Oh I'm sorry Ali, I didn't realize you had a time limit in place for conversations you're not involved with. Fuck off eh?

Pierce the reason why I asked is because I have intimate knowledge of the required curricula for elementary school - which includes the US history that should make the concept of natural rights abundantly clear.
I'm not trying to give you shit for being anti-gun, I'm just amazed and saddened that you don't seem to be able to grasp even the idea of inalienable rights. If anyone should be able to, it is a graduate of US public schools, whether they're a redneck or not.

No one gives us our rights. If they could be given (by society, by the king, by whomever) - they would be privileges.

It's a public forum jinx. I can ask any question I like. I guess I could tell you to fuck off after interjecting in the convo I was having with Radar in the first place?

Aside from that, I was interested to know why you'd asked in the first place. I wondered what the relevance was to the topic.

You could, but you probably have more important shit to stir somewhere.

No, I probably wouldn't because I wouldn't speak to you like that.

You wouldn't call me arrogant for asking a question - or you wouldn't tell me to fuck off?

I wouldn't tell you to fuck off jinx. I thought that was pretty clear.

I do think not explaining why you're asking a loaded question like that is arrogant. Maybe that's just my perception after being told on this very site that public school education is inferior etc blah blah blah.

So, in conclusion, I apologize if you were offended by my statement, however it was more Radars suggestion that it was clear PH was public school educated that pissed me off, so perhaps I should have directed my question directly to him rather than leaving it open for comment.

Yes, it was actually Radar's snarkyness that made me need to step away from the discussion. It wasn't my intention to belittle pierce, I went to public schools myself. That's where I first learned about inalienable rights. Apparently things have changed though.

I think all education is what you make of it. I've seen some brilliant results from public education and some really shitty results from the most expensive private education.

It all comes down to attitude in my opinion. that of the student which generally is imparted by the parent.

I also believe education has changed a lot since the generation of schooling you and I went through. Schools have far more leeway now with how and what they teach and where the focus is. I suppose if you went to a school which focussed on different issues, you might come up with a different education, or if you have a teacher who encourages you to look at things from a different perspective.

Holding a very similar viewpoint as PH, I have to say that I don't think his education can be blamed. He's certainly presenting his argument very well in my opinion. I wish I had half the patience he has and a quarter of his doggedness.

You think he's presenting his argument well?

He has changed his position on society bestowing rights on people. He thinks our rights change based on what the opinion of our rights happen to be. In other words, if Hitler thinks you don't have a right to live and the "society" of Germany agrees, it means you don't have a right to live. He wants to shy away from the right to life. But the right to life is no different than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to private property ownership, or any of our other rights.

Jinx said it brilliantly

Well, at least he's presenting an argument.

Your argument has been:
1) Because of gravity.
2) I've proven it in several unspecified locations.
3) I can shoot you.

Well you seem to understand what his argument is Radar. I'd say that means he's presented it well.

Whether you agree with his argument or not is another issue. One which we all know the answer to already anyway.

I disagree with your stance and I disagree with some of what jinx believes. I've stated the reasons why. Any further comment would be like flogging a dead horse.

Amen.

I've cited dozens of books and pamphlets he can read. I've explained it so simply a child can understand it. So you are either more dense than a child or just too stubborn to read.

I'll break it down once more.

Natural rights come from nature. We are born with our rights. They don't come from "society".

We are born with the RIGHT to life that even pierce doesn't dispute. Because we are born with the right to life, we are also born with the right to defend that life by any means necessary. Because we own our life, we own our body. Because we own our mind we have the right to think freely. Because we own our voice we have the right to speak freely. Because we own our labor, nobody else is entitled to it or to the fruits of it.

A right is the exact opposite of a privilege.

Michael Badnarik does a great job of explaining the difference between rights and privileges here....

http://www.constitutionpreservation....s/chapter2.pdf

Here are some links to pamphlets that explain natural rights and natural law...

http://www.constitution.org/law/bastiat.htm

http://jim.com/spooner.htm

Here is the Declaration of Independence

http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html

Here is the Magna Carta

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/magnacarta.html

Here is the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Here is Peter McWilliam's Book, "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do"

http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/aint


Take your fucking pick and actually read instead of lying by claiming that I haven't proved each and every word I've said, or that I haven't cited credible and reliable sources to verify what I'm saying

If you disagree with any part of anything I've said, you are a fucking blithering idiot.

I've also said that society is nothing but a group of individuals. Society has no more rights or powers than a single individual. If one person has no legitimate authority to tell another that they may not own a gun, neither do a thousand people, a million people, or a billion people.

If society decides what our rights are or bestows our rights upon us, where does society get this power or the rights? Society is made up of individuals. Clearly power comes from these individuals. And if individuals have power on their own before a society is created, it means individual people are born with these powers and they were bestowed upon us by nature.

I think this was from WIKI - I was doing investigating and forgot - sorry.

A privilege—etymologically "private law" or law relating to a specific individual—is a special entitlement or immunity granted by a government or other authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis. A privilege can be revoked in some cases. In modern democracies, a privilege is conditional and granted only after birth. By contrast, a right is an inherent, irrevocable entitlement held by all citizens or all human beings from birth. :eyebrow:

Juat a little fuel for the fire. I am torn by this whole discussion - I was sure and now I'm vascillating on a workable definition.

radar is dead on.....as usual. hear him.

you give away your rights at your peril. i agree with limiting one's rights in order to get along in an equitable transactional relationship with the rest of society. but when you allow a government or a religion to dictate your rights.....you're already dead.

You just gave a very good one.

Oh, I'll answer, gentlemen, and in my own good time, thank you. There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive; I've read enough of you to know that.

I hide nothing from myself, UT. In that you are remarkably mistaken. Should you think you have reason to believe me wrong, try proving it. I can wait, too.

I suppose I should add that I only skimmed pierce's nice long posts, so there's only a skimmer of a response. A more thorough reply awaits a more thorough reading.

My goodness, dude, I don't even have to leave this message to see you hiding things from yourself. You express a beautiful madness right here.

You say "There is none here capable of putting me on the defensive." This is "conclusion first, argument second", and is not critical thinking.

You have positioned your argument as correct, even while noting (in other posts) that you've only skimmed the other statements and are preparing your retort. In your mind, there is no chance that PH has made a valid point. Now the game for you is merely to express your side well, with flowery language, and feel safe and secure that you have somehow "won".

True consideration of the others' points is not necessary, and in all your time here we have never seen you do it.


Now I can't "prove" to you that you are hiding things from yourself. All I can say is that I've seen a lot of people argue a lot of different things, using a lot of different techniques. Your approach is all insecure pseudo-intellectualism. You seem like a smart guy, but you don't write for communication, you write to make people think you're a smart guy. You construct the utterly passive "In that you are remarkably mistaken", avoiding the active and direct "You're wrong." It annoys your readers and waters down your points.

Now, I don't mean to drive you off -- really not my intent -- but if you aren't writing to communicate, and you believe that nobody here can offer you any fresh insight,... why are you here? You're not listening to anyone, and you're not speaking in a way that makes people listen to you. Do you not notice that this is a social website and that communication between us is the whole point of being here?

You haven't proven anything, just restated your assumptions. I don't necessarily disagree that they are good assumptions, or that they are a good basis for government, but they are nothing more than assumptions. There is no proof there.

And for good reason. Rights are ideals. They are not subject to proof.

I am here in part because I can offer you fresh insight. And why would there be refusal to accept it? Contemplate that.

And where would I get the idea I can offer fresh insight, you may ask? Well, just why wouldn't I?

There is a difference between "evading" and "taking my time. There are those who would loudly insist I'm doing the one, when I'm doing the other -- shame on you.

Are not those opposing my ideological points on ideological grounds speaking in service of a worthless ideology? Let's see: arms -- collective, without individual. What?! Foreign policy -- leave fascists and fascism/communism alone. To what end?! Offered an ideology of liberty, they cling the more to chains, as if there were virtue in shackles.

