What is a right?

So what do you all feel is the actual definition of a right? Please keep in mind that this is intended to Ben a discussion on what rights are and should be and not how current or past law has treated them. We can all come up with examples of how laws violate rights.

I say that a right is something which cannot not be denied you by law, and in some cases, by others. By and large, however, this does not provide a mandate for you to receive such, nor force others to provide such.

If you have a right to free speech, then the government cannot make laws restricting what you can say. Nor can any individual restrict your speech. However, no individual has to listen to what you say, and any individual business or even government facility (under certain conditions) can remove you from their property for exercising such right. To be clear with the government facility part, I am not talking about public venues that are supposed to be common ground for all. Protesting outside the courthouse is within one's right, while shouting outside the actual courtroom would not be. Additionally for your right of free speech, no one has to provide you a venue by which to excercise said right. No radio or tv station is required to provide you air time. You are not guaranteed a place at the local auditorium for your rants or speeches. If you want to look at the right as covering all forms of expression (which for the record I do believe that freedom of speech is a subset of one's freedom of expression) no one has to publish your works or display then either.

If there is a right to health care, then, again, no law can be made restricting you from receiving such. This does not mean, however, that you can force anyone to provide you with health care. At the most base level, no one can be made to enter into the health care field. If there are no providers for health care, your right to health care has not been violated. Likewise, even if one existed, their right of association, as well as private property right, means they are not required to do business with you. Your right to health care is not violated, as you can still seek health care elsewhere. In the same vein, assuming the health care provider is willing to do business with you, I cannot stop you from seeing him. This violates both you and the business owner's/provider's rights. Now I can still stand outside, even right by the door, if the owner lets me get away with it, and try to convince/intice/pressure you into not going to that provider, per my free speech rights.

Naturally, we have the whole point of one person's rights end where another's begins. I have a right to throw a punch, but not to connect that punch to another person's body or property without permission. Similarly, I have to right to give another the permission to hit me in any way I desire. I know there are going to be points of contention of where one right ends and another begins, so please feel free to share those here.

I would say that a RIGHT is a behavior protected by law.

haymarket said:

I would say that a RIGHT is a behavior protected by law.

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Hmm... that means the law makers control (allocate?) your rights. I would say a right is that which can only be removed by due process of law - e.g. as a sentence imposed after criminal conviction. Where things get a bit tricky is that we have a right to avoid (refuse?) self incrimination yet may be charged with not filing an income tax return - the only thing needed to convict us is that we elected not to self report income.

ttwtt78640 said:

Hmm... that means the law makers control (allocate?) your rights. I would say a right is that which can only be removed by due process of law - e.g. as a sentence imposed after criminal conviction. Where things get a bit tricky is that we have a right to avoid (refuse?) self incrimination yet may be charged with not filing an income tax return - the only thing needed to convict us is that we elected not to self report income.

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Of course they do. Every nation with any power controls what rights its citizenry has. That is as old as the proverbial hills.

Your rights are what your government cannot do to you. They can be invoked in a court of law and that court must respect them. They are the things that separate a republic from a democracy, the things that you don't have the right to vote away.

Your rights are what you determine them to be not what the government gives you. Yes the government can control what we do and can attempt to regulate or remove your rights, but that does not mean your rights have been lost they are just being control by a government and if you moved to another Nation you might not be. One can decide whether they wish to obey those government rules, try and change the government, leave, or simply ignore the rules when they deem those rules as a violation of their rights. And example is Alcohol and Drug use, both have been made illegal at one point or another yet Millions decided that they felt it was their life and choice if they would use those products or not, the government dropped the ban on alcohol but keep some rules and of-course cash in on it, anyone notice the hypocrisy there? The same is going on with pot. Rights are not given by a government but they are often regulated.

haymarket said:

Of course they do. Every nation with any power controls what rights its citizenry has. That is as old as the proverbial hills.

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Every citizen with rights controls what power their government has.

ttwtt78640 said:

Every citizen with rights controls what power their government has.

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Maybe... it depends on the nation and it depends on the citizenry. In an ideal world - yes. But in reality - if you claim you have a right and the government of your nation says you do NOT have that right and they have the power to back up their judgment - then you do NOT have that right. That is simply reality no matter if we like it or not.

ttwtt78640 said:

Hmm... that means the law makers control (allocate?) your rights. I would say a right is that which can only be removed by due process of law - e.g. as a sentence imposed after criminal conviction. Where things get a bit tricky is that we have a right to avoid (refuse?) self incrimination yet may be charged with not filing an income tax return - the only thing needed to convict us is that we elected not to self report income.

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According to Thomas Paine and others of his time, the Rights Of Man precede the existence of government. The true purpose of government is protect those rights of men.

So if We The People created this government of ours, how can that government control our rights? It can infringe upon our rights, as it does so often, but how can it allocate our rights, other than certain procedural rights?

A right is the ability to make our own decisions as long as we live with the results of those decisions and as long as what we decide doesn't impinge on the rights of others. The government's job is to protect my rights from the decisions of others, and not to protect me from my own decisions.

Don't expect any right(s) on this site!

It’s hard to say given the fundamental philosophical nature of rights. Rights, in the end, are not some concrete property, you cannot hold it, you cannot see it. It’s a construct of philosophy and morality. As a firm believer in natural rights, I do accept that they exist. I tend to follow Kant a bit on his derivation of natural rights through the metaphysics of morality. But what is a right?

I think that a right is a natural limitation to justified force against your person, it is innate and inalienable. While various governments may have different sets of recognized “rights”, additional privileges, or even not recognize the rights of the individual at all; all humans have the same basic set of rights, rooted in life, liberty, and property. Rights limit the legitimate force of government and for the fundamentals, the justified force of other individuals against yourself. Of course, being a concept of abstraction rather than some concrete item, it does mean that force can still be applied, it’s just that the force is not justified.

I think this is an important factor to understand because it’s easy to get caught only in the concrete and say “well if a government doesn’t recognize your right to life, you don’t have it” or “anyone can shoot kill you, so you don’t have a right to life”. They take the fact that unjustified or illegitimate force can be applied, but that sort of force can always be applied. Rights give us the justification to resist that force, and to construct establishments to help police and punish those who do engage in the use of unjustified force.

If rights were merely defined fully by government, then under what circumstance are you justified to revolt? Never. You don’t have the right to revolt, you don’t have the right to have your rights recognized and protected, what the authority says is the word of god and you must obey. Every revolt is then some selfish outlash that is never fundamentally justified. You revolt because you feel like it. But when oppressed, is it not justified to revolt? How can you be oppressed without rights? Why is oppression understood neigh universally by humanity? It’s because we fundamentally understand that all humans have rights and that there are circumstances in which one is abused and their rights infringed upon, that we can see the justification in the revolt.

Rights are not some magical limitation to all force, but they do set restrictions on what type of force can be justly used and when. While the free exercise of the rights can be infringed upon by unjustified force, the right itself can never be taken away. It’s innate and inalienable to the individual.