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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
And, we may also have different ideas on what constitutes a human right.

Probably, because I don't see basic fundamental human rights as something hard to describe. They are everything a person needs to survive. There are still tribes of natives around the world, living this way.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Which one isn't there to protect our rights?

Just for starters . . . the building of post offices.

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So, without government, it's okay to kill anyone at any time?

It would seem so to some philosophers:
The pure state of nature or "the natural condition of mankind" was deduced by the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan and in his earlier work On the Citizen.[2] Hobbes argued that all humans are by nature equal in faculties of body and mind (i.e. no natural inequalities are so great as to give anyone a "claim" to an exclusive "benefit"). From this equality and other causes in human nature, everyone is naturally willing to fight one another: so that "during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man". In this state every person has a natural right or liberty to do anything one thinks necessary for preserving one's own life; and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, Chapters XIII-XIV). Hobbes described this natural condition with the Latin phrase bellum omnium contra omnes (meaning war of all against all), in his work De Cive. [SNIP]
In Hobbes's view, once a civil government is instituted, the state of nature has disappeared between individuals because of the civil power which exists to enforce contracts and the laws of nature generally. Between nations, however, no such power exists and therefore nations have the same rights to preserve themselves - including making war - as individuals possessed. Such a conclusion led some writers to the idea of an association of nations or worldwide civil society. Among them there were Immanuel Kant with his work on perpetual peace. SOURCE

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
And, we may also have different ideas on what constitutes a human right.

Probably, because I don't see basic fundamental human rights as something hard to describe. They are everything a person needs to survive. There are still tribes of natives around the world, living this way.

Yep, we certainly do have different ideas. A right isn't a need.

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
And, we may also have different ideas on what constitutes a human right.

Probably, because I don't see basic fundamental human rights as something hard to describe. They are everything a person needs to survive. There are still tribes of natives around the world, living this way.

Yep, we certainly do have different ideas. A right isn't a need.

So you don't feel the need for food, shelter, water, living, is a basic right? We have to have a piece of paper or our own government to define whether we live or die and protect that right, in your opinion?

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Got me. Good call on that one. I'll give you that one. I'll also give you post roads. Any others?

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Then, that means, we don't have a right to Life. Is that something you agree with?

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
And, we may also have different ideas on what constitutes a human right.

Probably, because I don't see basic fundamental human rights as something hard to describe. They are everything a person needs to survive. There are still tribes of natives around the world, living this way.

Yep, we certainly do have different ideas. A right isn't a need.

So you don't feel the need for food, shelter, water, living, is a basic right? We have to have a piece of paper or our own government to define whether we live or die and protect that right, in your opinion?

No, we don't have a right to food, shelter or water. You walk into your local grocer and and take food without paying because you have a right to it.

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

How is it we have a right to a roof over our head, food, education, shared knowledge, etc.?

Our system of government is not set up solely to support us. It is there to protect our rights, not provide them.

How is it that a bird has a right to fly in the air, a fish has the right to swim in the sea? These just are. We have been eating, living, learning, etc on this planet since we walked on two legs and started using tools. And yes, our government was set up to support us. I give you these words:

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A document can have a listing of all the Human Rights. I don't disagree with that. But, just because it's in a document that is called a Declaration of Human Rights doesn't make everything on the list a human right. If a human right emanates solely from our being human, whether or not it exists on a piece of paper or as a whole bunch of 1's and 0's, as in a digital document, it is still a human right if we are humans.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Their origins are no different to any other human concept - it is a product of human thought. They are inalienable only because we agree that they should be inalienable.

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather
Good lord, I don't mean literally. I mean as in do you have the right to go out and find a tree and pick an apple of any old tree and eat it, or go in the back woods of Kentucky and shoot a deer, skin it, and eat it (and before you even say it, I mean not off someone else's property). The supermarket don't own those foodstuffs, do they? Or how about land, why does one person have claim to that piece of dirt and not another? the native americans were certainly here first, so claim of ownership is not the case. Who has the bigger gun? If a person has to die in the street because he is denied simple basic survival needs, then it is the government that failed him. The government that was set up in complete opposition to English totalitarian rule. You know, its funny that even when we go to other countries and "liberate" them, we give out free food, shelter, and education. We gave the Iraqi people free food, free housing as we rebuild infrastructure, and helping with their civil utilities including education. They get all that, and yep we are paying for it. Nut you don't think Americans deserve the same??

