Political Crossfire Forums

I think a lot of it depends on which authority, in your opinion, grants rights and whether different classes of those rights (i.e. natural, political, legal) exist.

I think the concept of rights is a step in a positive direction, but ultimately flawed. It is a broken clock, right twice a day.

All of us are entitled to say whatever we want and do whatever we want, by virtue of being human... but the entire point of government is to regulate interactions between people, which ultimately requires judgement when two rights start to conflict.

For instance, I can't tell a person to go kill a person. The strict rights argument would be that I have the ability to say whatever I want, whenever I want, and I can face no legal repercussions for any of it.

Obviously that makes no sense. The reasonable limit, as accepted by just about everyone, is when another human being is harmed as a direct result of your speech. And so certain restrictions are in place. You can't threaten people, you can't tell others to kill people, you can't incite riots, etc.

Rights don't really exist in the way you are talking about them. I think we need to overhaul political philosophy, because frankly the whole "rights" thing seems brutally flawed.

Rights are like empires, they come and go. In the natural world, the world owes no man anything.

Rights are regulated by responsibility to recognise the rights of others.

As in my rights end where yours begin.

Whatever the limitation is with that border, then rights are regulated.

Rights are a legal fiction. They have no objective existence.