I mean, come on, people.

And why is your idea of madness, UT, so very strange? I'll put to you the question of what on Earth you're so sure I'm "hiding from myself." You post to allege I'm hiding... something. Something very unspecified.

Well, that's my filter: I require conversation, not lectures. Two-way honest communication, where two different collections of insights and perceptions are in play.

Because it seems obvious to me that there is more wisdom in the crowd than in any one person, even more wisdom in two smart people than in any one smart person. And the Internet is living, breathing proof of that concept.


And the more I think that I am communicating with someone who isn't a critical thinker, the less likely I am to accept their "insights" as up for heavy consideration.

And the less someone writes for communication, the less I am interested in what they have to say. Because not writing for communication is contempt for the reader.

Addendum. Since you have basically indicated that you are here to lecture, and that all of us are beneath your consideration, I wonder if there is anyone left who will take your opinion seriously.

Is there anyone reading this who'd like to speak up on UG's behalf?

i've often thought that UG was really just TW's sock puppet that he uses as a ridicule magnet for far right wackiness.

Tw wouldn't agree with that one, and for once he'd be right.

Make yourself worthy of consideration then. It's not impossible, just use all three digits of your IQ at once -- too many here just don't seem to do that, and it seems to have its root in regrettable unexamined assumptions. All I want is smart. I don't always get all I want.

And then you take a hard look at how people have behaved when in bunches, sometimes. The record is not one to give complete confidence. Even the smart, at best, make avoidable mistakes, and there's the further difficulty that smart does not necessarily mean good.

But rather than sing a paean to autocracy, I say this is a dilemma. Heinlein summed it up well in an interlude in Time Enough For Love that went something like this: Democracy is based on the assumption that many men are wiser than one man. How's that again? Dictatorship is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than many men. Um, what?

Are you really going to fully trust either way? Not me, mister.

I gotta call you on this one UG. Just simply answer the simple questions put forth by Pierce? What you have done is a classic, albiet unsuccessful, attempt at a diversion. You have now been gently guided back to the issue at hand. Post #166 is still waiting for your eloquent reply.

Yes, any country with a nuclear weapon will not get attacked by a conventional enemy. Iran notes this, that is why I even have doubts of them giving up their nuclear weapon program in 2003. The part about them bombing Israel or giving their future nuclear weapons away is a load of crap, it doesn't make sense, but I do believe nuclear weapons is on Iran's agenda.

We did learn about unalienable rights in public school, I just disagree with that idea.

If someone attacks me with a knife, I will defend myself whether it is a right or a privilege.

Either way, besides a minor few things all we are disagreeing on is semantics. When you say discovered I say created, when you say give up I say don't have the right. We get the same result either way, you just start at the top (unlimited rights) and come down (what we have now) while I start from the bottom (no right) and come up (what we have now).

I just believe that rights is an abstract concept, like morals, ethics, and freedom, because only humans can understand or use them and there is no way to test if they are actually there or not.

You did not read my post correctly Radar. I said since no one believes they don't have a right to life, no one can ethically decide if they have a right to life or not. Society can only mold people's beliefs of rights and enforce them. If Hitler believes the Jews don't have the right to life, that means he feels he doesn't need to justify killing them. If German society believes that a Jew has no right to life, that means a German growing up in that society will most likely believe that Jews don't have a right to life and that there would be no penalty for killing a Jew. A Jews can protect him or herself with the justification that he or she has the right to life. Rights, like ethics, are highly based on perspective.

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of living with a few unalienable rights because it makes things much simpler and sets very ethical guidelines 99% of the time, I just don't believe they are real. "Do unto others as you would want them to do upon you" is a horrible idea in some situations, but it is a good generalization to live by 99% of the time. Like unalienable rights, I don't believe that quote is the correct way, but I will tell other people it is because it is simple to understand, easily avoids conflict, and would be the most moral decision, in my opinion at least, 99% of the time.

