# What are our Rights? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 6, 2017, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465 "2017-01-06T17:47:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/21 "2017-01-06T19:47:12Z")
[QUOTE=Darren Garrison] The universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to you. All “rights” are cultural conventions. [/quote] That’s a bit simplistic. There is a difference between a cultural convention of providing for equal rights under law and a convention of simply providing for the “right” of the strong to dominate the weak. > [@Procrustus](#): > > People say “Driving is a privilege, not a right.” Who says? And why? What I think they mean is we won’t shed any tears when we take away your “privilege” to drive because you screwed up. It’s not like we’re violating your rights, or anything. Rights don’t get taken away by the government. But we’ll take away your “right” to vote if you get convicted of a felony. Driving is neither a privilege or a right. “Mobility” is a right. You have the right to go where you want, when you want (with the exclusion of trespassing where you don’t belong), however you are able to get there. “Owning personal property” is also a right. Owning a car is not a “right” because society is under no obligation to make sure you have one. And it’s not a “privilege” because no one has to do anything special to own or operate one, besides be able to afford it and pass a driver’s exam. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/22 "2017-01-06T19:51:04Z")
Yeah, you’d have to define your terms before you can expect anything approximating consensus. A “right” could be something that you think all volitional creatures ARE ENTITLED TO whether they are granted that right or not, whether it is recognized by folks as a right or not. Or you could define a “right” as "what society has agreed that you are entitled to as a human or as a citizen or as a male property owner over the age of 21 or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/23 "2017-01-06T20:09:35Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I think you are confusing “right” with “ability”. Maybe. I’m trying to reconcile the Deism-based Enlightenment concept of “inalienable right” with the fact that there is no god or any other non-arbitrary means of determining what humans “deserve” just for the sake of being human. That and the fact that every other definition of “right” I’ve heard is both arbitrary, contradictory, and goes against the reality of the situation, which is that people everywhere constantly have their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (among other so called “rights”) taken away at every turn. So clearly they aren’t “inalienable” or “god given”. They’re just normal human desires, like sex and food. All that leaves is the stuff you can do no matter what the government or anyone else says. It’s pretty freeing in a way when you internalize it. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/24 "2017-01-06T20:11:31Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Yeah, you’d have to define your terms before you can expect anything approximating consensus. A “right” could be something that you think all volitional creatures ARE ENTITLED TO whether they are granted that right or not, whether it is recognized by folks as a right or not. Exactly. Believing in “rights” necessitates a “rights giver”, which makes it a religious issue. A secular definition of objective rights for humans makes no more sense than a secular opinion of the objective rights of hamsters, tomatoes, and paint drippings. “RIghts” are whatever a society chooses them to be, and are neither objective or universal. (And if you think that they are objective, can you point out rights that _all_ human societies agree on? Because if rights were objectively true, you’d no more need to point them out than you’d need to point out walking on two legs or breathing air instead of water.) ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/25 "2017-01-06T20:16:41Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > A RIGHT is something you are at least partially owed. You have a right to vote; that is something the government actually has to proactively provide to you. The government is expected to pay for and maintain an apparatus of voting so you can vote. But they clearly don’t have to provide that. Note all the people who are not provided the ability to vote at all, right now. Prisoners, children, foreigners, etc. There might be an expectation there, but certainly no obligation. And they could easily disenfranchise everyone tomorrow, as evidenced by all the other previously democratic regimes that have disenfranchised people. What are you going to do about it? Fight back? Now there’s an inalienable right. They can try and put down the resistance but they can’t stop it from happening in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/26 "2017-01-06T21:02:15Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > Exactly. Believing in “rights” necessitates a “rights giver” I don’t think that’s necessary at all. I think rights can be derived from a philosophical consideration of the overall picture. You probably need some axioms if you’re going to be entirely formal about it, but you can abstract from the structural situation of the individual and the individual’s relationship with the rest of the social context. Usually this consideration will quickly spiral around the central self-referential logic loop: Each individual has the right to do absolutely anything except interfere with someone’s _else’s_ right to do absolutely anything except…{etc} The rest is just trying to reconcile where, exactly, one person’s action is beyond the scope of their rights as a consequence of it being an infringement on someone else. We tend to argue in broad universal terms, seeking a rule or set of rules that apply to all people in all cases, but end up with immense libraries of situation-specific laws and context-specific intentions and minimum requirements for the establishment of exceptions and whatnot and wherefore and etc. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/27 "2017-01-06T21:07:25Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The universe doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to you. All “rights” are cultural conventions. Agreed. There are no “rights,” only “interests.” When an interest is backed by a really large majority of the populace, it gets called a right. (And when a right is assailed by a large enough group, it comes into question and is in peril of being rescinded. Abortion and gun ownership are rights…and have been regulated, and could be taken away.) Dan O’Neill cartoon: a big opinion comes lumbering along, bumping people out of his way. “Watch where you’re going, you big opinion!” “I am not a mere opinion! I am a value!” “Yeah, that’s what they all say.” ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/28 "2017-01-06T21:24:49Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > I think rights can be derived from a philosophical consideration of the overall picture. And philosophy is subjective opinion. To paraphrase Death in _Hogsfather_, Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of “rights”, one molecule of “philosophy.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/29 "2017-01-06T21:56:21Z")
