Rights are an invention. Humans have no natural rights. We have what we can defend. No more. They are priviliges we have concocted for our society.
What good did human “rights” do for those murdered, raped and tortured by Hamas? Those who elected to jump to their deaths on 9/11 rather than waiting for the flames to take them? The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Of Dresden? Auschwitcz and Buchenwald? A right is an inalienable thing. Strangers, mother nature, other groups and even your own government can and will violate your “righrs” at a whim. That is why enshrining the “right” of the People to keep and bear arms was so genius. An armed populace does not docilely board rail cars for concentration camps. But unless militantly guarded, that “right” is also doomed. Many Democrats are all for repealing the 2d Amendment.
If you do not jealously guard your “rights” and defend them with zeal and tenacity you will surely lose them. Life? Liberty? Both can be rescinded on a whim by humans, bears or earthquakes. Pursuit of happiness? That is a state of mind. Toss me in a dungeon or sit me upon Persian pillows with servants to attend my every need. I cannot be stopped from pursuing happiness, although there is no guarantee I will find it.
I was going to respond to the human rights post by Glenn, but War Pig succinctly made the points I was going to bring up. By and large HR are good things and we should want to preserve them for ourselves and our posterity. However, I am under no illusions that they existed all this time and Western Man simply came across them and incorporated them into everyday life.
Hear, Hear!
It is true that rights are violated all the time but that does not mean they do not exist. Yes, rights need to be guarded and defended. The truth that the defense of those rights requires, at times, violence does not negate them. The concept of natural rights as used in our founding set limits on what the federal government was allowed to do. It was meant to be a practical application of a moral principle for our internal governance. The dissident right is antagonistic to the concept of a social contract, which is based on natural rights,… Read more »