Another reason I don't believe in the idea of unalienable is because there is nothing to enforce those rights besides humans. If everyone in the world besides me believed that I don't have a right to live and all 6 billion people try to kill me, there is nothing the universe or nature is going to do to stop them. The only person that can stop them is myself. If nature says that everyone has a right to life, then it would make sense that nature would enforce it, but it doesn't, hence another reason why I believe rights are man-made. Humans are the only ones that can enforce rights, so it makes sense that humans created rights. Nature enforces the laws of gravity, hence why it makes sense that nature "created" gravity.

To further my point on my second last paragraph, I will put an example scenario in the Philosophy Forum.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=16174

Nature grants us life, and all of our natural rights. Nature does not need to "enforce" rights. We protect our own rights. Another part of nature is that we die. Our lives are fragile and we have a right to defend them. Nature doesn't "enforce" the law of gravity. Gravity just is and that's part of nature. Our rights just exist. Neither our rights, nor gravity can be bought, sold, taken, or given away. They can be overcome, but that doesn't mean they cease to exist.

I can overcome the gravitational pull of the earth by getting into a rocket. The gravity still exists. I can overcome someone's right to life by killing them. It doesn't mean they didn't have that right. I can overcome their right to private property ownership by stealing from them, it doesn't mean I have a right to do so or that they don't still have the right to own property.

Our rights have nothing to do with perception. I don't have a right to life merely because I perceive myself to have it. I'd have a right to life even if I didn't know what rights were and I were dim enough to think they were created by society.

Here's a question.

Society is made up of individuals. If individuals do not have rights, where does society gain its powers from? By what authority does "society" act? How can "society" grant rights to people when the people who make up society have no rights?

In other words, how can you give something to someone that you don't have?

Also, anything that can be GIVEN can also be taken away. These are privileges. If society could give rights to people, they would cease to be rights. They would be privileges. If rights came from society, there would be no such things as rights.

If you acknowledge that we have a right to life, (and you have done so) my entire argument is proven because rights can't be bestowed upon us, they can only exist on their own.

A right inherent and is something you do not require permission to do. A privilege is permission to do something and this permission can be revoked at any time.


For instance, if I own a piece of land. I can walk across my land all day back and forth, and there isn't a single person on the face of the earth who can tell me to stop. I don't require the permission of anyone to walk across my land.

If I want to take a shortcut across YOUR land, I'd require your permission. You could grant me permission and extend the privilege of walking across your land. But in the future, if you get tired of me walking across your land, you can revoke that permission. You can never revoke my right to walk across my own land.

You said that you would defend your own life regardless of whether it were a right or a privilege. This statement alone proves it to be a right. It's something you do not require permission to do. It's something you were born with the right to do. This right can not be taken away from you. You can't sell your right to defend yourself to me because I already have a right to defend myself. I was born with it. You can't vote away your right to defend yourself. Nothing you say or do will separate your right to defend your life from your life itself. You can end your life, but then you would have no life to defend so your right to defend it is irrelevant.

As long as you have a life, you have a right to defend it. As long as you have a life, you own yourself and no other person or group of people has any claim to your life or your person. As long as you own yourself, your thoughts, speech, and labor are your own and so are the fruits of that labor. Nobody else on earth has any legitimate claim to the fruits of your labor unless you have sold those fruits or otherwise traded them.

Yes it does. Anything that gravity prohibits can't be done. Rights prohibit nothing in the absence of human enforcement.
If you attempt to do something without taking gravity into account, the punishment is failure.
If you attempt to do something without taking rights into account, the punishment is decided by yourself, in the form of guilt, and/or by the reactions of others, all of which are based entirely on perception.
This post is made up of sentences, each of which is made up of words, each of which is made up of letters. A letter doesn't have all of the properties of the post.

Again, I am not saying that we don't have rights, or that it's a bad idea to behave as if we do. What I am saying is that your assertions that rights have physical, objective reality outside the mind are unsupported. I suspect it is because they are unsupportable; not because they are false, but because the question of their validity is untestable.

