Question about Rights and the Constitution

Government is not some entity that exists apart from us. It is an institution that we create and sustain, and it exists to preserve our rights. When it no longer preserves those rights, we overthrow it and start again.

If the government passed a law that abolished free speech tomorrow, I wouldn't say "well, guess I don't have that right, after all."

Neither gods nor nature give us rights. In my view--and in the view supported by the Constitution--we simply have them by virtue of our being human beings.

It's an impossible question to get a consensus on, because you will never get everyone to agree on what a right actually is in the first place.

Is a right a thing you can do?

Is a right a thing you should be able to do?

If rights can't be taken away can additional rights be granted by anyone?

Are rights consistent across all of humanity?

In my view, a right is what you innately owe other people, and which they innately owe you.

If it isn't symmetric--if you don't give and receive the same consideration--then it isn't a real right.

Are there any rights in the US bill of rights that you feel are not innate human rights?

It is a social contract. We can respect each other's rights, but really we define what is in that contract. If it is important to us then we make the contract. If it becomes more important for society to live without a certain manufactured item like an assault rifle then we will limit and ban them. If it is important to have like a car then we will have a way to have them. We make those arrangements. There for it matters what society thinks and demands as per what we will have.

I just find it a little bit silly to speak of a manufactured item as a right in a capitalist society. It does not even fit as per the guntards fantasy because no one gives you a gun to own so your right to a firearm is not absolute and ends when you cannot afford one. How can something be innate when you are not born with it? Even then it is debatable whether or not it is innate. I think food and shelter should be a right when society is capable of providing for all, but even that goes away when we have shortages.

Some are formulated in a legal sense, but they stem from an underlying innate right.

The First Amendment is really about our right to think and communicate freely, to persuade others, to observe our beliefs, and even our right to complain.

The Second Amendment is about our right to self-defense and to defend the Constitutional order through force, if necessary.

The Fourth Amendment is about our right to privacy.

And so forth.

Our rights are from nature's god according to the DOC, if you don't believe that then they have always existed and like @Paladin said, they precede government and its government's role to ensure them.

If they are innate human rights do you feel that when engaged in overseas activity the US government (by way of its various extensions such as the US military) should have to follow conduct that avoids breaking any of them with non-residents of the US?

To a certain extent. But the Constitution is the contract under which we're governed, and does not extend to people outside our country.

If the respect of rights is dependent on citizenship or legal residential status, both things that are granted by the government and laws, then it would seem that the rights themselves effectively come from the government and laws rather than being innate rights.

Do you even know what innate means? If rights are innate then they exist beyond geographical boundaries. Since you do not afford a Muslim terrorist the same rights as an American citizen those rights are not innate. You just violated your own word meaning. If it is an innate right to you then the most vile suck sucking criminal rapist fuckhead has them.

I would also like to add thank you to that rep but I can only do one.

As I said, everyone has rights, but the Constitution is how we--not others--are governed. If we're at war with someone, they don't get a jury trial before we drop a bomb on them.

Are declarations of war also an innate human thing?

Is citizenship/belonging to a particular nationality an innate human thing?

On top of which, who are you officially at war with right now?

edit: basically asking how you define who "we" is without falling back on legal definitions. If the definition of "we" is defined by the government, then they by defacto determine who the rights are granted to.

always focusing on the "shall not be infringed" part, but I never hear them talk about what "Well regulated" means...

https://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm

So we "owe" you something by virtue of you simply existing?....

Sounds like your typical SJW bullshit if you ask me.

Yes. You owe me the liberty to live and to speak my mind and to believe what I want.

No. SJWs get into owing stuff. There's no stuff involved in rights. A right to stuff is an obligation on others to provide stuff.

Well, I don't know how you missed it. We've only talked about it a million times.

"Well-regulated" doesn't mean "subject to government control" (the 2nd becomes self-contradictory if read that way). "Regulated" didn't have that meaning in the 18th Century. It means "self-disciplined," "exercising self-control."

Even if you don't buy that, the adjective applies to the militia, not to the right.

How about "the right of the people" and how the Second Amendment isn't the only one to contain that phrase, and how no one questions whether these are meant to be individual rights or not?

That isn't even a question. The SCOTUS ruling in Heller v DC makes it unequivocal: the 2nd is an individual right (text of the decision below). Anyone still pushing the "collective right" nonsense is in denial.

If "the militia", is everybody, then kids getting mowed down by average dopes for a whole damned generation isn't "well regulated".
If only there were a way to punish a militia for being badly regulated.
Like a whiskey rebellion, something like that.
Oh, no, wait, that'd punish everyone.
Guess that ruling was a bad one.
Militias are militias.
And they're obsolete thanks to our standing army.
And the 13th amendment.

Make up your mind already. You say that I owe you liberty and things but also that I don't because that's SJW bullshit, so which one is it?

Yes you do. We've discussed it here.

Are you not reading what I'm writing?

My rights don't confer positive obligations on you. The only requirement they put on you is that you don't infringe upon them.

I have a right to exist. Your obligation? Don't kill me.

I have a right to speak my mind. Your obligation? Don't silence me, or threaten me into silence.

I have a right to worship as I please, or not worship at all. Your obligation? Don't force me into embracing your beliefs.

Those are your obligations. I have the same obligations toward you. My rights are limited only by the equal rights of others.

If I claimed, say, a right to a vodka martini every day at lunch time, it would mean you (either personally, or via the state) have an obligation to provide it. So, that's not a legitimate right, because it isn't symmetric. It's a "right" for me and an obligation for you beyond simply allowing me my freedom.

The right to keep and bear arms is not contingent on being part of a militia.

School shooters are not participating in militia activities. They are committing crimes, and they are punished by going to prison or being executed.

Not according to the Constitution.

What bearing does the abolition of slavery have on the militia?

It seems clear to me that the difference between positive and negative rights is entirely artificial, based only on the language used when expressing same. It is possible to rephrase anything you might come up with in both positive and negative terms.

Every right must, by definition, confer an obligation on someone else because they form the basis for the rules of society. A single person alone on an island may have rights in the abstract, but it doesn't matter from a practical standpoint since there are no other people whom those rights would affect.

The difference between a negative right and a positive right is that in the former the exchange is symmetric (I respect your right, you respect mine) where in the latter the person with the "right" confers an asymmetric obligation on another (e.g., my right to food or housing confers an obligation on you to provide it, and you cannot demand a reciprocal obligation on me).

Because the 2nd amendment wasn't put there "to combat tyranny", that's NRA propaganda.
It's there to keep down slave revolts.
Slavery is over.