You Have No Rights

[TheReal_ND]

I'm curious, what're peoples' thoughts on the practical utility of this question? I mean, does it really matter that rights aren't truly inherent for each individual? We treat them as if they are, the constitution treats them as if they are. So because society treats them as inherent in humanity, what is the usefulness of this type of conversation?

I would say it is an objective way to look at the state. Without the state you have anarchy and then you have no rights. From the perspective of if it just vanished tomorrow at least but of course tribes establish autonomous states. With a state you have given up your nonexistent rights but are rewarded with the security it brings and whatever rights the state grants you. Within the state you can also attempt to accrue even more rights via various methods but without one, well... there's that guy over there and he just took your wife, sold your son, and burned your corn right after he killed you.

[boethius]

Utterly illogical OP.

Rights don't exist because they can be violated???

Mr. Lawyerman must think that contracts don't exist because they can be breached. That property doesn't exist because it can be stolen.

That life doesn't exist because things can die.

[Martin Hash]

Life & property are objective. Liberty is subjective.

[Haumana]

Any opinions on Bill Maher?

Total partisan hack who lives in the bubble he says that others are living in. Stanhope has done some good work talking about political/social issues. I am not sure where he is at now because it seems like he is tired of hearing himself speak lately.

[boethius]

Life & property are objective. Liberty is subjective.

A piece of ground is objective. That is not property...that is dirt.

Your claim that you "own" it and can restrict my body from.walking upon, it is subjective (i.e."Property").

Don't make me pull a DBtrek on you and post the definition of the word "property", Lawyerman. There's a reason they call the class Property in 1st year law school and Geology in the science department : dirt ain't property.

[de officiis]

It is never out of season to recall James Wilson's line that the purpose of this Constitution was not to invent new rights, but to secure and enlarge those rights we already had by nature. In radical contrast, Blackstone said that when we enter civil society, we give up that unrestricted set of rights we had in the state of nature, including the "liberty to do mischief." We exchanged them for a diminished set of rights under civil society--call them "civil rights"--which are rendered more secure by the advent of a government that can enforce them. To which Wilson responded: When did we ever have a "liberty to do mischief'? When did we ever have, as Lincoln would say, a "right to do a wrong"? The laws that restrained us from raping and murdering deprived us of nothing we ever had a "right" to do. And so when the question was asked as to what rights we give up in entering into this government, the answer tendered by the Federalists was, "none." As Hamilton said in Federalist No. 84, "Here . . . the people surrender nothing." It was not the purpose of this project to give up our natural rights. And so, what sense did it make to attach a codicil, a so-called "bill of rights," reserving against the federal government those rights we did not give up? How could we do that without implying that, in fact, we had given up the corpus of our natural rights in coming under this Constitution?

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