Most of the examples you have given me are just proving that our disagreements have to do with wording. When it comes down to it, privilege and rights are just words that you can use to turn the argument your way. To me, there really isn't a difference between the two besides a label.

I'll try to organize my argument again.

As I mentioned before, most of disagreements are just arguing semantics coming from my bottom up approach and your top down approach.

Lets take the right/privilege to life in the United States. As most of us know, some states allow the practice of capital punishment. With this, would life be considered a right or privilege since the government has the ability to take a life from a person.

Your perspective: We have the right to life and the state is just violating that right in a certain case. The person still has a right to life but the state is violating that right. The person dies against his will.
My perspective: Our society agreed that in certain cases, we allow the state to take away our right of life. From that person's perspective, assuming he still wants to live, he has the right to life so he will defend himself but from the state's perspective he doesn't so they will kill him. The person dies against his will.

The outcome is the same in both of our perspectives, it is just that you go from bottom down and I go from top down and mine allows for perspective. The only thing I don't get from your perspective is what does the state think? Does the state think that he has a right to life and they are knowning violating it or something else?

Another example.

Your Perspective:We all have the right to bear arms but the people have decided that it will let the government violate our right.
My Perspective:We as a society decided that we do not have the right to own guns.

Once again, we have the same conclusion but you go top down and I go bottom up. My question from the last example applies here as well.

So I will try to sum it up:
Your Perspective: We will have rights that can never be taken away from us, but only violated when the people decide that they can be violated.
My Perspective We as people give ourselves rights and decide which ones we should have and to the extreme. I am generalizing here because society doesn't necessarily reflect the individual.


So the question is really do we create our own rights or are we born with them?

So that gets into my previous question, what would we be like without rights? If we have rights, then there must be some way we can imagine someone without rights.
Me: Rights are an abstract concept so we physically wouldn't be any different, just our laws would be different and we would feel the need to justify our actions with "because I can ethically".
You: ???


Now to the right versus privilege.

Your Perspective: A right is something that cannot be taken away from me and a privilege is something that can.
My Perspective: They are just labels created by humans. If society agrees that we can not take something away from me, it becomes a right. If we agree that something can be taken away from me it is a privilege.

Then the question comes up, who decides the difference between a right and privilege?
Your Perspective: ???
My Perspective: People decide.

Honestly, I do not understand how we decide what the difference between rights and privileges are? How do we know that the ability to bear arms isn't an unalienable right but a privilege? How do we know that the ability to marry isn't a privilege but an unalienable right? Who decides what is what?


Hopefully that answers your question.

While I rarely agree with UG on anything, I much prefer discourse with him than some of the other arrogant arseholes around this place.

At least he doesn't take himself seriously enough to be truly deluded unlike some others.

I also have to say that UG does have a good sense of humour on a number of levels and while he is quite unbelieveable in some of his assertions, on the whole he's just another dwellar with a certain way of doing things.

Like all the others that rub the wrong way, there's no need to respond if you don't want to.

To enforce something is to use force. Since gravity IS a force, nature does not need to enforce it. Not being able to do something because gravity exists, is not enforcing gravity.

My perspective is never that people allow the government to violate our rights. I say the people are coerced and threatened into allowing the government to violate our rights because they fear if they stand up for their rights, they will be the nail that sticks out the most and they'll get hammered.

People aren't ALLOWING the government to violate their rights, they are merely scared they'll be outgunned. Most people pay income taxes not because they feel a sense of duty or because they think they are the right thing to do. They pay taxes out of force and coercion. If they knew men with guns would not show up when they refused to have their income stolen from them, they would cease to pay them and exercise their right to keep what they earn.

If someone is raped, it doesn't mean they ALLOWED themselves to be used for sex.

Semantics. The fact remains that you can't ignore gravity, you can only work within it. You can completely ignore rights, and the only results will be based on human perception.

I disagree. You can't ignore rights. You can violate them, but not ignore them. As a person with rights, you can choose not to exercise them, but they still exist.

This isn't a semantics argument, it's a HUGE point.

