What are rights?

[wmw999 2,588]

Americans (and I am one) tend to talk a whole lot about rights. Sometimes we conflate them with privileges, and sometimes we expand them to meet with wants.

So, what do we have a right to? And how far does the government need to go to ensure that everyone in the country has equal access to these rights? If they're rights, does that mean that it's OK that some people have a much harder time accessing them than others?

The basic ones in the Declaration of Independence are Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness.

Life: who is a person? In the time of the Constitution, lots of folks didn't qualify. So should we expand it?
Liberty: If you're free, then you have to pay for stuff. Which means that you need access to the means to do so.
Pursuit of happiness: Well, if you go by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I think this falls somewhere in the second rung from the top. Does that mean that, if we feel it is self-evident that the right to this exists, that the government needs to guarantee everything below it? that would be a whole lot of stuff.

Just musing. And I haven't even got to the right to bear arms

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[AndyBoyd 0]

Great question. You are correct -- people throw around the words "rights" all the time without really understanding what it is the word means. Lots of ink has been spilled over the years by folks trying to explain and/or understand what "rights" actually are. Here is a link to a great web page on the topic, with a fantastic bibliography if you are interested in doing some reading.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

I have never been able to quite figure out how to make links clicky on this forum. Sorry

[jcd11235 0]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[quade 4]

Honestly I think that some of the rights most people think they have aren't rights at all.

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

This line from the Declaration of Independence is snappy and sounds good, but the reality is that even in the time it was written it was bullshit.

Any "right" that has qualifiers, isn't a right at all nor can it ever be.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver