What does "God-Given Rights" mean?

[NYcarbineer]

Self-determination is not removable from a person, inherently. The unalienable construct refers to this.

Jefferson says this is from our creator, pointing out that it is part of the human condition, and goes on to describe how government is given mandate by the governed to standardize and sort out rights.

Using wiki for an apt description:

"The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship, is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people...."

So what made the believers of that religious source of right(s) wrong?

Where in the Bible, if we use the Bible as a reference source of what we are led to believe God believes,

does God favor the democratic over the autocratic? Where does God endorse the Bill of Rights, or any such equivalent or similarity?

You could have a misunderstanding of Jefferson's use of Creator. Natural rights are not by any edict from a god, paper or person.. That's just the way it is. We are able to contemplate and act at our own pleasure, whether we like it or not, and we cant transfer that around. A good christian would attribute that to God. i don't think that describes Jefferson though.

Autocratic governance still struggles with Natural Rights. The challenge of government is to cage, combat or coax adhesion to legal rights boundaries.

Democracy just makes mandate more transparent. Maybe Jesus would like that. Couldn't call that one.

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

 

[antagon]

Using wiki for an apt description:

"The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship, is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people...."

So what made the believers of that religious source of right(s) wrong?

Where in the Bible, if we use the Bible as a reference source of what we are led to believe God believes,

does God favor the democratic over the autocratic? Where does God endorse the Bill of Rights, or any such equivalent or similarity?

You could have a misunderstanding of Jefferson's use of Creator. Natural rights are not by any edict from a god, paper or person.. That's just the way it is. We are able to contemplate and act at our own pleasure, whether we like it or not, and we cant transfer that around. A good christian would attribute that to God. i don't think that describes Jefferson though.

Autocratic governance still struggles with Natural Rights. The challenge of government is to cage, combat or coax adhesion to legal rights boundaries.

Democracy just makes mandate more transparent. Maybe Jesus would like that. Couldn't call that one.

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

Natural Law has a lot of application in political science.

 

[LibertyForAll]

Interesting. You must also believe committing murder is an unalienable right as we can choose to commit murder and pay the penalty.

Exactly! It's just not a freedom we'd protect because it directly conflicts with the freedom of others. This gets right at the core of the thread. Most of us are misunderstanding what 'unalienable' or 'god-given' means in context.

We've all grown up hearing 'unlienable rights' as something akin to 'sacrosanct' or, as someone else said, 'untouchable'. But I don't think that is what Jefferson meant at all in using the phrase. Unalienable freedom is the natural state of human existence (Free Will, as LfA points out). He is assigning government the task of, as much as possible, securing that state of freedom. Again, the point in calling out freedom as 'unalienable' was to emphasize that it wasn't a grant from authority - it's something we have before we even bother with government. We create government to enhance and secure the freedoms we already have.

Maybe you aren't making your point well enough for me to understand, but I can't see how we have a right to commit murder. We don't have a right to do anything that harms another but other than that we should have any other right protected by the government.

You only have free will over yourself not others. When other people come into the equation then your free will is mitigated by their right to pursue their will. If I murder someone then they are no longer capable of pursuing life. If I slander someone it could inhibit their ability to pursue life or freedom or happiness. I cannot choose for someone else unless they are incapable of choosing for themselves such as a child. The government determines where the boundaries are between my will and yours through laws. Most of the political process is mired in the debate over where to draw the line.

As an example, there are clear instances where killing someone is ok. If there is a threat to my life or a threat to someone else' then I can protect myself or them. The government sanctions killing all the time in wars. The President even sent a drone to kill an american citizen. So clearly murder happens and sometimes it is justified, sometimes it isn't.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Another take on this is that all of these freedoms boil down to one freedom. The freedom of thought. In other words "Free will". Before any action we take we think and decide on a path to take and then we take it. If there is a law against speaking on street corner, then we have a choice to either speak or not speak. If we speak we may go to jail but we have that option. This is what unalienable means in practical terms. It does not mean that there won't be repercussions for exercising that right. Government can never take away that freedom of choice no matter what laws they enact. Even the most oppressive regimes have political dissidents that are willing to lay down their lives for liberty. One could argue that free will comes from God but in the end it doesn't matter because it is a fact that we have it. You can either agree with me or disagree with me but the fact is that either way you are making a choice and I can't stop you.

