Privledge or right?

kjm: At the time of the writing of the Constitution and the arguments over the Bill of Rights, both the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists were in agreement that not all "Rights" applied to (roughly), "Criminals, the insane, and persons of ill repute". Note that "ill repute" had or has nothing whatsoever to do with court decisions and the loss of rights or privileges thereunder.

crobrun: The use of the word "Right" has to do with its legal sense. A criminal has no legal right to actions defined as criminal.

As to a difference between "Rights" and "Privileges": You have a right to seek a job with my company. A job with my company, in and of itself, is not your legal right; it is a privilege.

One who graduates from high school with a 4.0 GPA does not have a legal right to be given a pass on a college's Freshman English courses, but may be allowed to do so as a privilege.

"Right to Life" in the abortion issue has to do with a person's view as to when "humanness" begins: Conception or birth? If conception, a fetus is seen to have all legal rights. If birth, the fetus has no legal rights during pregnancy. (DON'T START!) The argument is less over a right than over when legal protections of a person's rights should begin.

Hope this helps.

Art
 
Many excellent posts to this thread. Judge Blackhawk's and Jack 99's could not, in my opinion, be improved upon.

The simplest facts are usually the most important, but they are also sometime the most difficult for philosophically opposed individuals to understand. In our system, RIGHTS are immutable. Conversely the government serves the people and the people grant its prerogatives. Those prerogatives, however, cannot constrain the RIGHTS delineated in the Constitution and its amendments. While this may seem like political theory, it is at the very core of the United States' liberty, judicial system, and government. It's time our 270+ million citizen understood this crucial, fundamental point.
 
While I normally dispise the show "Law & Order" for their views, last nights 2nd episode ended with a passionate plea in front of the Supreme Court.

It went something like:

Man only has those rights which he can defend. Life is an absolute right.

While any criminal can take your life at any moment, you have the absolute right to defend your life. Personally I believe by any means available. Including tooth, nail, stone, club, spear, knife, and firearms.

The government can't kill you for just any old reason, sure a rouge cop or federal agent can mistakenly or intentionally kill you, but other than capital punishment, they must have legal backing. What I mean is in defense of an officers or innocent persons life, during the legal execution of warrants, etc.

If life is not an absolute right then we are but slaves to the government. I know many of you feel that way now with all the taxes we pay, but the government has no right to my life or my person.




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Peace through superior firepower...
Keith

If the 2nd is antiquated, what will happen to the rest.
"the right to keep and bear arms."
 
I don't know about God-given (certainly the INSTINCT to defend oneself is God-given), but the RIGHT to keep and bear arms predated the Const and BOR in 1791, existing in the common law of the colonies before that. It was codified and thus permanently guaranteed by the GOVERNMENT (or so the founders thought) by its inclusion in the Bill of Rights. I highly recommend the writings of Stephen Halbrook on this subject - "That Every Man Be Armed" I believe is the name of his original second amendment book, with all the writing of the founders/framers.
 
Folkbabe,

Maybe you don't have any rights beyond the privileges granted by society. That's between you and society. I, however, have rights that are inalienable. That is these rights are not granted by society, by governments, or any other group or entity. As these rights are not granted by such entities they do not have the justification to remove them. These entities may have the POWER to do so but not the right. Society as a whole has no rights only individuals do. The government has certain powers that are granted by the people under the Constitution that limit the rights of individuals in some circumstances. Powers granted by the people can be reclaimed by the people.

The Second Amendment of the Constitution does not grant a right to me, it merely enumerates
a derivative of an inalienable right,i.e, my right to life. Since I have a right to life, I have a right to defend my life, since weapons are tools for defending my life I have the right to own them.

What have you been reading? Just so I can recommend to others from what to stay far, far away.

Tyrants would love a populace such as you.

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Byron Quick
 
"I don't tend to think that there are any "inherent universal" rights above and beyond what society
defines. We all have our own beliefs and have a responsibility to work for those beliefs but that doesn't
make anything inherent."

Ahhh, Folkbabe. I hope for your sake that your personal philosophy is never put to the test. The more I read from you, the more convinced I am that you have absolutely no understanding of the way the world really works.

Spartacus hit the nail on the head. You and your kind are fodder for the furnaces. Good luck.
 
I don't think you all read my post. My whole point was that just because rights aren't somehow mystically _inherent_ or _god-given_ doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for them and stand up to society. I don't believe that somehow certain things are "inherent" in the universe. I do believe that some things are worth fighting and dying for. It is society that sets the rules IMHO so we need to fight within society over them. Our society has set up certain things as rights, including the right to life and the right to bear arms. My point is that it is society not god that establishes what are rights. These rights vary from society to society. I guess this boils down to different religious beliefs than other people. By establishing for ourselves what is right and just we _avoid_ the trap of saying "this is god's will" and submitting to tyranny.

As to the real world, it seems very strange for someone who believes that certain rights are inherent in the universe is telling me that I don't understand the real world. Study a little sociology and/or anthropology and you'll see that rights change from society to society.
 
Natural rights do not change from society to society, the peoples tolerance to tyranny and the governments control over the populace changes.

If we ignore capital punishment for the moment, everyone has the right to live. No one should be able to take that away from you.

If you as an individual do not feel your life is worth defending, so be it. But that does not give that individual to make decisions which effect my right to live, or my right to defend my life.