The fact that you can kill someone doesn't mean they didn't have a right to life. The fact that you can steal their property does not mean they don't have a right to that property. The fact that you can use a rocket to escape the gravity of the earth does not mean the earth has no gravity.

Also, since Pierce openly admits he doesn't know the difference between a right and a privilege I'll ask him to read the links I've provided again.

Rights and privileges are not labels. An apple and a Buick are very different things. Calling them something else doesn't alter this fact. A rights and a privilege are the exact opposite. People do not decide what your rights are, but they may extend a privilege.

Your rights can not be numbered because all people have the right to do ANYTHING as long as they do not infringe on the person, property, or rights of a non-consenting other. Infringement means preventing another person's equal use of their rights, property, person, etc.

Why not? What happens if you do?
Or that they do. Or that they do. But the fact that you have to use a rocket to escape Earth's gravity does mean that the Earth has gravity.

The first two are unfounded assertions. The third has been supported by evidence.

False. All of them are supported by evidence and all are equally factual. You yourself say we have a right to life and so does Pierce. Ask every human being on earth if they have a right to live and they will say yes (assuming they can talk or communicate).

It is unanimous. It is factual. It is right. It is axiomatic. It is undeniable. And nothing you say or do will change it.

It's the truth
It's actual
Everything is satisfactual.

(Sidenote: just because every human being on earth believes something doesn't make it so. There was a time when every human on earth believed the earth was flat. Just sayin')

He is saying because gravity is associated with measurable results it exists and pretends there are no measurable results with rights. Violate my rights and you can measure how deep the bullet goes into your skull. You can't see gravity, but you can feel it. You can't see my rights, but you'll damn sure feel it if you violate them or try to deny me of them.

Radar, please stop with this bullet argument, will you? Its a fallacious argument.

Your shooting victim will not be feeling your rights. They will be feeling a bullet. The reality and tangibility of the bullet is no evidence for the reality and tangibility of your rights.
I'm not saying your conclusion is false, just that this argument doesn't support it.

I don't think that every single person on earth would agree that having their rights violated should result in any tangible experience for the violator.

It's not a fallacious argument. I have a right and will defend that right. If you claim I don't have a right and attempt to violate my rights, the result will be very real force used against you. The bullet they feel is a side effect of violating my rights.

We've seen tangible results when people didn't stand up to defend their rights in the holocaust and other genocides. The end result is always the same. People eventually stand up for rights, and those who violate them find themselves filled with bullets. Ask every living person if they have a RIGHT to live and not a privilege and 100% of them will agree that they do.

This is in no way like people thinking the earth was flat anymore than if 100% of the people on earth thought we didn't have gravity. Gravity would continue to exist regardless of the opinions of observers as would our rights.

Is "being respected" a right?

I ask because I sometimes read news stories about how one person will put a bullet through the skull of another person because they were not being respected. That must make it a right.

So your evidence for the universal, objective, physical existence of rights is group consensus?"Axiomatic" by definition includes a lack of proof. The right to life is a good candidate for an axiom. An assumption around which the rules of a good society can be built.

But an assumption nonetheless.
Bullets go into skulls without regard for whether they are violating or enforcing rights. They do it with regard only to the subjective views of the wielder.

And, as you hold that the US government violates your rights, and you haven't shot any of them, I would posit that not only is that "measurable result" meaningless, it is nonexistent.

Maybe the following example will show why this argument if fallacious:

A person (not Radar, a strawman) falsely believes he has the right to shoot people for sport. The police come to "take away/violate" this right and the person shoots the police in the head with a very real bullet.
Does the reality of the bullet prove that the right in question exists? Surely not.

My point is, the reality of your rights are not proven by the reality of your ammunition.
Again, this doesn't mean that your conclusion is false. Just that this particular inference is invalid.

How can you say that? How can you know that? You can't. You don't. Every living person? Does this not include your aforementioned ability to "talk and communicate" persons or every single living person 100%?

Correct. Group consensus is only a relevant argument on subjective issues. So stop trying to use it to support an argument for the objective reality of rights.