Interesting. You must also believe committing murder is an unalienable right as we can choose to commit murder and pay the penalty.

I see you commitment to not improving your intellectual skills is still intact.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Primates have a sense of fair play? You're an idiot. Rights are certainly manufactured, hopefully using logic and secular ethics. They're not something that God gave us. If I believe the bible thumpers, God takes away rights, and has done so since Adam and Eve sought out knowledge.

I am an idiot because two separate scientific studies on two different species of primates have proven that they have an innate sense of right and wrong? Yet you, who reject the science without even looking, are a genius.

Damn, I love being an right wing anti science nut, it makes it so much easier when someone posts something I disagree with, I don't have to pretend than science actually works.

Is it right that most mammals will kill the off spring of a female, so she'll go into heat again? Neither right nor wrong. You're a complete idiot.

I see you still haven't actually read anything, can't say I am even a little surprised.

 

[dblack]

Interesting. You must also believe committing murder is an unalienable right as we can choose to commit murder and pay the penalty.

Exactly! It's just not a freedom we'd protect because it directly conflicts with the freedom of others. This gets right at the core of the thread. Most of us are misunderstanding what 'unalienable' or 'god-given' means in context.

We've all grown up hearing 'unlienable rights' as something akin to 'sacrosanct' or, as someone else said, 'untouchable'. But I don't think that is what Jefferson meant at all in using the phrase. Unalienable freedom is the natural state of human existence (Free Will, as LfA points out). He is assigning government the task of, as much as possible, securing that state of freedom. Again, the point in calling out freedom as 'unalienable' was to emphasize that it wasn't a grant from authority - it's something we have before we even bother with government. We create government to enhance and secure the freedoms we already have.

Maybe you aren't making your point well enough for me to understand, but I can't see how we have a right to commit murder. We don't have a right to do anything that harms another but other than that we should have any other right protected by the government.

Yeah. I'm probably not being as clear as I could be. It's tricky because we use the word "right" in so many different ways.

When you're saying we "have a right to" do something, what you mean (I think) is "government protects our freedom to" do that something. But "unalienable rights" refers to something different, something more like there4eyeM's "capacity" or L4A's "free will". The Declaration is saying something like "We all have the ability to think for ourselves, the innate freedom to make decisions and act on them - and we create governments to protect that freedom". That's my take on it at least.

If it's not entirely obvious, this is my opinion on the meaning of unalienable rights as referenced in the DoI. I'm pretty sure most references, and certainly the popular interpretation, won't agree with the view I'm presenting. I'm just arrogant enough to think that I'm right and they're wrong.

 

[dblack]

Another take on this is that all of these freedoms boil down to one freedom. The freedom of thought. In other words "Free will". Before any action we take we think and decide on a path to take and then we take it. If there is a law against speaking on street corner, then we have a choice to either speak or not speak. If we speak we may go to jail but we have that option. This is what unalienable means in practical terms. It does not mean that there won't be repercussions for exercising that right. Government can never take away that freedom of choice no matter what laws they enact. Even the most oppressive regimes have political dissidents that are willing to lay down their lives for liberty. One could argue that free will comes from God but in the end it doesn't matter because it is a fact that we have it. You can either agree with me or disagree with me but the fact is that either way you are making a choice and I can't stop you.

Interesting. You must also believe committing murder is an unalienable right as we can choose to commit murder and pay the penalty.

I see you commitment to not improving your intellectual skills is still intact.

