Collounsbury is right.
The issue is:
SHOULD people have the ‘postive-government-obligating-material-type-rights"’ such as those in the UN Declaration.
Except that’s a lame definition of “right.” The government most certainly can take away your right to free speech if it decided to do so. It would just need to change the Constitution. Poof. No more right to free speech.
A “right” is just something that the law allows you to validly claim. Be it a religious practice or a free house. Both are rights if a society decides they are.
And the voting rights thing for felons depends upon the state. Some states have rights returned after the sentence is completed, some states do not depending on the crime.
I am sure that many among us can discern the difference between debate on a subject and debating the terminology. Having a debate without debating the semantics does not mean, my dear interlocutor, not using words. It simply means, and perhaps this is a surprise, the meaning is not in contest. As I noted, debating meaning of words is generally a sterile endeavor.
First of all, rights aren’t given, they are recognized. Secondly, saying that people have the right to free speech makes it quite clear what is being recognized. But saying that people have the right to housing is unnecessarily vague. Does that mean a homeless person has the right to squat on any unused piece of land?
Imagine that a person were to appear before a court with a broken leg seeking compensation, and the court were to declare that the man is due $100,000. Wouldn’t you agree that simply declaring him due $100,000 would be useless without specifying from whom this money is to be taken?
nicky
No, that’s not the issue, and I wonder at the temerity to tell me what my own thread should be discussing. If you want to discuss that issue, start your own thread.
Neurotik
So no government is in violation of human rights, as long as they declare beforehand that they don’t recognize human rights? That’s just bizarre. People have the right to free speech whether the government agrees or not.
The problem that I have with this language is that it reflects a “free lunch” attitude that seems to underlie many left-wing positions. It simply declares that people are to have these things, as if there’s some health care fairy that comes and cures anyone who has been delcared to have the right to health care. The statement that people have the right to health care isn’t really a statement about people, it’s about government. By focusing on people, and completely ignoring government, this language ignores the most important part.
Did The Ryan piss in someone’s breakfast cereal, or something?
He brought up a topic that debated what a word and concept meant, and he’s being attacked on the basis of being semantical. Well, semantics plays a large role in this.
There are clearly two seperate concepts behind what qualifies as rights being expressed - rights of non-interference, and rights of entitlement. He’s trying to debate if both can rightfully be called ‘rights’. That’s the crux of it. To attack him for using semantical arguments is just odd - there are clearly seperate concepts at work, and we’re debating how to apply them semantically.
My sense on the issue is that entitlements aren’t rights - they’re entitlements. I think rights are fundamental and can exist outside of a controlled societal structure on some level - but entitlements are simply something a society does because it thinks it’s a good idea. There’s nothing fundamental about them.
“Rights of non-interference”, as I called them, require nothing from other people, except to not interfere with an act of yours. Entitlements require one person’s effort, time, money, etc., to benefit another person. In the fundamental sense, I don’t think one person has a right to demand food, money, effort, etc., from another. A society might impose such a system, but it’s an arbitrary agreement, not a right.
If society dictated one day that everyone was entitled to a yacht, and forced a portion of society to become yacht-makers, I don’t think that there’s suddenly a right to yachts. Society created an entitlement.
Rights are recognized? Sure, sometimes. Sometimes they are given. Just depends on how you get there. But no rights exist until people think it up and establish it in law.
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Sure. And? What’s your point? The man still has a right to his $100,00.
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Sure, maybe in happy fun land. But in reality, you only have a right to free speech if your government recognizes it. And no. No government is in violation of human rights as long as they declare beforehand that they don’t recognize human rights, unless some other government or organization forces them to do so. To claim otherwise is just weird. Slaves didn’t have a right to free speech because the government said they didn’t. And it enforced that lack of rights.
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If you dislike the policy that’s fine. That doesn’t change the fact that if a government declares everyone to have a right to free health care, it’s still a right. You may have some ideological problem with the government granting said right, but don’t confuse the language. It’s still a right by any definition of the word, except for something you just invent in order to make sure that it doesn’t.
Which is what you are doing.
I agree with you that rights are recognized by the government rather than granted. Rights are essentially pre-legal – they are a statement of is theoretically owed us by our mere humanity, regardless of what legal rules may be in effect.
However, I disagree that “the right to free speech” is any less ambiguous than “the right to housing”. I could easily conjure up strawmen to make “the right to free speech” sound nebulous and absurd:
“Does it mean that I can shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater?”
“Does it mean that the government has to pay to publish a book that I wrote?”
If the Bill of Rights contained a “right to housing” I’m sure the U.S. courts would sort out what that meant in any particular case, just as they regularly do with the right to bear arms and the right to religious freedom:
“Does the right to bear arms mean I get to manufacture nerve gas for personal use?”
“Does religious freedom mean that human sacrifice is allowed if I believe in it as a sacriment?”