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

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A document can have a listing of all the Human Rights. I don't disagree with that. But, just because it's in a document that is called a Declaration of Human Rights doesn't make everything on the list a human right. If a human right emanates solely from our being human, whether or not it exists on a piece of paper or as a whole bunch of 1's and 0's, as in a digital document, it is still a human right if we are humans.

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There seems to be two different but related things being discussed here. the first is whether we have a specific human right to education. The second seems to be where do human rights come from, on what basis are we entitled to human rights. I am going to focus on the latter - where do human rights come from?
Thus far three answers have been proposed to this question - they come from "our Creator" or, they are inherent in our physical humanity or they come from agreement between humans.

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We need to bear in mind that the concept of human rights is a specifically Western discourse. The discourse of hum an rights was developed in the West - there are many parts of the world that have very different concepts of relationships between an individual and the society they inhabit, concepts that mightn't involve human rights or anything resembling them. This undermines the idea that human rights are 'naturally' universal.
Prior to the Enlightenment period, such rights as humans possessed were said to have been granted by the Creator, or achieved by negotiation and agreement between social parties. As Western thought shifted from a God-centred universe to a human-centred Universe, the idea that human rights were inalienable triumphed. This discourse conveniently located the source of those rights in our humanity our physical being. It is pointless to try to identify the physical source (ie in which part of our bodies such rights might be located).
That the discourse of human rights is a product of a specific time and place, that it has varied across time, that many of the rights were initially achieved through social processes all suggest to me that rights are a matter of agreement between humans. There's nothing divine or inherent in our biology about this concept. Human rights are not given in Nature. Their origins are no different to any other human concept - it is a product of human thought. They are inalienable only because we agree that they should be inalienable.
Having said that, I believe that the concept of universal and inalienable human rights is a very good one, an indispensable democratic and inherently fair basis for ordering relationships between individuals and societies. Just let's be clear about where those rights come from.

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather
Good lord, I don't mean literally. I mean as in do you have the right to go out and find a tree and pick an apple of any old tree and eat it, or go in the back woods of Kentucky and shoot a deer, skin it, and eat it (and before you even say it, I mean not off someone else's property). The supermarket don't own those foodstuffs, do they? Or how about land, why does one person have claim to that piece of dirt and not another? the native americans were certainly here first, so claim of ownership is not the case. Who has the bigger gun? If a person has to die in the street because he is denied simple basic survival needs, then it is the government that failed him. The government that was set up in complete opposition to English totalitarian rule. You know, its funny that even when we go to other countries and "liberate" them, we give out free food, shelter, and education. We gave the Iraqi people free food, free housing as we rebuild infrastructure, and helping with their civil utilities including education. They get all that, and yep we are paying for it. Nut you don't think Americans deserve the same??

You have a right to make your way in this life. It's up to you, not me, to provide food, clothing and shelter to you. If you can't/won't/don't, then you will have to rely on the benevolence of others (charity). And, yes, grocers own the goods they are selling. They were bought either from a grower or from a third party that bought them from the grower. Why do you think you have to pay the grocer, if it's not theirs?

If you go into a town where there is a teacher's strike going on, can you sue the teachers for not providing your kids an education? If they have a right to an education, you certainly should be able to do just that. The teachers are infringing on the rights of the kids, are they not? Best of luck trying that case.

We are giving all that stuff to the Iraqi's because we destroyed all that stuff. At least that's why we do it now. Initially, we did it as a sort of method of buying an acceptance of our presence there. I have no issue with our repairing the shit we broke during the war.

A better example would be Haiti, or other countries like that where we did not do anything to destroy anything, and are simply gifting them out of our National benevolence. Go ahead and bitch about that all you want.