Why the insult? Ravi makes a keen observation here. It gets right to the heart of the matter.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

For our purposes though, and in the context of creating a harmonious society... your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. We can't look at unalienable rights and the government's responsibility to secure them without thinking about what it is that we're trying to accomplish. If we were all alone on a desert island with no other nose in proximity of our fist, then yeah.. our rights are unlimited, swing away. But that's not the reality of the situation. The reality of the situation is that we ALL are possessed of the same rights, but in the context of civil society, we can't exercise them at the expense of another. Hence the limits.

So yeah, the guy who is slandered does have a right to be left alone, just as the guy who does the slandering has the right to free speech. But it's the aggressor who actively abrogates the rights of another who gets into trouble when the rights of two people come into conflict. The slanderer's swing has met with someone else's nose.

Why do people think that legal rights and natural rights are the same fracking thing?

Slander is a legal concept, not a natural one. It involves one person saying something that the legal system says is unlawful. That cannot happen outside of a society that has a government structure that makes slander actionable.

What you guys are talking about at this point are human characteristics. I would say that's wholly different from unalienable rights. We can't separate unalienable rights from the goal of a harmonious society because they simply don't have meaning outside that context. If you're alone on a desert island, you don't NEED a "right" to exercise your freedom. There's no one else there to recognize it or attempt to impede it. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. If my nose isn't there, you don't need a "right" to swing your fist.

Your that harmonious society trumps natural rights just does not hold up when we say understand the concept of natural rights.

Natural rights are things that the government is not responsible for. Life comes to us from a source other than the government, Yes, the government can kill us, but it cannot grant us life. The government does not have the power to give us life, nor does it have the power to take our life and give it to others. That is what makes unalienable rights unalienable. this is not a hard concept to understand once you move past the idea that all rights are granted by the government, or by society.

There are, obviously, rights that come to us from a harmonious society, I would argue that privacy is one of those rights. Privacy is not something that comes to us from being alive, yet it is something that we cannot exist without in a harmonious society.

There are also rights that come to us from the government. That is why, if we are discussing rights, that we have to recognize that there are different types of rights. Some are natural, and exist simply because we do. Some exist because we need them to live among others. Some are civil, and exist because the government grants them to us.

Your problem is thinking that all rights are unalienable. My right to swing my fist is not unalienable. It might seem that I can swing my fist simply because I am, but there are, as I have argued, multiple sources for rights, and we need to determine what the source of my right to swing my fist is. If I am alone I can swing it as much as I want, but if we are living in a harmonious society my right to swing my fist has to end somewhere before your nose comes into contact with it.

Notice, I did not say at your nose, because I object to people swing their fist in my face even if they don't actually hit me. The law actually realizes the same thing, which is why we have the crime of assault, which does not actually involve physical contact. That means might right to swing my fist is not unalienable.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Using wiki for an apt description:

"The divine right of kings, or divine-right theory of kingship, is a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy. It asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from the will of God. The king is thus not subject to the will of his people...."

So what made the believers of that religious source of right(s) wrong?

Where in the Bible, if we use the Bible as a reference source of what we are led to believe God believes,

does God favor the democratic over the autocratic? Where does God endorse the Bill of Rights, or any such equivalent or similarity?

You could have a misunderstanding of Jefferson's use of Creator. Natural rights are not by any edict from a god, paper or person.. That's just the way it is. We are able to contemplate and act at our own pleasure, whether we like it or not, and we cant transfer that around. A good christian would attribute that to God. i don't think that describes Jefferson though.

Autocratic governance still struggles with Natural Rights. The challenge of government is to cage, combat or coax adhesion to legal rights boundaries.

Democracy just makes mandate more transparent. Maybe Jesus would like that. Couldn't call that one.

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

Meaningless?

Tell me something, how does the government grant me the right to life? Does it control something I am unaware of that allows them to determine who gets born? Are there a limited number slots available for them to grant people life? If they run out and decide that someone else needs to live can they take it away from me to keep another person alive? Can they keep people from dying if they are necessary?

