Summations Only

Let me provide an example of a right that you have that is not granted to you by the government.Under the US Constitution, the federal government has enumerated powers only. The government has no rights at all; only duties, and enumerated powers to carry out those duties.So in any case a) not within the umbrella of the government's enumerated powers and/or b) residing totally within the individual rights carved out by the constitution, your rights cannot be considered to be granted by the government, because the government cannot legally exercise the power to affect those rights without exceeding its powers.Example:Nothing in the constitution grants the executive branch the power to quarter soldiers at your house against your will during peace time. In addition, your right to avoid such a situation is explicitly protected by the Third Amendment.Note that it cannot be truly said that the bill of rights grants you that right. You actually would have the right even without the bill of rights, because the executive branch has no constitutional authority to contravene that right.While it is true that the US Army has bigger tanks, more men, and more armament than you and that you have no power to successfully, physical oppose General Moron's command to occupy your house during peace time, the taking away of your house is evidence that your rights have been violated and not that they did not exist. Taq is dead on about that point. There is a sense in which this statement is correct. But it is a sense in which absolutely nothing that the government succeeds in doing is ever an infringement of your rights. Under such a sense, slaves never had any moral authority to object to their status, and Korematsu's interment during WWII was unquestionably just, because the government defines just. I don't accept either proposition. In fact I know those propositions to be completely, unambiguously wrong.Such a definition is not standard word usage. You are free to use the word rights as you do, but in an argument where everyone else is clearly using a different, viable, and standard definition, I don't see how your calling them wrong has any merit.

Can you demonstrate a source of a "right" for the US government to quarter soldiers in your house during peacetime or are you just making up stuff.It is in fact, unlawful for the US government to do so under the constitution. Further, I have not merely asserted such to be the case, I've demonstrated why such is true. In response, all I get from you is mere assertion. The US government has no rights -- at all.You express the belief that if the government in fact acts illegally, the government is not merely infringing a right; you in fact never had that right.As I and others have pointed out, that proposition is ridiculous. In essence your position is that nobody has any rights, but only access to privileges allowed by the government.Further, I believe I can demonstrate from some of your own prior postings that you don't even believe that rights are granted by the government.For example in our discussion about a judge whose racially charged joke about Obama leaked out, you took the position that the judge had a right to share such jokes with his buddies and that any leaker had only the right to delete the email rather than to release it for public consumption. And what might be the source of said right? Certainly not the federal government, who would not be involved on either side. Certainly not the constitution, which does not deal with free speech issues between two non-state actors.As another example, you argued that a church has every right to exclude inter racial couples, and that I had no right to attempt to persuade the pastor to change the policy. Where does the right to practice religion free from persuasion by private parties come from?Let me suggest that your current position concerning rights is a mere semantic point, and uses a definition of rights that few people would bother with. There is indeed a right not to have the state cover your living body with a tank when you are peacefully protesting in a public square. Korematsu did have all the rights that every other American enjoyed under the constitution.

Absolutely true. But the constitution is not the government. The government is subject to the constitution. This isn't part of the argument that I want to take on, and to this point I haven't. I am saying that American citizens have rights that are not granted by the government. If the US government has quartered soldiers in your house during peacetime, then they have violated a right that was never granted to the government.The question of whether are not there are natural rights is quite an old one. Points can be made on either side. While I feel that there are some natural rights, which extend at least to having the power over one's own life and limb absent some amount of due process, I acknowledge that some people feel very strongly that there are no natural rights.But even if we deny that there are natural rights there is a very strong consensus among much of society regarding a base line set of rights that ought to be respected by every government. The above statement is historically inaccurate. The current US government was formed completely without the power to quarter soldiers in your house during peacetime. That limitation was quite deliberate and was based on experiences during the war with Britain. There was no devolving. There was instead a recognition by the Founding Fathers that they did not want their government to have such power.Further, under our system of government, people have rights. The governments does not. The government has enumerated powers and the right to quarter soldiers during peacetime is not among those powers.

In my previous message I laid out areas where I agreed with you, others where I disagreed, and yet others in which I was simply not arguing at all. Yes there are points on which you and I agree.However,In addition to whatever you are claiming is your position in your current message, you have also claimed that our rights were granted by the government, and you implied that the fact that the government could violate a right by force meant that you did not have that right.Nothing I've posted supports your position re: those points mentioned above. Citing my statement that American citizens have rights that are NOT granted by the government certainly does not support that position.As I have mentioned, the issue of whether there are or are not natural rights is an old argument that I am not willing to recreate for the umpteenth time. The cases for both sides of the issue can be found in any number of places on the internet. If something I have posted agrees with one of your arguments regarding that topic, so be it. You are still wrong about the history behind the rights spelled out in the third amendment.

