Yes.

So you believe we only have rights to life and liberty if the government says so? Thats sad really.

Why is it any different than if the government fails to protect a right? I presume you'll at least acknowledge that the government doesn't always protect rights.



Most certainly they do.

Let me put the gist of your question back to you: Does your life have a meaningful existence if there is nothing in place to guarantee you can live?



Impossible, yes. So let's not pretend that we're doing so anyways. Most win/few lose, well what about the people who don't accept the odds?



We aren't?



You know, there was a whole group of people who helped found this country who felt the same way. They even write about them in the history books as opposing the Bill of Rights because they didn't think rights needed to be enumerated at all. People already had their rights, what was the point of listing them?

Some of us live in the world that is, and not the magical world that ought to be.

A right is an expectation to be treated a certain way, and therefore a matter between equals.

Natural rights? Go to the slaughterhouse and tell the animals there that they have natural rights



Government =/= social contract. Even if we dissolved government we would still have society, and rights insofar as we agree to have them amongst ourselves, which would require all of us to act a certain way.

Nature is a construct, rights are a construct, natural rights doubly so.

This post was edited by Skinned on Feb 26 2015 05:45am

The3 opposite of what I believe makes me sad. That's why I believe it. Because the truth is whatever makes me happiest. Have you seen my Unicorn stable? I own several. We take baths in gummy bears together.

Or we can examine the notion that rights don't exist for all creatures, just humans. When did they come about on the timetable of evolution? Did our most recent genetic ancestor have rights? If so why were there no mention of them until the 1700's? If they did then when did they come into being on the genetic timeline? And when the homo sapient evolves into something else eventually will their rights go away or change?

It seems like tying rights to nature inextricably puts you in a position that ties the idea with Rights with evolution, and then you're left to decide what steps of evolution is necessary for the idea of right to exist....does one only need to be able to imagine the world that ought to be to imagine a concept of right? Well that would be a purely human creation, with human rules and human justifications.

Can rights exist independent of a government? Theoretically yes, as long as there were bonds within the society that could require people to act a certain way without the use of violence, but we can't fall back on anything like rational self-interest when dealing with animals like us though, especially given our violent natures and all the repressed violent urges that go on under the social contract...violent sports and war only takes us far enough in satisfying these urges and some people can't participate in those things.

This post was edited by Skinned on Feb 26 2015 06:18am

at bolded Seeing how we are human and discussing about how we should or would "get along" with other humans at this point in our specie's development why is this assumption wrong? Why not work within the boundaries we are given?

Do you really place such little hope in your fellow man to be able to have such low capacity to hold onto a base knowledge of right and wrong? For others to want to act civilly? Or is it in yourself where the faith fails do you fear that you wouldn't adhere to the most basic concepts of right and wrong without a government to scare you into behaving that way? If you answer no to the last then why do you feel that you are that much superior to your neighbor?

@ bold: You could have fooled me, especially considering how government invariably arises as the means to upholding rights with all the statists around here.

@ red: is that not the definition of natural rights?



I think you're hung up on a misconception regarding what natural rights are. A natural right isn't something you expect out of the wild, dog-eat-dog competition for survival found out IN nature. I suggest you take a gander at the wiki on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights

An example would be helpful.

well for however long you are alive before you die and in some cases well beyond your death your life would still have some meaning

We can start with the easy stuff. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let me ask you this: do you believe that the concept of negative rights is a valid concept?



Well there you go. Thank you.