My guess is that, as usual, you don't actually have any idea what you are talking about. You just want the government to be all powerful, and are going to refuse to admit there are things the government cannot control, like life and death.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Interesting. You must also believe committing murder is an unalienable right as we can choose to commit murder and pay the penalty.

I see you commitment to not improving your intellectual skills is still intact.

Why the insult? Ravi makes a keen observation here. It gets right to the heart of the matter.

there is a difference between rights and power. I have a right to life, I have the power to kill. I cannot take my life and give it to another person, neither can the government. That is what makes it an unalienable right. The fact that I can kill does not mean I have an unalienable right to kill, even if I have the right to think about it.

You both missed the heart of the matter because you are misunderstanding the concept of a right.

 

[dblack]

I see you commitment to not improving your intellectual skills is still intact.

Why the insult? Ravi makes a keen observation here. It gets right to the heart of the matter.

there is a difference between rights and power. I have a right to life, I have the power to kill. I cannot take my life and give it to another person, neither can the government. That is what makes it an unalienable right. The fact that I can kill does not mean I have an unalienable right to kill, even if I have the right to think about it.

You both missed the heart of the matter because you are misunderstanding the concept of a right.

Ahh... well, then we simply disagree. I think you have it wrong.
There are different kinds of rights, and 'unalienable rights' is a very specific category. It's not the same thing as "rights protected by government". The rights protected by government are a subset of the broader unalienable rights that we start with.

My understanding of unalienable rights is that they are simply innate freedoms of action (capacities, or free will, as others have characterized it). You're taking it in the more traditional way - as a statement that certain rights are special and endowed (by the Creator?) with special status that makes them untouchable by government. I think that's a mischaracterization of the concept that's at the heart of many of our misconceptions about the government's role in protecting freedom.

 

[NYcarbineer]

You could have a misunderstanding of Jefferson's use of Creator. Natural rights are not by any edict from a god, paper or person.. That's just the way it is. We are able to contemplate and act at our own pleasure, whether we like it or not, and we cant transfer that around. A good christian would attribute that to God. i don't think that describes Jefferson though.

Autocratic governance still struggles with Natural Rights. The challenge of government is to cage, combat or coax adhesion to legal rights boundaries.

Democracy just makes mandate more transparent. Maybe Jesus would like that. Couldn't call that one.

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

Meaningless?

Tell me something, how does the government grant me the right to life? Does it control something I am unaware of that allows them to determine who gets born? Are there a limited number slots available for them to grant people life? If they run out and decide that someone else needs to live can they take it away from me to keep another person alive? Can they keep people from dying if they are necessary?

My guess is that, as usual, you don't actually have any idea what you are talking about. You just want the government to be all powerful, and are going to refuse to admit there are things the government cannot control, like life and death.

The government can draft you and send you to die in a war. Constitutionally justified.

 

[NYcarbineer]

You could have a misunderstanding of Jefferson's use of Creator. Natural rights are not by any edict from a god, paper or person.. That's just the way it is. We are able to contemplate and act at our own pleasure, whether we like it or not, and we cant transfer that around. A good christian would attribute that to God. i don't think that describes Jefferson though.

Autocratic governance still struggles with Natural Rights. The challenge of government is to cage, combat or coax adhesion to legal rights boundaries.

Democracy just makes mandate more transparent. Maybe Jesus would like that. Couldn't call that one.

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

Natural Law has a lot of application in political science.

Natural law applied to rights is gibberish. Survival of the fittest is natural law. Democracy is exceedingly unnatural; it is a noble attempt to overcome the laws of nature as they apply to humans from our origins.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Natural rights are a meaningless concept. All the founders were saying is that they believed that we should all agree that there should be a basic set of rights that government should not encroach upon, without good cause, and in the event government did,

the People would have just cause to remove that government and replace it.

It's just a logical argument made in the context of the times. As I said, it's a God based argument made against the opposing God based argument that was the divine right of kings.

It's hardly uncommon throughout history for causes to claim God is on their side.

Meaningless?

