberty to exercise your unalienable rights as you choose does not mean that those rights no longer exist.

If you can't exercise a right, then it is pointless to claim it. But this completely fails to address the point I made. The aliens are claiming ownership of what they believe to be their planet since they made it. So does it belong to us or them and who makes that ultimate decision?

Originally Posted by Peter Grimm

Let me throw my 2 cents in here.

Rights, by definition, can be either legal, social, or ethical.

Beginning with the ethical - you can claim that ethics are subjective, and that's true to a marginal extent, but, largely, human ethics are universal. Nearly every culture on earth has an ethical system that boils down to the golden rule: do to others what you would have them do to you. In other words, treat people as you feel you deserve to be treated. That forms the foundation for what we might call "natural rights."

Socially, if we can agree on this guiding ethical principle, we then interpret this and begin to structure society in a way that protects these rights for the members of that society.

We then come up with laws. Laws which, of course, are unique to specific goverrmsnts and cultures but which, nonetheless, share a number of guiding principles.

For instance, murder is illegal in nearly every culture on earth. This implies a right to life. Theft and slavery are nearly universally illegal. This implies the right to property and liberty.

You see, we get so hung up on our differences sometimes, we start to believe morality and legality to be completely subjective and cultural. In fact, our commonalities are much more profound and run much deeper than our differences.

Every child learns not to hit other children, to share, to treat others with respect, etc. These shared values carry in to adulthood and in to the laws which we create for ourselves.

All rights are then subjective or relative to a society. And no, not every child learns not to hit other children. That may be your ideal and many of us share it, but that is not reality.

Originally Posted by ernst barkmann

this post will be marked and noted for further reference.

WHY? Is it a shock to you to find out that nobody can deny or limit rights that you do not have?

Originally Posted by TurtleDude

again this is a silly and irrelevant comment. we reference natural rights because they were recognized by the founders in the Bill of rights. People like you pretend that the Bill of rights is extremely limited and the Bill of rights' prohibitions on the actions of the federal government are extremely narrow. We who do not worship the federal government understand that the founders believed in natural rights and intended to prevent the federal government from raping those natural rights. They did this two ways

1) they NEVER EVER gave the federal government the power to interfere with those rights in the main body of the constitution and when some of the founders were worried about dishonest politicians in the future pretending that the federal government had any power not specifically denied it,

2) they created the Bill of rights which was a negative restriction and restatement of that fact

You can pretend all you want that we don't have those right but the Bill of Rights proves you are incorrect.

so does the fact that the federal government was never properly delegated the power to so interfere with them

What all this vitriol is about - well - that is a mystery because all I told you was that nobody can deny you rights that you don't have in the first place. Any rational person dealing with reality would agree with that.

Originally Posted by haymarket

WHY? Is it a shock to you to find out that nobody can deny or limit rights that you do not have?

Originally Posted by haymarket

Nobody can limit rights that you don't have in the first place.

you have declared rights do not exist..but below you say they do!



Quote Originally Posted by haymarket View Post
The 19th effectively gave females the right to vote. There is no doubt about that in the rational mind of any thinking person who knows history.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket View Post
It most certainly does and I already gave you several examples including rights contained in the Sixth Amendment and the various right to vote provisions.

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket View Post
Everything in that article confirms that the right to vote was given to women by the 19th Amendment. This proves you wrong beyond any doubt. For you to deny it - yet again - is simply a sign of your refusal to accept reality and fact because it would destroy your extremist self imposed belief system.