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ORIGINAL: Edwynn
Where I'm in agreement with (what I perceive to be) the spirit of the OP is that the concept of the furthering of progress, the betterment of any society, the respect to the individual within a society, and a host of such like considerations conduce to the notion that a society who values their own, and proposes to consider themselves as being a spearhead of evolution, would find some convenience in the notion that we might consider, in estimation of the above, that education deserves consideration as a 'right.'

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: Darkfeather
Good lord, I don't mean literally. I mean as in do you have the right to go out and find a tree and pick an apple of any old tree and eat it, or go in the back woods of Kentucky and shoot a deer, skin it, and eat it (and before you even say it, I mean not off someone else's property). The supermarket don't own those foodstuffs, do they? Or how about land, why does one person have claim to that piece of dirt and not another? the native americans were certainly here first, so claim of ownership is not the case. Who has the bigger gun? If a person has to die in the street because he is denied simple basic survival needs, then it is the government that failed him. The government that was set up in complete opposition to English totalitarian rule. You know, its funny that even when we go to other countries and "liberate" them, we give out free food, shelter, and education. We gave the Iraqi people free food, free housing as we rebuild infrastructure, and helping with their civil utilities including education. They get all that, and yep we are paying for it. Nut you don't think Americans deserve the same??

You have a right to make your way in this life. It's up to you, not me, to provide food, clothing and shelter to you. If you can't/won't/don't, then you will have to rely on the benevolence of others (charity). And, yes, grocers own the goods they are selling. They were bought either from a grower or from a third party that bought them from the grower. Why do you think you have to pay the grocer, if it's not theirs?
If you go into a town where there is a teacher's strike going on, can you sue the teachers for not providing your kids an education? If they have a right to an education, you certainly should be able to do just that. The teachers are infringing on the rights of the kids, are they not? Best of luck trying that case.
We are giving all that stuff to the Iraqi's because we destroyed all that stuff. At least that's why we do it now. Initially, we did it as a sort of method of buying an acceptance of our presence there. I have no issue with our repairing the shit we broke during the war.
A better example would be Haiti, or other countries like that where we did not do anything to destroy anything, and are simply gifting them out of our National benevolence. Go ahead and bitch about that all you want.

Wow, so you would actually hold an MRE in front of a starving NYC boy and instead hand it to an Iraqi.

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And for some would say, if we hadn't gone there in the first place, we wouldn't have destroyed their stuff.

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And I am NOT talking about charity. I am talking about this society as a whole, doing what it used to do, ages ago. You still have not commented on what I said of past human societies re: prehistoric, native american, etc. All examples of how humans didn't need a government to mystically provide them with "rights" so what, they didn't have any? Is the concept of human rights merely a modern convention??

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That the discourse of human rights is a product of a specific time and place, that it has varied across time, that many of the rights were initially achieved through social processes all suggest to me that rights are a matter of agreement between humans. There's nothing divine or inherent in our biology about this concept. Human rights are not given in Nature. Their origins are no different to any other human concept - it is a product of human thought. They are inalienable only because we agree that they should be inalienable.

Having said that, I believe that the concept of universal and inalienable human rights is a very good one, an indispensable democratic and inherently fair basis for ordering relationships between individuals and societies. Just let's be clear about where those rights come from.

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You are missing what I'm saying. I'm saying that government doesn't provide us with our rights. Government is there to protect/secure our rights, or, better yet, enforce our rights. Without Government, we still have what I call human rights. Those are rights that we have simply by being humans.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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You are missing what I'm saying. I'm saying that government doesn't provide us with our rights. Government is there to protect/secure our rights, or, better yet, enforce our rights. Without Government, we still have what I call human rights. Those are rights that we have simply by being humans.

Your humanity confers no special "rights." Human Rights are a social/cultural invention.

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Pardon me for over simplifying (which I am), but in delving into the German Grundgesetz (basic law), it is striking how dignity of the individual is paramount. That is, there is a barrier to both the state and the corporation (they didn't bother to mention church at all; they learned from our mistake, yes?) in regard to the dignity of the person, something missing in the venerated US Constitution.