Tell me something, how does the government grant me the right to life? Does it control something I am unaware of that allows them to determine who gets born? Are there a limited number slots available for them to grant people life? If they run out and decide that someone else needs to live can they take it away from me to keep another person alive? Can they keep people from dying if they are necessary?

My guess is that, as usual, you don't actually have any idea what you are talking about. You just want the government to be all powerful, and are going to refuse to admit there are things the government cannot control, like life and death.

The government can draft you and send you to die in a war. Constitutionally justified.

That is not even close to a response to my questions, want to try again?

I will make it simpler for you, just one question. If the government decided you deserved to live and I deserved to die while you were laying on your deathbed could they take my life and give it to you?

 

[Inthemiddle]

Meaningless?

Tell me something, how does the government grant me the right to life? Does it control something I am unaware of that allows them to determine who gets born? Are there a limited number slots available for them to grant people life? If they run out and decide that someone else needs to live can they take it away from me to keep another person alive? Can they keep people from dying if they are necessary?

My guess is that, as usual, you don't actually have any idea what you are talking about. You just want the government to be all powerful, and are going to refuse to admit there are things the government cannot control, like life and death.

The government can draft you and send you to die in a war. Constitutionally justified.

That is not even close to a response to my questions, want to try again?

I will make it simpler for you, just one question. If the government decided you deserved to live and I deserved to die while you were laying on your deathbed could they take my life and give it to you?

Are you an organ donor?

 

[Ravi]

Exactly! It's just not a freedom we'd protect because it directly conflicts with the freedom of others. This gets right at the core of the thread. Most of us are misunderstanding what 'unalienable' or 'god-given' means in context.

We've all grown up hearing 'unlienable rights' as something akin to 'sacrosanct' or, as someone else said, 'untouchable'. But I don't think that is what Jefferson meant at all in using the phrase. Unalienable freedom is the natural state of human existence (Free Will, as LfA points out). He is assigning government the task of, as much as possible, securing that state of freedom. Again, the point in calling out freedom as 'unalienable' was to emphasize that it wasn't a grant from authority - it's something we have before we even bother with government. We create government to enhance and secure the freedoms we already have.

Maybe you aren't making your point well enough for me to understand, but I can't see how we have a right to commit murder. We don't have a right to do anything that harms another but other than that we should have any other right protected by the government.

Yeah. I'm probably not being as clear as I could be. It's tricky because we use the word "right" in so many different ways.

When you're saying we "have a right to" do something, what you mean (I think) is "government protects our freedom to" do that something. But "unalienable rights" refers to something different, something more like there4eyeM's "capacity" or L4A's "free will". The Declaration is saying something like "We all have the ability to think for ourselves, the innate freedom to make decisions and act on them - and we create governments to protect that freedom". That's my take on it at least.

If it's not entirely obvious, this is my opinion on the meaning of unalienable rights as referenced in the DoI. I'm pretty sure most references, and certainly the popular interpretation, won't agree with the view I'm presenting. I'm just arrogant enough to think that I'm right and they're wrong.

I don't mean that the government protects our freedom to not be murdered. I just don't see being able to commit murder as a right, no matter where rights come from.

 

[Ravi]

I see you commitment to not improving your intellectual skills is still intact.

Why the insult? Ravi makes a keen observation here. It gets right to the heart of the matter.

there is a difference between rights and power. I have a right to life, I have the power to kill. I cannot take my life and give it to another person, neither can the government. That is what makes it an unalienable right. The fact that I can kill does not mean I have an unalienable right to kill, even if I have the right to think about it.

You both missed the heart of the matter because you are misunderstanding the concept of a right.

Oddly enough, you seem to agree with me. Are you opposed to capital punishment?

 

[dblack]

Maybe you aren't making your point well enough for me to understand, but I can't see how we have a right to commit murder. We don't have a right to do anything that harms another but other than that we should have any other right protected by the government.

Yeah. I'm probably not being as clear as I could be. It's tricky because we use the word "right" in so many different ways.