> [@HumbleThinker](#): > > Do you think there are other rights? I think most people would agree we have a right to representation in our government. ---
**Author:** ![Cartoonacy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/848f3c/32.png) [@Cartoonacy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartoonacy)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/30 "2017-01-06T22:01:57Z")
I’ve always thought of it this way: “rights” are what you have until and unless someone imposes limits or takes them away from you; “privileges” are what you don’t have unless someone gives them to you. Life and freedom are rights; driving a car, having a job, and receiving medical care are privileges. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/31 "2017-01-06T22:14:51Z")
> [@Cartoonacy](#): > > … receiving medical care are privileges. Depends where you are. In Canada, receiving medical care is a right, protected by federal and provincial law. Which to my mind illustrates that a discussion of rights is always context-specific. What is a “right” in one country may be a “privilege” in another, and vice versa. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/32 "2017-01-06T22:43:55Z")
> [@Cartoonacy](#): > > I’ve always thought of it this way: “rights” are what you have until and unless someone imposes limits or takes them away from you; “privileges” are what you don’t have unless someone gives them to you. Life and freedom are rights; driving a car, having a job, and receiving medical care are privileges. People keep using the term “privileges”. A privilege is “a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.” Now technically, you do need to meet certain qualifications to drive a car or work a job. But I would not call those “privileges” as anyone has the right to go out and try to obtain those qualifications. And in this country (as in most developed nations), receiving medical care is not a “privilege” any more than receiving fire or police service is. Anyone can go into an emergency room and receive life-saving medical care. > [@Darren Garrison](#): > > Exactly. Believing in “rights” necessitates a “rights giver”, which makes it a religious issue. A secular definition of objective rights for humans makes no more sense than a secular opinion of the objective rights of hamsters, tomatoes, and paint drippings. “RIghts” are whatever a society chooses them to be, and are neither objective or universal. (And if you think that they are objective, can you point out rights that all human societies agree on? Because if rights were objectively true, you’d no more need to point them out than you’d need to point out walking on two legs or breathing air instead of water.) I’m not sure why you feel rights need to be universally agreed upon. I’m pretty sure most people agree with a sort of John Locke concept of “natural rights” with respect to life, liberty and property. At least when it pertains to them. I know many people would disagree on this next part, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to presume that rights apply universally to everyone. But people seem to be conflating “rights” with “guaranteed services” or “entitlements”. Since services have to be provided by other people and those people also have the right to not be forced to provide their labor, creating systems that protect people’s rights and provide for their needs becomes a lot more complex. Like I said, you have the right to travel. Buy you don’t have the right to force me to drive you around or buy you a car. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/33 "2017-01-06T22:45:32Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > And philosophy is subjective opinion. To paraphrase Death in _Hogsfather_, Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of “rights”, one molecule of “philosophy.” Your atoms and molecules only exist as interactions between fields of interactions. Show me one indivisible “particle”, one “thing” that exists independently of interactivity. Philosophy is real. Materialism ain’t. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/34 "2017-01-06T22:50:17Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > And in this country (as in most developed nations), receiving medical care is not a “privilege” any more than receiving fire or police service is. Anyone can go into an emergency room and receive life-saving medical care. Most people maintain that rights exist whether the government grants them or not. If we change the meaning to “whatever the government has given you permission for”, it’s an entirely different concept. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/35 "2017-01-06T22:51:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I’m not sure why you feel rights need to be universally agreed upon. Because “rights” isn’t a real thing like gravity is a real thing and the proton is a real thing and the speed of light is a real thing. Ask any intelligent living creature that happens to live anywhere in the universe any time in history what gravity, what a proton, and what the speed of light is and they will be able to tell you the exact same thing if they are scientifically literate. But the concept of “rights” is an artifact of the programming running in the human brain, and is utterly meaningless outside the programming of the human brain. If the same basic concept of “rights” was running inside every human brain, that would make the concept as “real” as it is going to get, at least within the constraints of human thinking (but not necessarily within the thinking of the 20-foot intelligent lobsters of Crabulon VII.) ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/36 "2017-01-06T22:52:42Z")