What does? I have no idea what "it" refers to. No, you have not been consistent.I have pointed out your inconsistencies in several posts. Your description of how the rights described in the bill of rights are held by US citizens is both historically and operationally inaccurate. Your error has led you to make several other errors. The most significant error is your position that rights that are not respected by the government, or any other single one of the possible sources, do not exist.I have agreed with your statement regarding the three sources of government because the terms "societies" and "cultures" are so vague as encompass just about anything, including natural rights.If there is anything in this post that is unclear, or if you need me to quote your previous erroneous statements, just ask.

This is an extremely Anglican and distorted view of the situation in South Africa. Unless only the society and culture of the minority white, ruling population counted, there is simply no math that suggests the vast majority of the society and culture of South Africans did not acknowledge the rights of black South Africans prior to the point where the government decided to grant them.A more fact based analysis would be that apartheid was a denial of basic human rights by a minority government and society in a superior position to wrongly deny basic human rights.I'm not going to take on the position of whether those human rights are natural rights.

I don't want you to agree with me. I find it quite fascinating that you will attempt to defend the position that there is nothing inherently wrong with a system of apartheid forced on a majority population against its will by a minority government. I want you to continue defining the indefensible. No need for that. The fact is that the system of apartheid was seen as evil by the majority of people inside of South Africa. Your attempt to say that all three of the government, culture and society of South Africa viewed did not agree that blacks had rights cannot be justified without viewing the black population as of no consequence in the culture and society.In fact, your position really boils down to saying that black South Africans had no rights until the government got around to recognizing those rights.I don't find it necessary to change a single word of my position, and I certainly would not do so in order to gain possible agreement with you. Even using your own ridiculous criteria, we can defend the position that black South Africans had rights which were being violated by the minority government. The idea that blacks had no rights until de Klerk et al. deigned to recognize them is both ridiculous and repugnant. Fortunately, that idea is also wrong.

I did not claim to have quoted you directly. But if apartheid was inherently wrong, then we can also say that the black population had a right to oppose such a system because of its inherent evil. Yet you deny such to be the case.

I understand that Taq has not proven or demonstrated that there are inherent rights.But I don't understand the line of reasoning behind your question. If there were rights that were inherent or intrinsic rather than being granted, then how would a count of countries who do not recognize those allegedly inherent right be relevant? Does the long length of a list of evil doers make the list invalid?Further, even if countries violate legal rights that are on their own books, other countries don't necessarily gain the right to enforce those legal rights. Yet no one is claiming that legal rights do not exist. This would seem to be a question about the scope of the right to liberty and not whether there is any such right to liberty.

I don't see any problem or inconsistency with Taq's position in that regard. You seem to think that inherent rights must be absolute in scope. Why can't there cannot be an inherent right against imprisonment without just cause. Natural rights might not be inalienable.Perhaps only a few rights are inalienable. More rights are inherent, but alienable. At least such a state of affairs is possible and forms a consistent position. It could be that alienation requires action on the right holder's part and cannot be accomplished by unilateral action i.e. absent some forfeiture action on the part of the rights holder.So a right of freedom of motion might be inherent but forfeitable if you murder your brother.

Is anyone arguing that all rights are intrinsic or inalienable? Perhaps here is no intrinsic right to possess cannabis.At least I can understand your position, although I don't agree with it. If there are any absolutely inalienable rights in the sense that can never be forfeited in any circumstance, those rights are probably very limited in number. I would list the right not to be tortured by others among those rights. But the fact that many countries, including the US, don't respect such a right is not proof that the right does not exist. Instead, the lack of respect is simply an argument that such countries ought to be soundly condemned for their stances.

Maybe such imprisonment is a breach of a natural right. But simply counting people who agree or disagree is meaningless, because even legal rights are subject to being disrespected.

I don't care what Taq says.And the fact that some people don't recognize some right does not mean it does not exist. It just means that the right is not universally accepted or respected.

Not by voting on it, which seems to be your method. Taq's position is not limited to his views on liberty. I largely agree with his logic, and disagree with yours. As I understand your view, it includes the proposition that if there are laws against possession of cannabis or tax evasion, then there is no such thing as liberty.I may not agree with a particular issue which Taq says does not constitute liberty, but that is just a matter of degree rather than principle.

Exactly so.Jesus said that we were to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Understood properly that commandment would not mean merely doing unto others what we ourselves would want, but would mean treating your neighbor with empathy for your neighbors feelings.Your mom doesn't want a tennis racket for Mother's day. That's what you want.