I would think that basic human decency would demand that all among us (however undeserving) should be provided with a minimum level of food and shelter. How a “right to subsistance and shelter” would actually be provided in the real world is a matter for debate. It doesn’t mean that squatting would automatically be legal (you have to balance the need against another right – the right to own private property.)
But it might mean that all municipalities would be required to maintain bare-bones barracks-type shelters large enough to house the local homeless population.
But all rights carry societal costs. The right to bear arms results in a large increase in firearm deaths. The right to religious freedom costs the government huge amounts of tax revenue that could be collected from churches. These societal costs are largely invisible to you because you’re used to them, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
I’m with Collounsbury. If you think its better for society to have lots of people sleeping in the streets, then debate the pros and cons of the policy directly. But don’t try to use an abstract discussion of rights as a smokescreen.
Well is it? The Ryan’s premise is based upon the idea that it is. If the declaration were liberal as claimed, I would left out the qualifier “in circumstances beyond his control.”. This liberal would grant these rights whether you deserved them or not.
And I might add that The State has a right to be able tp provide for these rights.
You’d have to define “liberal”.
The UDHR isn’t liberal in the classical sense because it requires government intervention and entitlements. Classic liberalism is opposed to such things.
Ted Kennedy liberal, although he is leaning kinda right. 
Me 'n Teddy don’t neccessarily accept the “fault” part.
The the US constitution isn’t a great place to be looking to define rights. The 2nd amendment relies on a number of external elements, such as the invention of firearms, people who sell firearms and money to buy firearms. Of course the government isn’t required to, and doesn’t provide these things, but it is wrong to claim that it, for instance is a right that is inaliable and exists seperate to the society that granted it.
The second amendment doesn’t refer to firearms - it refers to arms. The spirit of the amendment is the keep the government from interfering with man’s natural right to defend himself. It applies to sticks as much as guns, in spirit.
Let’s take a look at the complete text of that amendment:
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Now, where does it say “firearms”? Or are you just indulging in ignorance?
Now just a dang minute there, fellers.
If one can accept the rather clumsy grammar of the 2nd, and take it in the spirit of the time it was written, one can surely accept that in those same times “arms” referred to guns, not sticks or swords or even arrows.
The Constitution does not talk about my right to keep and bear sticks.
Um…no, it talks about your right to keep and bear arms. See, it’s all encompassing. So sticks are including.
Maybe so, but when I read the ammendment aloud it sure doesn’t sound like I’m talking about sticks. Sounds (and feels) like guns.
Is this one of those “slippery slope” (and off-topic) arguements? 
BTW; I am not anti-gun.
Mangeorge, what’s your point?
That the founding fathers specifically protected the right to bear firearms, but no other arms, because of some arbitrary measure?
The amendment was written to protect the basic right of self defense (from criminals, and government) from intereference from the government. The actual tools in questions, be they spears or M16s, is irrelevant. It was clear that they intended the populace to be able to act as soldiers when necesary.
I’m sure they specifically had firearms in mind in writing it, but that’s irrelevant. Those are the tools. The spirit of the amendment is the protection of arms - any arms that served the purpose it was written with. In the future, that might become personal laser weapons, or something, rather than firearms. That doesn’t invalidate it.
To address Gex Gex’s original point, the second doesn’t really require ‘outside elements’ at all - it keeps the government from interfering with you preparing to defend yourself by not being able to limit you in or strip you of your arms, whether they be spears or rifles. There’s an inherent right to be able to gather and eat food - it’s not invalidated because it depends on the sun to cause plants to grow, or plants to produce fruit so we can eat.
Is this one of those “slippery slope” arguements?
Yep.
Off topic?
Yep. Sorry.
The Declaration does say “in circumstances beyond his control”, which in my mind excludes people (men, anyway) who are too lazy to fend for themselves. And that fact does move the Declaration somewhat in the conservative direction. And relieves the hypothetical government of any responsibility for that segment of the population.
Could it be that the Declaration is an ideal, something to compare states to as an indication of the level of human rights embraced by that state?
Is what a slippery slope argument?
You appear to be dismissing me as making some sort of slippery slope argument, apparently, while I was addressing your assertions, which appear just to be “uh, arms means firearms cause that’s what it makes me think of”.
I still don’t know what you’re getting at.
I think you’re making an anti-ss arguement.
If you allow that “arms” means literally “guns”, then you must also allow that “well regulated militia” means just that. And that guns are neccessary to maintain that militia. Only that. And so on, down the slope.
And I didn’t say “uh” anything. I said that the Constitution is talking about guns because that’s what it says. You can use the word “spirit” to include just about anything. Kung Foo lessons?
Look, I don’t care one way or the other about guns as a hobby, or for hunting, or any other legal purpose. Neither does the 2nd, IMO.
I also find the OP to be much more interesting than this tired old arguement.