Life in a republic, aka American democracy, is not a zero sum game my right wing friends. No one is pressuring you to give anyone anything. You agree as a citizen to responsibilities within the framework of our nation. You have ever right to your Walmart wages, your trailer, your ten kids and Friday night bowling. Should you be lucky, you have a right to your split level, two kids, and Friday night cocktail parties by the pool with friends. But maybe 'right' doesn't fit into my less serious reply, maybe instead stop thinking that if another has a decent wage, a good job, that somehow includes you. Consider your broadly useless abstractions such as freedom, free markets, and other such nonsense, then consider FDR's bill of rights as an example of goals that are at least grounded in reality, and goals that worked till the seventies and eighties in America. But again I am busy today so I leave you whiners on the right with this food for thought. I like the quotes.
You like quotes because you know that when you try to post without them, like you just did, you end up contradicting yourself and sounding like an idiot.
Living in a republic has nothing to do with whatever point you are trying to make. Unless you can show me something that I signed, or verbally agreed to, you cannot argue I agreed to something just because I was born in this country. You would be offended if I told you that you agreed to defend the US, right or wrong, simply because you were born here, stop trying to pretend that me being born here imposes obligations on me, especially when you try to pretend that those obligations don't cost me anything.
In the real world if you have a right to a house someone has to build it. That costs resources, and the end result is that there is zero net gain in utility. The fact that the cost of that house is spread across multiple people while it only benefits one person does not change the fact that it is a zero sum transaction. Unless you understand that you are not basing anything in reality.
Edit of old thread.
Four woman live in two different countries, one country is a democracy and the second a totalitarian nation. The woman believe that they live in nation which grants them certain rights. That value is written into the governing documents of each country. These rights include individual freedom separated from any coercion. One day the two woman from the democracy decide to go on vacation. One woman buys her ticket and gets on a plane to Bermuda. The other woman has limited resources and when she gets to the airport is told she cannot board the plane without sufficient funds. Finally after much dispute she is arrested and thrown into a state jail.
One day the two woman in the totalitarian state decide to travel abroad. One works in government and gains permission to go to Bermuda. The other woman checks with her local commissioner and is told she cannot travel to Bermuda. Travel to Bermuda is not allowed. She disputes the decision and is soon thrown into a state jail. Two woman exercised their right, two couldn't, yet all held the same value. Each woman had individual rights, yet in each case those rights were dependent on other factors. If our rights are dependent on so many extraneous items, how is it we claim any rights at all?
What?
Two women traveled to Bermuda by paying for the service provided in different coin of value to the system they were constrained to work within. The other two women expected other people to hand them things because they, like you, were deluded and believed that life in whatever system they lived in was not a zero sum game. Every single one of the women exercised her rights, even the two that ended up in jail.
Go back to a real school and pay attention.
My reply below. You answer first.
What value does a concept of individual rights have if any action at all is dependent on exterior factors? There is no such thing as a right, for in order to have a right certain conditions must be meet. Rights come within a context, without context a right is meaningless fantasy useless except as rhetorical flourish or apologetic rational.
Let me get this straight. The two women who ended up in jail because they expected other people to provide services to them did not have rights because they didn't get what they wanted? That is not what rights are about, rights exist outside of economic or political systems, not because of them. The fact that governments exist to deny people rights does not change the fact that people have them.
Who decides when rights collide?
Did slave owners have the right to own slaves?
Did slaves have rights?
Do women have the right to control their family decisions?
Do gay people have the right to marry?
If an unborn child has a right to life does it then have a right to support?
Does a child have a right to proper nutrition? Education?
Do you have the right to impose your religious beliefs on others?
What gives you that right?
Does your labor grant you any rights?
Does the fact your labor and perks only exist because you live in America grant you special rights?
"Between equal rights, force decides." Marx
"No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any." Friedrich Nietzsche
"A man has a right not to be insulted in front of his children." President Lyndon Johnson 'the moral necessity of the 1964 Civil Rights Act'
"Rights are just (tastes) emotions without rational thought' Bentham paraphrase
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Like I said, you like quotes because it you think it makes you look smart, even though you use quotes that contradict your point.