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Peace through superior firepower...
Keith

If the 2nd is antiquated, what will happen to the rest.
"the right to keep and bear arms."
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>originally posted by KAM_Indianapolis:
Natural rights do not change from society to society, the peoples tolerance to tyranny and the governments control over the populace changes.[/quote]

That is exactly the problem. People are just so used to looking around and seeing that other countries have successfully taken away the rights of their citizens (with little or no resistance) that they start to accept it as the norm. Pretty soon, it's not looked at as, "The citizens of that country have had their rights stomped on," but instead, "Well, look at all the other countries that do it. It must be acceptable." That's how our rights go from being seen as "rights" to merely "privileges."
 
Q.1. Having these rights, I want to keep them - how do I build enough "clout" to keep the antis away and wake up the sleepers?

Q.2. While doing the suggested solution, how do I cope with all the "power points" up and down the "chain of command"?

Alone? I don't think so. Philosophy is okay - after food, shelter, bills and Caesar; also I think most folks are busy handling their own personal current events and that's why there is so much apathy. No doubt there are other forces at work too.

Maybe the Framers, wherever they are, will send us a message, huh? Maybe after they stop crying.

AB


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2nd AMENdment - "So Be It."
 
We all stand up for our individual rights. Come election day we need to vote and make sure the message is loud and clear.

"Don't tread on me!"

Don't tread on my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Common sense must prevail!!!

[This message has been edited by KAM_Indianapolis (edited May 25, 2000).]
 
Self-preservation, and self protection are a basic premise that one has the right, and responsibility to assure one's own survival, and protection.


Let's loook at this from another perspective.
Animal Rights activist have made great strides to insure the safety of certain animals from human intervention. While there is a good side to this, there's also a bad side to it.
But one point to be made is that these animals have been guaranteed protection from humans intent on their harm, so why aren't you and I considered to have the same RIGHTS? Aren't we equal to the beasts of the world?

I would suspiciously answer that question like this? If we're to NOT have the right to protect ourselves, then the only answer left would be to have a massive military/police state, where there would be a soldier on every corner of every town. Since that's impossible by virtue of numbers of people and arms required. Let's look at satellite technology to "overseee" everyting going on down here. They could observe, and document activities occuring, and dispatch control forces to the "troubled areas".
But that's no better than what we've got now, in as far as reporting a crime scene...

My FFL has a poster in his business by Spyderco(??), it says, "All God's creatures have knives." It shows Eagles, Hawks, Wolves, etc

Considering what was being explained in the Federalist Papers, and minutes of chartering the Constitution. What's of real interest in this issue is the refusal to ratify the Constitution as it was originally proposed. Seems too many people realized that there were no guarantees against a government like they'd escaped from. And there were no guarantees for personal LIberties, only provisions for a newly formed government.

Every major legal case often sets a precedence where others will follow in the years to come. As for the legal case of what the Bill of Rights does and does not provide.
That precedence has already been set, and the revisionists know this! The precedence is the Bill or Rights itself. It makes specific points of Rights and guarantees to the people, not to the government. What it does do for government is limit it's involvement in and around the Rights of the citizens.

If that person feels that citizens haven't the RKBA, then (s)he also feels that the citizens don't have any of the remaining rights either. Such as freedom of speech, or due process, or right to sue for greivances against government, etc.

This is the same type person that acuses you and I of voting a Primary Election on one issue. They're partially right on that claim. I will vote in the elections for one issue, Freedom!!! And that one item has ten specific reasons behind it.

Best Regards,
Don

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The most foolish mistake we could make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms;
History shows that all conquerers who have allowed their subjected people to carry arms have prepared their own fall.
Adolf Hitler
 
No, folkbabe, rights are not inherent in the universe. A hurricane has no interests in my rights nor does a descending asteroid. But rights are inherent in human beings as individuals. A female has the same natural rights in Somalia and Afghanistan as a female in the US. Rights regularly trampled by the powers that be.

My rights do not come from government. Rather the government gains its legitimate powers by delegation from me and from other individual sovereign citizens. I am aware of no society (a construct of sociologists largely) which has instituted a government. Most governments are constructed by very small groups of people even those that are broad based and democratic.

As far as "learning a little sociology and anthropology" goes, I would be very careful about patronizing the people on this board. There are some very high power degrees running around loose here and tons of experience as well. I have a BS in psychology and as a direct result I have very little faith in sociology, anthropology, and yes, psychology also. Most of them would not recognize the scientific method if they were locked in a cage with it. And no matter what the fuzzy thinkers say, if it doesn't use the scientific method, it isn't science.

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Byron Quick
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>clipped///In our system, RIGHTS are immutable. Conversely the government serves the people and the people grant its prerogatives. Those prerogatives, however, cannot constrain the RIGHTS delineated in the Constitution and its amendments. While this may seem like political theory, it is at the very core of the United States' liberty, judicial system, and government. It's time our 270+ million citizen understood this crucial, fundamental point.[/B][/quote]

"it should be at the core ..." it seems to me to be the way "it is". I think if we look at the entire BOL, we'll find not just the 2nd AMENdment, but all are being worked on by those who would change our country.

Example: We have a RIGHT to bear, correct? - Not a privilege, but a right.

Taken from the R.O'D gun premit article in the (Connecticut) "The Advocate Online" newpaper:
(Greenwich Police Department)Police Chief Peter Robbins confirmed O'Donnell's bodyguard, who he would not identify, had applied to his department for a permit that would allow him to carry a concealed weapon.

"The facts are (O'Donnell's) bodyguard has made an application for a carry permit," Robbins said. "It's under review, and I haven't yet granted a permit for this applicant."

"I HAVEN'T YET GRANTED ..." -
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/Advocate/release/05-25-2000/article1.html

The "CORE" is under attack!

nuff said.

AB

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2nd AMENdment - "So Be It."
 
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