Rights Are Exclusive Claims

Added on October 4th, 2014 by Chet Manley | Report Post
Tags:Humor, Politics

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anonymouscommenter (#191098)

9 years ago

More specifically, having “the right to X” means that X cannot be taken away from you without one hell of a good reason (eg., you plan to use X to kill people), not that the government must give you a ton of X without you having to move a finger for it.

Gropegrope (#189286)

9 years ago

Semantics.

No rights are inherent.
You have whatever “rights” your particular society, culture or government allow you to have. (or “grants” you)

Do governments have a right to collect taxes for instance…?
It may not be an exclusive right, but if you want to call yourself a citizen, then you are giving them that right.
Do homosexuals have the right to marry? This is an exclusive right that hasn’t been granted until very recently.

The idea of rights does not exist in a vacuum.
Humans are a social animal with very complex social systems.
To speak about rights, without looking at the whole picture (like how rights affect society in the spectrum from anarchy to order) is grossly overly simplifying the issue.

drevil007 (#191102)

Reply to Gropegrope

9 years ago

You described entitlements which far too many confuse with rights. As human beings we are born possessing rights, the government may violate those rights, limit our ability to exercise those rights, but those inherent rights are still possessed by us. The US Constitution acknowledges that we posses rights independent of whether the Government approves of those rights or how we exercise those rights. Too many in and out of government are way too eager to violate the rights of those they do not agree with; the first step is to claim (falsely) that rights are granted by the Government.

Korinthian (#3174)

Reply to drevil007

9 years ago

What is a right that nobody acknowledges?

Gropegrope (#189286)

Reply to drevil007

9 years ago

Humans aren’t born “possessing rights”.
That’s claptrap.
Whatever rights you have are entirely dependent on whatever society, culture, country, government you were born under….or currently live in.

Assuming that the “rights” outlined in your Constitution are universal, or even “self evident” is a very shuttered ethnocentric view.
They are different in every society or culture around the world, and certainly vary across history.
They haven’t even been consistent over your own history.

And who wrote that document that lays out your “rights” anyway….?
Your first government, wasn’t it….?
And they certainly didn’t intend them to be applicable to all members of society (the poor, women, and blacks had to wait more than a century before those “rights” were extended to them.
Your constitution is entirely a political document.

You can call them rights, entitlements, freedoms, laws, morals, karma….anything you want.
Semantics.
Just language.

They only mean anything when they are put into law.
And even then, they are often “amended”….