No, consensus doesn't prove it. Our rights are self-evident. The consensus just proves that people recognize that our rights are self-evident.

False. Axiomatic means it's obvious and always true. It is self-evident and factual regardless of your denials. The right to life isn't an "assumption", it's a cold, hard, indisputable fact.

Wrong.

Bullets go through skulls when they are fired from a gun. A gun is a tool used to defend oneself when our rights are being violated, whether those rights are our right to life, our right to remain unmolested, our right to defend our property or family, etc. Our rights are unquestionable and even YOU claim to have a right to life so you agree with me whether you spew more mindless garbage or not.

How do you know I haven't shot any of them, or that I won't in the future? I've also never said that a bullet through the skull is the ONLY measurable result.

I've already said, your BELIEF in rights is disconnected and unrelated from what your actual rights are. Your rights are the same regardless of your opinion. They exist regardless of your denials. They are the same for all people. Our rights do not include violating the rights of others such as offensively killing someone rather than defensively.

In your example, your strawman is an insane person (much like those who deny the existence of immutable and unalienable rights) and he has violated the rights of another person. If he is killed using DEFENSIVE force by another cop, his rights have not been violated. Our rights never include violating the rights of others and a belief in such does not mean it's true.

Assumed to be true without proof. And yet, everything you attempt to use to support that assertion is entirely subjective.... for whatever the user has in mind when it is used. In support of a right, real or imagined, or in violation of a right, real or imagined. Someone being shot is only evidence of what the shooter was thinking, not whether they were right or not.It's the only one you've offered so far.

Yes to most of this ... but I was just talking about your bullet-in-the-head argument.
Do you agree that strawman's ability to shoot the police in defense of his supposed "right" fails to prove he has that right? It sounds like you do, I just want to be clear.

No, I do not agree. Having the ability to violate another's rights is not the same thing as having the right to do so. I have the ability to rape someone. I do not have the right to do it.

Might does not make right and does not make rights. You can deny rights all you like, but you and I both know that you have them. You have the right to life, so this childish exercise in futility proves nothing.

You have the RIGHT to blather on and on claiming we don't have rights.

Pierce said he would defend his RIGHT to life even if someone else thought it were a privilege. This alone proves it to be a right because it's not something we require permission to do and it does not violate the rights of others.

How many of you are intellectually honest enough to have read the links I posted? My guess is none.

You didn't even read the post you are replying to.
You do agree that "strawman's ability to shoot the police in defense of his supposed "right" fails to prove he has that right?"

His ability to shoot the cop does not prove that the has the right to.

And your ability to shoot someone you percieve to have violated your rights doesn't prove that you have the right to.

So if a group democratically votes that they do not have the right to own an assault rifle or they vote a representive in who believes the people he or she is representing do not have the right to own an assault rifle that the people are scared of getting thrown in jail? That doesn't make sense. Just because you believe that we should never allow the government to violate/take away our rights doesn't mean that everyone does.

Then why are non-politicians trying to get guns outlawed? And I know people that know the income tax is technically illegal but wouldn't mind it if it went to places besides the military.

Not everyone thinks that gun laws are comparable to rape.

No it doesn't, it just proves that everyone agrees that we have that single right. I can just as easily say I don't have the right to life and your conclusion is proven false right there. You are using invalid logic.

It is like saying that just because every human thinks it is unethical to practice cannibalism makes that a universal ethic. But, in the past (actually present too but I am leaving that out for the sake of the example) groups thought it was not only ethical but sacred to practice cannibalism so it obviously isn't a universal ethic.

Finals week is coming up (I come on here to get my mind of studying right now) and I am not going to read through a bunch of links right now for something that you can answer in two seconds. Good way at avoiding my questions though so I will ask them again.



Questions for Radar:
1) What would humans be like without rights?
2) Who determines the difference between a right and a privilege?
3) When did the first human group discover/create rights?
4) Did rights exist before humans evolved the ability to justify their actions?

Thanks, HM, glad someone got the point ;)