Rights are whatever the government whose thumb you are currently under decides they are. Ideally you should work to make governments grant rights that uphold the general welfare of the citizens under government control, and oppose those “rights” which are detrimental to the general welfare. But even if I say that a citizen of North Korea should have the right to criticize the government that don’t make it so. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/37 "2017-01-06T23:01:59Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > And in this country (as in most developed nations), receiving medical care is not a “privilege” any more than receiving fire or police service is. Anyone can go into an emergency room and receive life-saving medical care The example given by **Cartoonacy** was health care in general, not the much more limited “life-saving medical care.” And in most developed nations, people have a right to health care in general, not the limited “life-saving” care Americans have a right to under federal law. The scope of the right to health care depends on the legal system of the country you are in, which counts against the idea of universal rights. Oh, and it’s been well-established in previous threads that in some parts of the US, people do not have a right to fire-fighting services. > [@](#): > > But people seem to be conflating “rights” with “guaranteed services” or “entitlements”. Since services have to be provided by other people and those people also have the right to not be forced to provide their labor, creating systems that protect people’s rights and provide for their needs becomes a lot more complex. Not really. Rights like health care aren’t enforceable against other individuals, but against the government. It’s up to the government to provide the funding to hire people who voluntarily take jobs in the health care system. But my right to health care is a legally enforceable right. The fact that it requires government to provide the health-care infrastructure does not mean it’s not a right. Similarly, the right to vote requires governments to provide an elaborate service to ensure I can vote. My right to vote would be meaningless if the government did not provide that infrastructure, a government service. And if the government failed to do so, I could take the government to court to enforce my right to vote. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/38 "2017-01-06T23:12:48Z")
I think a different way of saying it is the stereotypical adolescent complaining to their parents that something “isn’t fair”, to which the parent replies that nobody ever said that life was fair. Except you replace the word “fair” with “right.” Did a person living in the neolithic have the “right” to not be eaten by a lion, and if the lion ate him, did that lion violate his rights? If it doesn’t violate his rights, how is it different if he was killed by another person? “Rights” means society collectively saying “boy, wouldn’t it be nice if we all agreed to do _x_ and not do _y_?” and different societies have different ideas on what _x_ and _y_ are. For just one instance, the Spartans thought that fighting and bullying amongst children [was a _good_ thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge), to be encouraged. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/39 "2017-01-06T23:45:31Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I think a different way of saying it is the stereotypical adolescent complaining to their parents that something “isn’t fair”, to which the parent replies that nobody ever said that life was fair. Except you replace the word “fair” with “right.” Did a person living in the neolithic have the “right” to not be eaten by a lion, and if the lion ate him, did that lion violate his rights? If it doesn’t violate his rights, how is it different if he was killed by another person? “Rights” means society collectively saying “boy, wouldn’t it be nice if we all agreed to do _x_ and not do _y_?” and different societies have different ideas on what _x_ and _y_ are. For just one instance, the Spartans thought that fighting and bullying amongst children [was a _good_ thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agoge), to be encouraged. Thomas Jefferson’s assertion “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights” is a wonderful thing that it’s good for people to believe. In a strictly philosophical sense, it’s not true. You argument is similar to the one that Robert Heinlein put into the mouth of his wise old general character in _Starship Troopers_: “So you say there’s a right to life? Well what about a man who’s drowning in the middle of the ocean? Where’s his right to life?”\* One might even point out that in the end, everybody dies, so clearly everyone is alienated from any right to life eventually. One could also point out that people lived in caves and whacked dinner with clubs for thousands of years without any of them, as far as we know, asserting any rights. Primitive cultures had primitive governments without any trace of the idea. It was only when societies reached a certain degree of complexity that philosophers like Aristotle and Augustine started thinking about the question of what justice is, which can be thought of as the birth of the idea of rights. But as an organizing principle for a modern government, a strong belief in inalienable rights is great, and far better than any competing principle. - paraphrasing from memory ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465/40 "2017-01-07T00:30:11Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > Most people maintain that rights exist whether the government grants them or not. If we change the meaning to “whatever the government has given you permission for”, it’s an entirely different concept. > [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Rights are whatever the government whose thumb you are currently under decides they are. Ideally you should work to make governments grant rights that uphold the general welfare of the citizens under government control, and oppose those “rights” which are detrimental to the general welfare. But even if I say that a citizen of North Korea should have the right to criticize the government that don’t make it so. “Government” isn’t some physical force that happens to us. A government is just as much a creation of society as rights are. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-our-rights/776465.md?page=3)