When you're saying we "have a right to" do something, what you mean (I think) is "government protects our freedom to" do that something. But "unalienable rights" refers to something different, something more like there4eyeM's "capacity" or L4A's "free will". The Declaration is saying something like "We all have the ability to think for ourselves, the innate freedom to make decisions and act on them - and we create governments to protect that freedom". That's my take on it at least.

If it's not entirely obvious, this is my opinion on the meaning of unalienable rights as referenced in the DoI. I'm pretty sure most references, and certainly the popular interpretation, won't agree with the view I'm presenting. I'm just arrogant enough to think that I'm right and they're wrong.

I don't mean that the government protects our freedom to not be murdered. I just don't see being able to commit murder as a right, no matter where rights come from.

That's because you're seeing only one definition for 'right' - ie, a freedom that government protects. You're hearing us say that the "freedom" to commit murder is an unalienable "right" and hearing that as the same thing as the "right" to freedom of speech. Unalienable rights aren't the same thing. It would probably have been better if Jefferson had used some other word besides "right" to describe this default state of freedom. Committing murder is an "unalienable right" because, by virtue of having free will, it's something any of us could choose to do. But saying that isn't the same thing as saying it's a right government should protect.


Just try to accept that "unalienable right" isn't describing the same kind of thing as legally protected rights. It's talking about our default state as thinking beings. It's saying that each of us starts with freedom (free will) and we create government to protect that freedom as much as possible. Obviously, the "freedom" to commit murder is unacceptable because it directly violates the freedom of the victim to live. The whole point of creating government is to resolve conflicting unalienable rights.

 

[Ravi]

Yeah. I'm probably not being as clear as I could be. It's tricky because we use the word "right" in so many different ways.

When you're saying we "have a right to" do something, what you mean (I think) is "government protects our freedom to" do that something. But "unalienable rights" refers to something different, something more like there4eyeM's "capacity" or L4A's "free will". The Declaration is saying something like "We all have the ability to think for ourselves, the innate freedom to make decisions and act on them - and we create governments to protect that freedom". That's my take on it at least.

If it's not entirely obvious, this is my opinion on the meaning of unalienable rights as referenced in the DoI. I'm pretty sure most references, and certainly the popular interpretation, won't agree with the view I'm presenting. I'm just arrogant enough to think that I'm right and they're wrong.

I don't mean that the government protects our freedom to not be murdered. I just don't see being able to commit murder as a right, no matter where rights come from.

That's because you're seeing only one definition for 'right' - ie, a freedom that government protects. You're hearing us say that the "freedom" to commit murder is an unalienable "right" and hearing that as the same thing as the "right" to freedom of speech. Unalienable rights aren't the same thing. It would probably have been if Jefferson had used another word than "right" because of this equivocation. Committing murder is an "unalienable right" because, by virtue of having free will, it's something any of us could choose to do.

Just try to accept that "unalienable right" isn't describing the same kind of thing as legally protected rights. It's talking about our default state as thinking beings. It's saying that each of us starts with freedom (free will) and we create government to protect that freedom as much as possible. Obviously, the "freedom" to commit murder is unacceptable because it directly violates the freedom of the victim to live. The whole point of creating government is to resolve conflicting unalienable rights.

Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly, now. I think we have unalienable rights and we also have rights conferred to us by society. The government can't infringe upon our unalienable rights, but it sometimes does infringe on our rights conferred to us by society....if there is a compelling reason to do so, and if we the people are the government.

I will have to think about this some more.

Good thread!

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The government can draft you and send you to die in a war. Constitutionally justified.

That is not even close to a response to my questions, want to try again?

I will make it simpler for you, just one question. If the government decided you deserved to live and I deserved to die while you were laying on your deathbed could they take my life and give it to you?

Are you an organ donor?

Totally irrelevant to the question.

There is no doubt the government can take my organs if it wants to, the question is can they transfer whatever it is that makes me a living being from me to another person. If they cannot my right to life is unalienable.